20 ms·

How to balance full-time work with creative projects

• adamnemecek 8y ago
  I'm sorry but it's not possible. When you work full time, you have little time left, maybe 4 hours a day. These are not prime working hours, they are leftovers. You make very little progress which discourages you even more. You feel guilty about watching TV. You try to do something on the weekends but let's be real, the five days in between are really going to break your flow. I feel like the idea of a "side hustle" is selling false hope. Maybe people call something a "side hustle" just so that they can brush of criticism with "it was just a side hustle". I've convinced 3 people (2 friends, one person on hacker news) to quit their jobs to work on their ideas, pursue self-study and figure stuff out. They've all been very thankful and the progress on their respective journeys has been much faster. You can't build something cool without devoting yourself entirely to it.
  • androidgirl 8y ago
    You can make the opposite tradeoff, work on side projects very early (I start working on mine at 4am) and work at normal hours after. The tradeoff is you might be less enthusiastic at work, but I've not suffered from this yet (big yet, remains to be seen). Also, you need to be more of a lark to do something like this.
    • rozenmd 8y ago
      I've started doing this, noticed I'm ridiculously more productive in the two hours before work than after.
  • diminoten 8y ago
    Maybe you mean "not likely", because "not possible" is objectively false.
  • eksemplar 8y ago
    I disagree. Some days you’ll be beat, sure, and you won’t be able to be creative on those days. But that’s fine, if you accept it. Other days you’ll get a lot of creativity done in your spare hours, and if your hobby is computer science, then you can certainly get a side project done. Because if you have a few hours to watch Netflix or browse hackernews, then you have a few hours to do other things, and once you get into the habit of having fun with your hobby, it will feel nothing like work. Granted, that last bit isn’t as easy as it sounds, and it’s probably impossible if you don’t like your side project. Like if your side project is to build x because y will be good for you, then x may not be what you want, and it’s almost impossible to do that then. Disclaimer, I’m Scandinavian. Our work week is 37 hours. My work week isn’t though, and I still had time to build a password cracker for DES encrypted passwords in c the other day, because it was fun. Of course, if your goal is to start a business, then it’s perfectly possible that this won’t be fun, and I do agree that it’s often a good idea to give it a shot instead of trying to do it on your spare time. But creative side projects? That’s like going for a run or watching a movie.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • SurrealSoul 8y ago
    I disagree and actively disprove of this. I have four hours at home. Hour1: Eating / TV / Hanging out with wife Hour2: Development, studying, cultivating Hour3: Gym Hour4: Relax, mental health, maybe some more development While I agree that my progress is significantly larger on the weekends, the five hours from the weekdays gives me a good amount. Keep in mind too, this is about side projects, creative ideas. Not about "starting a business" or some startup venture
    • sharkmerry 8y ago
      do your wife and you work different schedules? You only spend 1 hour a weekday with your wife? and spend more time working on the weekend?
      • SurrealSoul 8y ago
        We go to the gym together and spend a lot of time in hour 4 together. The first hour is just exclusively for us. Often she will visit me while I am coding and I (typically) don't mind :) Per weekend day, I normally find four~five hours of development time and the rest I typically spend with her. It's also worth noting that this schedule isn't law, there are days were I don't develop or go to the gym to hang out with my wife more
    • gnulinux 8y ago
      I'm insanely curious how can you spend an hour at gym. Showering alone takes 30 mins. There is also time commuting to and from gym. Do you work out for only 20 mins and is insanely efficient doing this task? Most people work out ~1 to 1.5 hours and combined with inefficiencies, commute and showering it's a 2 hour commitment.
      • rozenmd 8y ago
        a Starting-Strength or Greyskull LP program only takes about 30-45 mins. Faster if you've been doing it for years...
      • SurrealSoul 8y ago
  • rosser 8y ago
    "The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is busy doing it."
    • nf05papsjfVbc 8y ago
      I'm afraid Kurt Gödel did not receive this note.
  • stanmancan 8y ago
    I couldn't disagree more. I started two side projects while working a full time job. I also have a family and coach my kids sports team. I enjoyed working on them in the spare time I could find, enjoyed seeing the progress I made (no matter how slow). Because I couldn't dedicate a ton of time working on them, I had plenty of time to -think- about it. Driving, grocery shopping, in the shower... when I did sit down I knew exactly what I needed to do and was very productive. After a couple of years they both had grown to a point where I was able to comfortably quit my job to pursue them.
    • quickthrower2 8y ago
      Becoming a parent had made me more resourceful too. If I get half an hour to code I'll smash it out like a rabid animal. That said been doing renovations recently and there is definitely pent up energy for physical work after a day of coding.
    • adverbly 8y ago
      Any tips on pulling that off? You make it sound very easy(couple of years seems pretty damn fast to me), so maybe you, like the author, could share what you think led to your success?
      • bartcobain 8y ago
        I second this and also, what is your creative project?
