It's common for a developer to have side-projects, whether it's a blog, an app to build, an open-source library to maintain, or a course to watch or read. Aside from a full-time job, it can be hard to dedicate time to them.
Often, I like to get up one hour early and work on it. I often find myself working on Saturday morning if I feel like it. What about you? What are your strategies, tips and tricks to manage your time for your side projects?
Top comments (9)
Lately, I have very few things I keep myself accountable for doing: minimum amount of exercise and investing in my relationship. The rest I do as I have energy. To "hack" the energy, I try to find partners when I can, as that typically makes things more fun.
free time will never come, you have to create it. For me I work some extra hours in the evening after work.
I keep a list of tasks I need to complete for that night so I will stay focused
I have a 3 months old kid, full time work and had been trying to establish my startups. I in general try to leverage all the time I have in the world. I prefer to keep things fluid with lots of pipeline . whenever I get chance I try to close them 1 by 1.
I've only been doing personal projects for a short time and I still find it hard.
For now, what I do is focus on the projects of the company I work for full time during the week and leave the weekends for my side-projects.
But I would like to read what the rest does, I am exhausted during the week after work, I need to relax my mind, but maybe with a good organization you can manage to combine it.
I try to work on side-projects weekends afternoon, and during the week I work on the evening for few hours when I want it, so most of the time 2-3 days during working days.
What helped a lot is making sure the task of my side projects are easy to reach and last less than 2 hours, this way I can see progress even with small loads of work.
For the working days, working on side-projects helps making the cut after a day : I finish my jobs at time, take a one hour break, eat something, and then go back to my side-project.
Sold my house in SF. Lots of time since I don't have to work now.
Living the dream.
I sleep less.
I can choose to less Mountain-biking, less PlayStation gaming, less reading. To compensate for the time I lack for side-projects.