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You Don't Need to Quit Your Job to Make

• jowiar 8y ago
  The one MAJOR caveat I have with this is that, depending on what you have signed with your employer, there’s a pretty good chance that your employer can claim ownership of what you’re doing. And it’s one thing if you’re making art or something in my spare time, but a side-business may well turn into working for free for your employer.
  • Hydraulix989 8y ago
    Not true in California: https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2011/lab/division-3/2870-2872/2870/ https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2011/lab/division-3/... This supersedes anything stated to the contrary in employment contracts.
    • jowiar 8y ago
      “Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer” — for large enough employers, this encompasses a lot.
      • Hydraulix989 8y ago
        I believe the precedent is that this is actually enforced with a very narrow scope in these cases.
• stephsmithio 8y ago
  There's this typical entrepreneur story-line that everyone loves to tell. VC-backed entrepreneur that went "all in", quit their job, and produced a unicorn. TechCrunch loves this stuff. I feel like this is so misleading and makes people feel like they need to quit their jobs in order to be successful in making side projects or businesses. In general, I feel like we need to eliminate dichotomies in life. So I wrote from another point of view: one that I am currently living, working FT and building side projects. In many ways I think it's: 1) Doable 2) Perhaps the most healthy and thoughtful approach. Interested to hear other people's thoughts. Do you really need to quit your job to build a successful business?
  • dasil003 8y ago
    The crux is how you define success. There's a reason business is so cut-throat and usually amoral—it's hard to make a scalable business. If you want this kind of outlier success as an entrepreneur you need to go all-in. On the other hand, keeping a day job and modest lifestyle enables a broader range of success where you build stuff on your own terms that maybe makes a few bucks or improves someone's life, but without the pressure to go big. The vast majority of ideas can't become massive corporations, but a lot of them might change the world in a much more positive way if you can find a way to take money out of the equation.
  • hinkley 8y ago
    I much prefer the old trope of starting in your garage. But I don’t know if VCs killed that or overconsumption just filled up all the garages.
    • robbrit 8y ago
      If you can afford a garage in the Bay Area, you can't afford to run a startup because you're too busy paying your mortgage ;)
      • hinkley 8y ago
        Or you can just sell the house and live like a king in Patagonia...
      • jdreyfuss 8y ago
        Garages are all converted bedrooms now
  • parthdesai 8y ago
    Not really. Remember DHH started and built Basecamp 1.0 and rails while still working on his consultancy business 40 hours a week. Not every company needs to be next Fb/Google/Amazon. Nothing wrong with having revenue in millions and not billions if you are profitable.
• winniephan 8y ago
  we quitted our jobs to make, it is a very challenge but fun journey. Now we make a decision to come back to work and still being makers. Nice article Stepth!
• hprotagonist 8y ago
  I just have a bike shop in the basement, man.
  • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    I keep saying if you spend your day on intellectual work then it’s probably a good idea to do something with your hands in your own time.
• Madmallard 8y ago
  I feel like the problem isn't time... it's energy. If you slack enough at your main job to have the energy to push your side project you're doing a disservice to your employer.
  • stephsmithio 8y ago
    I don't think that creating things on the side is mutually exclusive with doing a good job at work.
  • thompsons 8y ago
    Agreed. Having one or more side projects, a full time job, relationship, etc. is great. People are aspiring to become 'makers' and turning otherwise relaxed side projects (couple hours here, couple hours there) into fully-fledged effort is a massive energy sink that requires some form of sacrifice, and therein lies the struggle. Slacking off at work is a solution, albeit one that (despite risking career, if that's a de-motivator) could move you closer to burnout via laziness and / or turn a simple dissatisfaction towards your day job into contempt for each working day. Which is why it's important to either A) know you're the type of person who can slug it out for potential future reward, or B) work on an idea you actually enjoy, will continue to enjoy, and can slack off every now and then
  • darkpuma 8y ago
    God I hope you're not a manager. When you see an employee's pictures of a strenuous hike they went on, is your first thought that they must be stealing that energy from the company?
    • lukebitts 8y ago
      GP is probably talking about themselves. I too feel very little energy to program my personal projects after spending the whole day programming for my company
      • w323898 8y ago
        Maybe your personal projects shouldn't involve programming?