      • stanmancan 8y ago
        One project was pretty lucky; my wife’s employer had a manual process that was very time consuming and inefficient. My wife mentioned it and I told her I could help solve it. It was a huge risk because we had no way to get infront or anyone that could sign off, and being a huge company it would have been a horrible process. I decided to develope a solution first and pitch it. Luckily it worked out for me because they easily could have turned me down and I would have spent months developing it for nothing. However; I enjoyed making it and looked at it as a learning experience so I wasn’t too concerned either way. Now they pay monthly and it’s been a good recurring source of income for me. Another project was something I built for myself a few years ago (macvendors.com) and made available. After about 4-5 years traffic picked up and it started to grow. Now I receive about 350 million API request per month and growing. We recently introduced paid plans but the income from them is pretty much irrelevant, under $100/m. The site makes a little bit of ad revenue though which helps.
  • abakker 8y ago
    Maybe in your experience. personally, I've not found it to be too frustrating to maintain a side hobby/business doing and selling woodworking items. Potentially, if you view "full time" as being 10+ hours/day, then yeah, it would be hard, but, if you can manage 8/day on work +2 per day for commute/errands and 1 for relaxing, you still have 13 hours left. I like to sleep 8 hours/day, so, 5 total that can be allocated to hobbies/side projects. even if you lose 2 more hours to inefficiencies/task switching losses, then you still can spend 3 hours on the project, and if you do that with dedication it works pretty well.
    • thrower123 8y ago
      This works well if you are in your early 20s or otherwise have no real obligations, but otherwise it becomes very untenable unless you are ruthless about carving out that time, and the other people in your life are accepting of that prioritization. The best I can do is try to carve out a couple of hours late at night or early in the morning, when everyone else is asleep. But you end up robbing Peter (sleep, chores, exercise, cooking, time with loved ones) to pay Paul.
    • _coveredInBees 8y ago
      I take it you don't have a family? Because I don't see any time carved out for spending quality time with a partner and kids (if you had one or more). I'm not entirely sure why the person you replied to got down-voted so heavily. Yes, it's possible to do stuff on the side, but it is exhausting and hard, especially if you are juggling a full-time job and family life. As a husband and dad to two, there is a lot less free time available on any given day to pursue side projects and hobbies. I prioritize time with my family, and I prioritize time to take care of my health (work out), and that leaves very little time to devote to hobbies. Even with an understanding spouse who is okay with me spending my nights after the kids go to bed on study/hobbies, I get 1-2 hours on weeknights at best. I still build things, learn things and tackle new things, but it is hard, and it can be very exhausting if you try to sustain it over long periods of time. But I like my job, my co-workers, and I like where I am at life, so I have no complaints. If I wanted to switch careers or build something substantial on the side, I would definitely recommend doing what the OP suggested, even though it seems riskier and harder.
  • cs02rm0 8y ago
    Not quite sure why you're being downvoted even if people have different views it situations. For me side projects are generally just too large and all consuming to run alongside my contracting. I've had the odd smaller project but that's the exception rather than the rule. Maybe things are different for people working on different types of side projects or who don't have the three kids I do, but I can empathize with the feeling that it's impossible.
• SurrealSoul 8y ago
  As with everything, your milage may vary with these suggestions. I am not the writer, but am just a man with a side project, which is getting more and more of my time. Change “I can’t” to “I don’t.” -- This section bugged me. At first, I thought it was great. Looking back, this is great advise for a smaller project, or someone just starting. However as your project gets bigger and larger you need to have time for mental health. By saying "I don't do anything Tuesday evenings" can isolate your friends or family. Sometimes after a hard day of work you just want to play a game or two with your friends, but it can be hard to make that push knowing you're actively "sabotaging" your progression. Having a routine is nice, and I find it the only way to progress myself, but sometimes it feels good for your friends and family to "bug" you. I personally believe breaking a routine for your mental health will be beneficial in the long run. I do love the words about finding creative peak hours, building slowly and in general good habits. For what it is worth, I am using a "circle development cycle". You can imagine it as a circle progress wheel, making initial progress on several things and going back to improve them several times. The initial pass may be an uncolored landscape, where by the fourth pass there are natural mountains, cities and ect... This way I am cultivating new creative ideals while progressing on things as a whole. My "done" state will arrive sooner, but by delaying the "perfect" state's date. Anyways, this is a great article and just wanted to share my smaller findings while I apply what the author suggested to myself
• rubenhak 8y ago
  I could combine multiple creative projects with day job, but that all ended when I turned 30. Had to quit my main job to fully focus on the startup i work on.
  • heurist 8y ago
    Joining a startup was death for my creative side projects. I get to be much more creative at work now than I used to but it's still work, and a lot more of it.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• chasd00 8y ago
  Don't try to make money with your creative projects and they'll be a joy. If you're trying to make money with them then have a plan in place to turn them into your day job so you can make time for fun creative projects eventually.
  • bartcobain 8y ago
    Which of this suggestions is your case? Edit: formatting.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• zachlite 8y ago
  I tried to balance, but months would go by and I wasn't making progress that satisfied me. I quit my job last month, and so far, it seems it was the right decision. What really pushed me over the edge was just realizing how bored I was at work, and it wasn't just a slow period - it was systemic. The projects I'd fantasize about spaced out commuting home genuinely excited me, but then I'd snap out of it as soon as I got home and realized I had 4 hours to eat, bathe, and maintain relationships with friends and significant others. I was scared to think about losing my paycheck, especially because I'm not pursuing these projects as potential revenue streams - really just for the sake of exploring and learning new things. I'm fortunate enough to be in a position where my only financial obligation is rent, and as a software engineer, a few hours of freelance work per comfortably covers that. I'm not advocating everyone go quit your jobs, because I realize everyone's situation is different. But life is too short to be bored as shit.
  • LargeWu 8y ago
    Same here, except it's not friends, it's kids. I spend a fair amount of my work day completely bored by the grind of software development and thinking about my hobbies (which right now is mostly screenprinting and music). But by the time I get home, cook dinner, clean up, and put the kids to bed, it's between 8:30-9:30, which means I have 1-2 free hours to do anything else. Having a creative outlet helps a lot, both because I have an urge to create, and nobody else gets to tell me what to do or how to do it. It's much more rewarding than video games or TV. Not sure quitting my job is in the cards at the moment, but my son's preschool is closing down for the summer in June, before he starts kindergarten in the fall. I've considered taking the summer off to stay home with him for a few months and just do creative projects.
    • zachlite 8y ago
      If you took the summer off, would you possibly work on a creative project with your son? It can be so nice to share something you love with someone you love, and motivating too.
      • 8y ago
• keiferski 8y ago
  Personally, I think the “burn the ships” strategy is probably more viable for a serious endeavor, if you can afford (financially or otherwise) to do it. Save up 6-12 months of living expenses, make a plan, launch a barebones version, then make the jump and quit your job. Speaking only personally here, but I think trying to just schedule in productive creative time doesn’t really work. There is no real enforced urgency and it’s too easy to think, “Well, I worked hard at my day job today, so I deserve to relax.” There is no “survival” mental state. But YMMV. I think it depends on whether you’re a “disciplined slow-but-steady worker” or if you thrive on being obsessed with what you’re working on.
  • jcoffland 8y ago
    This sounds like a good recipe for disaster. There's no buffer room in this plan. You've got 6-12 months to make your company profitable or it either fails or you get into massive debt.
    • keiferski 8y ago
      I don’t know, worst case scenario you learn a ton and...go get another job? Life is short and time is valuable. There is a very real cost to not putting your 100% into something.
      • AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
        There's also a cost to putting yourself 100% in to things, that's why they have this whole "moderation" concept.
    • herewego 8y ago
      Meh, there's risk involved, but saying it's a "recipe for disaster" implies that you think the outcome is nearly set or that the odds are against you. I challenge that line of thinking. You don't necessarily "got 6-12 months to make your company profitable or it either fails or you get into massive debt." A counter example could be that if your company's net begins to converge towards profitability, your burn rate would decrease and it's entirely possible that your 6-12 months becomes 18-24 months. Bail if you don't see that convergence and you'll still be able to re-enter the workforce without wiping out your savings. It's not an all or nothing game. Alternatively, just get to profitability in 6-12 months :)
• bloomca 8y ago
  My experience is that if you can afford it, allow yourself 2–3 months sabbatical, and after some time (for me it is about 2 weeks), you'll start to produce creative projects. I personally write down all ideas and when I have time to implement them, choose what looks the most interesting (and feasible). With this strategy, in the last couple months, I was able to implement: https://2018.bloomca.me/en https://2018.bloomca.me/en – just a website showing how bloated web is https://real-local-food.com/ https://real-local-food.com/ – project about local food https://nameless-hamlet-12227.herokuapp.com/ https://nameless-hamlet-12227.herokuapp.com/ – check your allergies application, built for a hackathon. Now, you can notice they are not perfect, and by no means are finished, but before I was not able to produce that much. edit: formatting
  • RickS 8y ago
    Yes! The most important bit of this comment IMO is the "about two weeks" part. There's a trough of uselessness in vacations – 14-21 days is the minimum in my experience. In week 1, I'm annoyed by my vacation. I don't care about sitting on a beach, I'm bored, I want to get back to solving problems. In week two, I'm aghast at the mundane routines I've fallen into, bullshit hangouts, errands, and reddit. Something weird happens in week 3 where all the books you read, all the ideas you have, start to take on this new lightness and optimism and interestingness. Hang out in that vacation mode for as long as you can afford to. I wish I had more insight into that last state, but it's a very rare day that I take more than a month off work. For me at least, vacations under 3 weeks are somewhat useless from a "recover your health" standpoint, and I'm much better off spreading a week or two of vacation around in a way that makes many 3 day weeks, giving room to run errands and make non-work life more relaxed across the board, rather than oscillating between tire fires and mandatory relaxation.