• throwaway-1283 8y ago
  This post is entirely premised on being single and not having kids.
  • jasonlotito 8y ago
    No. You can have kids and still create things, even new businesses. It really is about choice, and good time management. Too often people don't have enough time, but when you really look at what they do, you see where they do have enough time, where they really do make choices. I say this having founded a startup before I was married, and having started a business after having kids, 15 years apart. It's about the choices you make.
    • throwaway-1283 8y ago
      There is a spectrum of how engaged you are with your kids as a parent and it would be hard to have a full time job, a side job, and then also be a highly engaged parent. Also I think it would be even more difficult as a mother.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      • jasonlotito 8y ago
        You are 100% wrong. And your insult is obvious and not welcome here.
    • godot 8y ago
      I think throwaway-1283 isn't necessarily wrong, the author herself said as much -- she chose to forego a relationship for now and focus on side projects. Kids take even more time than just a relationship. Not as a challenge to you, but just out of curiosity, how old were your kids when you started the latter business? I have an infant now and it's hard to imagine having time at all to do anything outside of work. There just isn't that sort of time. When I was "just" in a relationship or married, I didn't have any problems putting time and energy into both founding a startup and even engage in side projects (even as I work on my startup). Having a baby is a whole new story. I imagine things will get better as kid grows older -- probably better at school age, and then even better at high school/college age. But it'll be a long time. Maybe 15 years later like you said.
• robbrit 8y ago
  Sounds like Toptal has some good employment agreements. One restriction keeping people from making, side hustles, etc. are the onerous rules that larger tech companies place on their employees. There are agreements around non-competition, intellectual property ownership, conflict of interest, and other little gotchas. These can be very broad since modern tech companies sprawl across a lot of industries, so even if your specific role is far from the side hustle you want to do, your company might be quite close to it and therefore that is a conflict of interest. I've actually had the situation where I was blocked from getting paid for tutoring on Codementor.io because it was "getting paid on the side to use skills and know-how that is part of his job". Of course, this probably doesn't apply for things like bike shops or other types of maker activities that aren't technical. It also probably doesn't apply for pro bono things like open-source contributions. [EDIT]: added "probably doesn't apply" since it seems like in some cases it can cause problems.
  • michaelbuckbee 8y ago
    I worked for a Fortune 100 company whose backbone was intellectual property (involved in 100,000+ products) and as you might imagine, their view of what constituted "intellectual property" and any reasonable human being's view were quite different. During onboarding someone asked about building a table and selling the plans and were told that "they would definitely need to talk to legal".
    • lowercased 8y ago
      I've run in to places that wanted to pull "all your intellectual property belong to us", but I don't really think they really wanted this. I think they just want the right of first refusal. If I developed something illegal, then said "well... my employer owns it technically because I did this during working hours" they definitely would try to wriggle out of that IP.
      • scarmig 8y ago
        Half the reason for these agreements is because they generally do want all your intellectual property: it means that there's less risk of one of their entrepreneurial employees quitting and starting a competitor, even in an ostensibly unrelated sector.
• jrs95 8y ago
  Just work 70+ hours a week! Yeah, no thanks.
  • darkpuma 8y ago
    It's not work if you enjoy it. That's quipy but it's true. Some people enjoy burning time in front of a television, but other people have hobbies they enjoy just as much (if not more) and which can be made to break even or even generate a profit.
    • icebraining 8y ago
      You might stop enjoying it when it burns you out, though.
      • jrs95 8y ago
        I've seen this happen to everyone I've known that's tried it.
• kalesh 8y ago
  Gotta agree on don't have enough time argument. I think there are ways to manage time more effectively. There are so many distractions now-days, social media, whatsapp etc, people waste time too much. An ex-Google Tech Lead talks about this here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W_VsLXmjJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W_VsLXmjJU.
• fzeroracer 8y ago
  Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that are legally not allowed to make in their free time because the company they work for owns the rights to things they make, even if made fully using their own time. Or the company may forbid working on open source projects under fears of developers sharing ideas that said company believes they're entitled to. Until the law is changed so that companies don't own things developers make like that, there are many people that lose the motivation to make things in their free time.