    • mrec 8y ago
      > There's a trough of uselessness in vacations – 14-21 days is the minimum in my experience Can confirm. I haven't had more than two weeks off in one block in the last ~20 years, and the results have been exactly what you'd predict. This Onion article from 2013 is depressingly accurate: https://www.theonion.com/find-the-thing-youre-most-passionate-about-then-do-it-1819584843 https://www.theonion.com/find-the-thing-youre-most-passionat...
• chrstphrhrt 8y ago
  Can only do this if able to build up a state of flow around it. Start small, as small as possible. Not everything good has to be big. All the comments like "dump everything and dive in head first for X months" sound like some weird cult of extreme heroism to me. Everything is a process, not some abstract form that can magically be reified into existence by wanting/trying harder. We are animals and have to build up the habit and curiosity in tandem, else risk burnout.
• cortesoft 8y ago
  I really miss working on personal projects. Having young children at home makes it pretty impossible. The only time I have to work on personal projects is after the kids go to bed, and by that time my brain is done. I have pretty much resigned myself to not doing any personal projects until they are older. If only I realized how much time I had in the before-time....
  • imhoguy 8y ago
    In the past I tried creative night shifts too, sometimes till 3AM but in the morning I was wrecked. So what works now: I go to sleep same time as my kids and wake up much earlier. Benefits: 1) kids get good habit going to sleep at the right time 2) you get a proper sleep 3) at least my morning mind is much more fresh after some exercise 4) your creative wandering is time limited by how early you wake up - that is most difficult especially in the winter, but it is just a matter of habit and doesn't sacrifice health so much. 5) I am unlikely to procrastinate in the morning if I wake up with a planed task in mind
    • mr337 8y ago
      This is spot on and have started this two weeks ago. I get up at 5am and start work at 9am. Solid productivity time with no little ones.
      • cortesoft 8y ago
        Yeah, sadly 5am is when my kids like to wake up :(
        • mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
          Same here :) isn't it just lovely? :)
      • achileas 8y ago
        That early time for me is to focus on my body with exercise. A lot of time in this industry we forget about the body because our mind pays the bills. It's not sustainable.
• jeremyarose 8y ago
  We have time for what we prioritize. That doesn't mean it's easy, but it is possible.
• perfunctory 8y ago
  The best way is simply not working full-time. Work part-time. I know you'll now come up with all sorts of excuses why it's hard/impossible. But hey, you want to do a creative project. That implies you are a creative person. So get creative. I assume the partial loss of income is not a problem. Can't be in our industry. So go negotiate with your boss. Negotiate hard. Your boss can't agree because he needs someone to occupy a desk - work half a day. Trade other benefits. Get your colleagues on board. No luck - change jobs, become a freelancer. Hack, you could even become a freelancer at your own former employer. There are plenty of options. Get creative!
  • scarecrowbob 8y ago
    I think it's incredibly hard to do this. But it's not impossible. I managed to do it; that's how I can afford to be a musician and play paying gigs. I had to negotiate a position at a very small firm, but I get a salary based on a 30h week and I've been doing that for several years now.
  • magic_beans 8y ago
    > The best way is simply not working full-time I would LOVE this, but I can't get insurance or benefits this way (in the US).
    • jcoffland 8y ago
      You can buy your own insurance and save for your own retirement.
      • mathgeek 8y ago
        > You can buy your own insurance Depending on where you live in the US, this can be more costly than it's worth (compared to group coverage).
        • jcoffland 8y ago
          With group coverage you are paying much more than you think. The cost to your employer could have been paid to you as wages. The best option for buying your own insurance is to buy the absolute minimum coverage with high deductible and HSA option. Then put money in the HSA and save on income taxes.
• bpchaps 8y ago
  I've found it to be very hard. Very, very hard. It got to the point for me where my "creative projects" took over and started to become what I spent most of my mental energy on, so a fulltime job became extremely difficult. These days, I only work 10hrs a week doing independent contracting, which while it's not much time, it's been surprisingly exhausting considering the time crunches and other strange pressures that come with it. That said, my "creative projects" are a pretty involved - two of them include FOIA lawsuits.
  • malux85 8y ago
    ok there's no part of this comment that I'm not interested in you expanding on if you would! Does the 10 hours a week support you financially? Is that because your cost of living is low? Tell us about the creative projects and the lawsuits!
    • imhoguy 8y ago
      > Tell us about the creative projects and the lawsuits! He was on HN FP recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18257867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18257867
• gavanwoolery 8y ago
  - I work fulltime - I commute 30 minutes each day during the week - I am a fulltime dad - I exercise 5 times per week - I walk my dog 2x daily - ~10 hours/week on chores/yardwork/construction - I still manage to have a side project. Its definitely doable, I think you just need to be a little bit mentally ill. :)
  • jcoffland 8y ago
    Do you have time for friends? Friends seem to be the last priority these days yet there have been several studies that link having close friends to long-term health and happiness.
    • gavanwoolery 8y ago
      I do not have time for friends, as one might expect (unless you count my wife and/or her friends as friends, or "twitter friends"). Which is ok by me, since I am pretty antisocial in the real world. :)
      • bartcobain 8y ago
        What is your current side project sir?