  • alexis_fr 8y ago
    I’m an entrepreneur, 2 employees. I may be running to my loss in theory, but by all means I help employees starting their side projects. It is much better to give them ideas for things where you know it won’t collide, and they come back knowing React and SQL. It has worked so far. A previous one has left for consulting gigs, after a few months trying his gigs under my umbrella company. That was the best « smooth transition », he saw for himself, I got a ~20% cut, and now he’s dying under paperwork to create his own company (we live in France, which explains why it would have been even harder for him to create his company when he was unsure he liked it), and I have set a nice example of « promoting » which helps me recruit. Employees are not owned. They were where I was 10 years ago. People change jobs. It’s part of the success of a career. They go through our companies but I’m tired of employers acting like their employees don’t exist after the end of their period or as if they owned property.
  • cellularmitosis 8y ago
    The last time I was job hunting (in Texas), I brought a copy of California Labor Code section 2870 with me and made it clear that this needed to be part of my employment contract. If job hunting isn't realistic for you, at the very least you should have a serious conversation with your boss. The next time you are up for a promotion or a raise, hand them a copy of 2870 and say "that's nice, but this is what I really want". Print it out. Bring it up in your 1-on-1's. At the very least, make sure your boss isn't surprised as to the reason why you eventually jump ship. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB&sectionNum=2870 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
  • 8y ago
• soulnothing 8y ago
  I have gotten really serious at trying to start a business this year. I devote Monday through Thursday to working on my business. After work I take an hour to an hour and a half break. Then I work for five to six hours, then thirty minutes break before bed. Friday through Sunday, I devote to writing, resting, or other things. Honestly it's mostly resting, because I'm way beyond burnt out. The thing is I'm spent after my work day. I'm making more errors at night, causing more rework and frustration. I was also concerned about layoffs/loss of job. So I was dipping time into job searching. That's not even getting into the existential what am I doing with my life. I'm early 30s and wasting the bulk of my youth trying to start a company. It's depressing to me to be locked to my computer for 13 to 14 hours a day. I love working on my business idea. But I have music I want to work on, novels, etc. Places I want to see. This past weekend I went to a weekend startup accelerator. It has been years since I felt like that. My brain was firing on all cylinders, and I was working on a team. The past several years of my career. Have been death marches, and projects that are cancelled mid stream, and I'm flying solo. This is why I want to start a business, but I'm just so exhausted all the time. I have done the quit and take a few months off in the past. Those were the happiest I've been in my career. But something has yanked me back to a full time job, because I need money asap. Then the last portion as someone else mentioned. The inane invention assignment clauses. My last role took ownership of everything past, present, and future I thought. Irregardless of medium. My current role tried that, but I got an addendum to the contract. I had a past employer try and sue me because we left on bad terms, and they drowned me in legal fees. Sure you don't need to quit. But if you want your sanity, and some legal peace of mind it's the best thing.
  • WesleyLivesay 8y ago
    I don't have a business, but I have been working on a side project for almost 5 years after hours, I commit about 20 hours a week to it. At the beginning I tried what I called 'super days' that sound a lot like yours. What I found is that while I was 'working' those 5-6 hours at night I was not very productive mostly due to mental exhaustion. Then on 'off days' I was way too exhausted to do anything, and I never fully recovered. For my project (creative in nature) this caused crippling Creative Productivity Anxiety and depression. About 1.5 years into the project I broke my foot (long story) which meant I had to change things, then I had a kid about a year later, which caused me to change again. Both of those were really good developments What I found is that a far better schedule for me was to spread things out. Now I still put in about 20 hours a week, but it is in the form of 1.5 hours at night on week nights and 6 hours on Saturday and 6 hours on Sunday. The Saturday and Sunday time is generally split three ways (morning before family wakes up, kid's nap time, evening after kid goes to sleep) I feel like I get more work done because I have the mental ability to actually work for each of those pieces of time. Schedule may look different for you, hobbies, family, etc. But I would definitely suggest with exploring smaller pieces of Second Work, especially on week days.
• checkyoursudo 8y ago
  My problem isn't time. My problem isn't energy. My problem isn't desire. I would like to make something. I would love to make money making something. My problem is that I don't know what to make.
  • gukov 8y ago
    The So Good They Can't Ignore You book should help.