        • kawfey 8y ago
          From his HN profile: https://www.voxelquest.com/about.html https://www.voxelquest.com/about.html
          • bartcobain 8y ago
            WOW. Thank you. This is really a nice Creative project. So inspiring.
            • gavanwoolery 8y ago
• pettersolberg 8y ago
  Well, get out, plow on some field. That will give you some balance regarding the mental vs. physical stress dispute. Didn't read the article though.
• jpmoyn 8y ago
  I really like the layout of the website.
• ppeetteerr 8y ago
  The advice in this article is very on-point. I would add that a creative project can also be done at your current job. If you have the freedom to take on new responsibilities, it will be generally seen as a positive (who doesn't like employees that work late and on the weekend?). You might even get a promotion. How that compares to doing something on the side is up to you, but I would recommend not seeing work as just work, but a place where you can experiment in an existing enterprise.
• JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  No time. Interview prepping so it has to be leetcode day in and day out because that's what the industry expects...
  • gnulinux 8y ago
    A good side project is like leetcode on steroids, so this is not very true.
    • wingerlang 8y ago
      Do you have some examples of good side projects that fits your description? Leetcode specifically targets a specific problem (per entry). Side projects might contain one or two, but usually I'd guess it's a small part of the total worktime.
      • JustSomeNobody 8y ago
        Exactly. There's no way I could work on enough side projects to cover all the algorithms and data structures and concepts that interviewers expect me to have at my ready.
• costcopizza 8y ago
  Wow, the comments in this post are timely. I'm considering taking a month off to move to an unfamiliar, non-destination area to work on my creative project (songs) for 8+ hrs a day with no other commitments.
  • richardbrevig 8y ago
    Will you have a support network of friends or other people to regularly and daily spend time with? A month might not be enough time to slip into a loneliness caused depression...but set yourself up for success if you do this.
    • costcopizza 8y ago
      I won’t. I plan on visiting a church every Sunday, perhaps a couple volunteering days too.
    • qnsi 8y ago
      Hey, what happened to rivalseek? Is it not going to be continued? I never tried it, but comments said it was very good - maybe you can share your method if there is no plan to continue? (sorry for offtopic)
  • frankhorrigan 8y ago
    I've done this a few times. Never for a full month, but for weeks at a time. Remember to be kind to yourself. Take walks, keep up your exercise schedule and eat well. When I've done this in the past, I've really focused on maximizing and would generally work well over 8 hours a day. Usually 12, sometimes more. Exhaustion is its own creative juice. But not for a full month. :)
• wayanon 8y ago
  This came at just the right time for me!
• frankhorrigan 8y ago
  I'm a person who can't sustain my mental health if I'm not building things. Quite literally. And I know there are plenty of others like me who face the idea of a typical 9-5 life with crushing existential dread. I appreciate the article, and I'd also caution anyone who opened it looking for magic tricks or simple solutions. There really aren't any. I work part-time and make substantially less money than I could working full time. I say no to friends who want to hang out. And sometimes I start to hate my creative work or get burnt out on it. But I do it; I keep doing it. I'm in a band, I make my own music, I built an art car for Burning Man this year, I write and design things. And it keeps me happy and keeps me going. All I'm really trying to say is that it's like health. The trick to being in good health is that there is no trick. Eat well and exercise. The trick to having creative pursuits is to sacrifice the time to sit your ass down and get to work.
• zackmorris 8y ago
  For what it's worth, I've been attempting to switch the pathway in my mind about creativity and side projects from depression to rage/wrath. I've played the victim for so long that people really don't want to hear about it anymore. I've basically exhausted every opportunity for procrastination and ineffectualness and still find myself stagnant in my early 40s. In my case, I wanted to build a gaming PC so I could learn Unity. I forced myself to do the research and find articles about which parts to buy and how to assemble them. I don't even want to think about how long that process took. Maybe 6 months? A year? Finally I resigned myself to the fact that I would probably make a mistake, but I have some money saved which means that I could afford to. I broke down and bought all the parts one day a couple weeks ago: https://techbuyersguru.com/1500-ultra-compact-mini-itx-gaming-pc-build https://techbuyersguru.com/1500-ultra-compact-mini-itx-gamin... Note: get a normal 2.5" SSD (I got a 1 TB Crucial/Micron because they're based out of my town) because you need the M.2 port if you want to use an HTC Vive with their new wireless adapter: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2RP77A2945 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2RP77A2... I also upgraded to a Corsair 600 Watt power supply and paid $10 more for a Be Quiet! SILENT WINGS fan. It turned out that all of my questions about where to plug in cables were answered by the manuals or labeled. You can use the included 8 pin to split 6+2 pin power supply cable on the GTX 2070 for example. Building a PC turned out to be easier than when I was repairing Macs at a previous job. I didn't have to mess with the BIOS, I only had to download ethernet and wifi drivers to USB stick for the motherboard after I installed Windows 10. The point I'm trying to make is that all of the details above turned out not to matter. They only added a slight bit of money and time. In the face of the months I lost sweating over parts, they were inconsequential. That's how all of the projects in my life have been. I'm classically trained for STEM where there is no room for error. I go to the ends of the Earth to make sure that there are no bugs. But it costs me heavily in terms of my own time and reserves of motivation. So that's where the rage comes from. Think about all that waste, and that for the most part there is nobody to blame but yourself. Channel that into brutality, and wage war against the hangups and demotivational sessions where you talk yourself out of doing something. Discipline is a negative word and I don't like it, because people use it to make themselves sound better than you. I prefer words like wrath, because you can draw on neglected aspects of your psyche and feel untapped energy reserves. We're so far to one side of a healthy bell curve that it's good for us sometimes to draw from the other side. If you want an exercise to feel this, do a plank right now on your elbows and toes, keeping your torso parallel with the floor. Start a timer on your phone and you'll feel an anxiety (like holding your breath too long) around the 30 or 45 second mark. When your stomach is about to fall, use rage to bring yourself up to parallel. Each time you begin to fall, roar silently in your own mind with profanity. Feel the endorphins course through your veins. Anyone can do a minute - but going beyond yourself you can do several times that. Your strength emotion may not be rage (maybe it's gratitude, or forgiveness), but you can still find whatever it is and recruit it to force yourself to take a first step, even if it's devoting a period of time each day towards the first step of your goal. Do it every day for 2 weeks, even if you don't like how it feels, and you will find that channel in your brain become automatic (like part of your subconscious) and probably even forget it by the time the next step is needed.
• d357r0y3r 8y ago
  I think side projects, software at least, are a lot like the Civilization games. You can't wait to start. The first 10% is awesome. 10-40% is complex and the difficulty ramps up. 40-100%, all you can think about is starting over on something else. At around 80%, you just quit and actually do start over.
  • rolleiflex 8y ago
    Speaking as someone who played the Civilization 2-5 to the point of obsession, and one that quit a full time job at $megacorp to focus on a side project of mine full time, this is so apt it's funny. One of the reasons people do side projects is that they want to be free of other concerns that govern larger projects, like being able to make money, existing code, design or frameworks, or simply, existing paths of thought. But after the 80% point, the project has already created its own ways of thinking about certain problems, and that means you'll have to solve some problems suboptimally just to retain the existing body of problems being solved optimally. Compromises. Boring-but-important bits, like designing, coding (HTML tables ahoy) and sending launch emails, which I did, the whole day yesterday. I think as a society we fundamentally underestimate how much the average person yearns for freedom, all day, every day. Selling that freedom has its benefits, but it's not a free lunch.
    • d357r0y3r 8y ago
      Yeah, same. Left an awesome job to do my own thing after getting seed funding. For the first few months of doing that, I told myself that I could never go back to the 9-5 grind. I am now very excited to go back to the 9-5 grind.
      • rolleiflex 8y ago
        One thing doing a project full time teaches you is that the problems with full-time tech work in a company aren't problems because you're working for somebody else, they're problems of working on anything for a long period of time, regardless of who owns it. Once you realise that, you also figure out that doing your own thing doesn't inherently buy you a seat in Valhalla by the virtue of being your own boss. You still have a boss, the fact that it is you helps with fewer things than one would think. At least you got funded. I'm still bootstrapped, spending my own money for the privilege. :)
• nurettin 8y ago
  find a satisfying, well paid job and those "creative" feelings might just go away.
  • TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Easier said than done. In this industry, I've successfully managed to find increasingly well-paid jobs, but satisfying? That never happened. Part of this may be having too strict standards of satisfaction - I know I care a lot more about the utility of a project than about its tech particulars. If you find satisfaction in working regardless of what is the end product, then there's plenty of suitable high-paying jobs in this industry.
  • BigJono 8y ago
    That's basically impossible. Almost every full time job that pays well is some variant of patching together code that other people wrote with very little work on interesting problems. Unless you somehow consider "why is my CRUD app not working after my teammate introduced this shit library" an interesting problem, in which case I'm very jealous.
    • nurettin 8y ago
      I like to tie things together and watch them work. Not very hard to find a job that makes me happy. And I live in a 2nd world country, so it isn't very hard to find a relatively well paid job from abroad.
• Bekwnn 8y ago
  Re: the "go easy on yourself". I think it's hugely important to set aside relaxation time and, though it may seem counterintuitive, be active during that time about being relaxed. To me, that's usually a visit to the zoo, a walk by the ocean, or sitting in a coffee shop reading. Having the mindset of "I'm going to disappear for a bit" lets you focus on unwinding. At the same time, rather than beating myself up or getting depressed when I'm not doing as much on the side as I would like, I've found a "healthier" approach is a more heated, angry frustration, similar to when you keep dying on the same level in a game. That kind of stimulus brings out something competitive in me and as a result I become more determined to overcome and "beat it". It's similar to the restlessness other commenters have described on the 3rd week of vacation, except it also continues to build while I work 40 hour weeks.
• sajidkalla 8y ago
  This is hard until you really got hooked into something very different from the day job. I have been working for banks for more than 10 years. Tried many side projects. One that really got me in is entirely different from computers, Leathet crafting. 3 months. From 0 to 1. Now I have a design and a successful Etsy shop called tauruscamp.com
  • shrimpx 8y ago
    Your wallets are really cool, congrats!
• hardwaresofton 8y ago
  I think what people should be doing is rethinking "full-time" work. 40-hour weeks don't make sense in today's society. Start negotiating the "standard" 9-5 contracts that are out there today, instead of just blindly agreeing -- ask your employer if you can do 4 days a week for the appropriate amount of pay. In addition being on-call (thus sacrificing even more freedom and your time) and required to manage operations is cool only if your company pays you extra for that extra time you're losing. Since this is a more contentious issue I'll elaborate - in the past, companies hired night-shift employees and split the work, not giving a ~10k bump in pay to the day employees and expecting them to keep laptops close to them while they were off-premises. BTW, if you think you're underpaid as a tech employee, you're almost certainly wrong -- don't forget that the big tech firms colluded to keep wages low not too long ago. Time is the one resource you never get back (well so far at least). Anyway, nerds/engineers never think of this stuff, it's why CTOs are the least paid of C levels [0]. [0]: https://www.comparably.com/blog/what-the-c-suite-earns-a-look-at-executive-pay-in-tech/ https://www.comparably.com/blog/what-the-c-suite-earns-a-loo...
  • around_here 8y ago
    You mean overpaid, right?
    • hardwaresofton 8y ago
      Yes, I meant overpaid -- apologies for the typo. From what I can tell, despite the enormous amount devs are being paid, It seems like we're still on the underpaid side of the balance, especially depending on where you are.
      • around_here 8y ago
        I agree. Otherwise the biggest capitalists who claim to love competition just s'damn much wouldn't have created a cabal to keep salaries down.
        • hardwaresofton 8y ago
• president 8y ago
  Hard to do if your job workload is elastic and/or has on-call. Unfortunately these days, most employers are looking to squeeze 110% of your time and energy.
  • pietrovismara 8y ago
    These days? That's how it always worked so far.
• bartcobain 8y ago
  Since many(if not all) of this comments are completely empirical and based in personal experiences, all I can take from this comments is that one of my 2019 resolutions is to start a plan and save money to quit job and focus on a project of mine.
• rick22 8y ago
  Technology is supposed make human work less. Ironically as the technology advances the working hours has also increased. Bertrand has written nice short summary http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html in the 1930's which is sadly very much relevant today.
• mattbierner 8y ago
  Over the past five years, I've sort of reinvented myself though side projects all while staying quite professionally productive. I wrote a little about my project process almost a year ago and thought I'd repost it here in case any one else finds it helpful: --- (From early 2018 [1]) My driving force is to create things and that directs how I go about personal projects. I don't have much in the way of an official process, but the typical project cycle goes something like: 1. Start with any idea or question that is most interesting to me right now, for example: converting audio propaganda to waveforms. I usually try to align the project with some longer term personal goal. One of my current longer term goals for example is to start a business. To do that, I want to become better at selling things. Therefore, my current medium term project is to try selling letterpress prints of the waveforms from propaganda. 2. Research the idea, start learning required skills, and begin prototyping. Often—as in the letterpress project—I go in with no idea what I am doing. I always try to keep my specific goal in mind and make sure I am delivering something, either as learning or as actual prototypes. I'm also trying to become better at collaborating with other people on this and outsourcing the work here (which is itself another longer term goal) This stage usually spawns a number of new ideas that I add to a personal backlog. If one of these is more interesting than what I am currently working on, I change the project's focus or abandon it altogether. 3. Polish, release, and share. If the project is still interesting, continue iterating. Otherwise, go back to step 1 and repeat. I try to keep this cycle short but that isn't always practical, so I compensate by having multiple project going on at the same time. These roughly fall into a few different timescales: one-off (a few hours in one go), short (1 or 2 weeks freetime), medium (a month or so with interruptions), and long (3 months+ of very off-and-on work). This process has let me create, explore, and learn quite a bit without getting burned out. It has also taken me in directions I never expected. I don't know any of this would work more broadly. Again, my driving force is to just to create things. I'm operating in a bit of a vacuum with no real audience in mind or much in the way of external pressures. --- Main takeaways: - Side projects should be for you. - Mix short and long term deliverables and goals. - Have variety and continually iterate to avoid burn out. Since writing the above in early 2018, I actually did learn letterpress in order to complete the propaganda waveform project[2], which itself led to me traveling to Switzerland for a letterpress poster design class, which led to all sorts of adventures in Switzerland and Italy and tons of new project ideas. I'm also continuing to explore selling more (including selling printed posters) Again, this general mode of working has let me explore a large number of side projects while doing good work in my day job. There is really nothing special to it. However side projects have been incredibly important to me and I hope these points may be useful to someone else too [1]: https://github.com/mattbierner/blog.mattbierner.com/issues/11 https://github.com/mattbierner/blog.mattbierner.com/issues/1... [2]: https://blog.mattbierner.com/anwar-wave/ https://blog.mattbierner.com/anwar-wave/
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• b123400 8y ago
  The article and all the comments seem to assume work and creative projects are mutual exclusive, that we have to find a balance. I am wondering if it is possible to have a job that allows people to be creative? Like, as happy as doing side project? If no, what kind of experience did you have that suggest it is not possible?
• tnr23 8y ago
  It's not possible. And even if you try, no competitior will even take you serious as you are just at 10% speed/willpower/energy. Just quit you job and start in a manner that makes sense :-)
• jerry40 8y ago
  I consider freelance as a side project (miserable, I know) and I'm able to devote ~15 hours per week to it. Plus I take several hours for English, coursera and functional programming exercises. My next goal is to leave my job (it takes 11 hours per day including commute and lunch time) - it will free ~2.5 hours a day! So actually freelance is a side project which should help me to say goodbye to my full-time job.
• anacleto 8y ago
  I'd argue that this has a lot with to do with set point theory. As humans, our curiosity arouses around novelty. The object will tend to lose its novelty over time, and we'll tend to progressively lose interest in it up to the point where we go back to 'set point'. Hint: look for mechanisms in your side projects to add novelty to the system so that your interest doesn't plateau. When we built https://sametab.com https://sametab.com as an internal side project, we used to constantly brainstorm new ideas about how this could eventually become. The more ideas we were founding the more the project looked new and appealing at our eyes.
• revskill 8y ago
  Quit your full-time work if it's not creative
• JamesAdir 8y ago
  I'm stuck in the first paragraph: "What type of work or situations might you seek out that wouldn’t leave you in a bad mood after working?" I would go work in many menial jobs, but the problem is that this jobs pay very little and then you're worried and stressed and can't move on with side projects. If you go to a nice corporate job (not as a career but just as a source of income) you're usually left grumpy as he describes.
• meuk 8y ago
  I honestly don't know how people can produce something decent while working fulltime. I am usually home at about six. I then cook, do dishes and hurry to get to sports training, am back at 22:00, hit the shower and go straight to bed. I also have a buttload of stuff I want to learn, and so many projects I want to do that I never get to really work on anything.
  • snarfy 8y ago
    I stop by the grocery store and grab cooked food from the deli counter. It takes about 5 minutes. I eat my food on paper plates, and workout in my room. I'm probably gaining 1.5 hours per day on you. It's more expensive this way but time is money. If I consider it time I paid myself it's worth the expense.
  • deveac 8y ago
    >I honestly don't know how people can produce something decent while working fulltime. Since getting funded, I work well beyond full time, I rarely walk through the door before 7:30pm, and then I cook dinner for my wife who gets home later than I do. And yet...I do have in between hours that I need to decompress and explore. My strategy is to employ radical focus and boundaries on one or two extracurricular activities at a time, and be absolutely ruthless with my expectations of how much time I have to give to them. I've got two projects I'm doing now. 1) Build a website for my wife's brick and mortar retail business, and 2) Continually use new dApps. For my wife's website, I've set a humble goal of having its main job be only to build her email list at first, and keep it minimal to set up and maintain. I'm using a Shopify template so I can easily transition to online commerce later, but for now I want it to grab emails, and I'm giving myself a MONTH to do it. Tonight, my goal might be to simply choose the font for the main text on the site, allowing me a bit of time to google best practices and then implement. A few days from now I might simply download a collection of viable stock images to deploy later. An hour here, an hour there. Bottom line is that a month from now, her business will have a website that will begin adding value to her business. Stage 2 will be allowing her to sell/checkout items from her Instagram page, and Stage 3 will be a full blown online storefront which will effectively be an entirely new business separate from her brick and mortar, but I'm nowhere near thinking about those now. My other current project is to have a cursory familiarity with various crypto dApps. It's pretty easy, I've just got a list of applications that I'm signing up and trying, one by one. This Saturday, I'll work on my company, but later on in the afternoon or evening at some point, I'll sign onto Augur and place a bet, poke around a bit, and decide which dApp I'll look at next. None of these projects will take meaningful time away from my main work, but I'll be filling the "in-between decompress" hours with productive fun snippets of learning and doing. These are things that I used to occupy more with reading or gaming back when I had more time. It doesn't seem like much, but it will add up. 1-2 years from now I'll be able to easily knock out and maintain online stores, and will be fluent (and have opinions on) a number of decentralized crypto applications. I think that's pretty awesome, and totally doable! Biggest caveat: I don't have kids, haha. >I also have a buttload of stuff I want to learn, and so many projects I want to do that I never get to really work on anything. I say you choose ONE, set a RADICALLY humble goal for what "Phase 1 success" of your project looks like, then imagine how much time you think it will take, multiply that time by FIVE, and just begin :)