• ivanhoe 8y ago
  In my view, instead of cutting down on your fun time and activities, you can cut down on your expanses, so that you need to work less and thus create more free time for yourself. It's much healthier to work half-time or 3 days a week or something like that - and then use that extra time for your own projects and still have enough of it left for a normal life, family, friends, reading books, going out. What author proposes is certainly doable, but not something I'd really want to do to myself: no relationships, no tv (or books or games or sport), no much social life, just work and sleep. Maybe I'd do it for a while if I had a really promising, unicorn kind of idea, but just to fool around with side-projects and learn new stuff it seems like a hell of a sacrifice on his side.
• pacifika 8y ago
  Nobody commutes, has kids or pets, shops for groceries, cooks food and cleans up anymore? That all comes off the 8 hours.
  • asark 8y ago
    Yeah kids and commuting eat at least half that. Take another hour off, minimum, for basic chores to make sure you have food and your house doesn't turn into such a disgusting mess that makes the nightly news. Also all hours aren't created equal and congratulations, you now have what are probably your three—at most—worst hours left to try to "make" in, without cutting into sleep. BTW unlike a job the time commitment is barely better on the weekends. Hope you can work productively while having 1-10 minute interruptions every 1-10 minutes. If not then the math's identical to that for a weekday.
• w323898 8y ago
  tl;dr: keep your day job and stop watching TV. Excuses incoming.
• chaostheory 8y ago
  I heard this advice from various people over the years. It's not bad advice, but it's missing some details This advice only works if your side project and your day job aren't equally intense ie. if you're programing for your day job and your side project involves more programming, you will burn out. You can pretend that you relax with even more programming, but your body will disagree. To make this work beyond a few months or a year as a programmer, you will either need to do an easier side project where ideally you're not doing the programming; or better yet you will need a very easy day job that doesn't use up the bulk of your daily creativity and problem solving stamina. Yes, it is a finite resource. The true ideal situation is being able to work on your personal projects during down time at your day job... Also as someone else already mentioned, read your employment contract. Outside of places like California, the IP portions of that contract are draconian ie. your employer will own any idea that you generate whether it is on the job during office hours, or in your sleep or free time at home. This is even more important to keep in mind if you work remotely even just part of the time.
  • movedx 8y ago
    > if you're programing for your day job and your side project involves more programming, you will burn out. Then as stated in the article, only work on the side project for an hour a day over 365 days. Time is on your side and it's OK if it takes a year to get to an MVP. Look at Stardew Valley, for example. > better yet you will need a very easy day job that doesn't use up the bulk of your daily creativity and problem solving stamina. Yes, it is a finite resource. This is a fair point. That being said you can always focus on side projects that aren't related to the day job (and in some cases that might have to be the case contractually.) For example I'm a DevOp by day, but my business is moving into VR.
    • Profan 8y ago
      Stardew Valley is a weird example because the guy spent four and a half years working 12-hour days and did _everything_ themselves.. not sure that's the comparison you want here. (and their family/girlfriend supported them, they did work as a theatre usher occasionally apparently, but their "day job" was largely the game above even normal standards)
• mac_was 8y ago
  When asked what surprised him about humanity the most, the Dalai Lama replied: “Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”
  • badpun 8y ago
    On the flip side, if no one was anxious and everyone was perfectly enjoying the present, it could be that no one would ever bother to even invent the wheel.
    • n4r9 8y ago
      On the flip side's flip side, if people weren't so anxious about carving their life out, it could be that we'd have plenty more Edison's and da Vinci's inventing great things for the fun of it.
      • cvrjk 8y ago
        On the flip side's flip side's flip side, if people weren't anxious about making money and building a future all those fun ideas might not have gotten monopolized for use
    • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      I bet the person who invented the wheel did it whilst idling one sunny day.
      • r_smart 8y ago
        They may have gotten the idea while idling, but it still took work to design and test prototypes. This would obviously be more true for the many more advanced inventions that have come since.
      • 8y ago
• billfruit 8y ago
  I do recommend Arnold Bennet's 'Living on 24 hours a day', though written almost a hundred years ago, his ideas are even more effective today.
• wrestlerman 8y ago
  I think it depends on the business you are building and also on yourself. I don't think everyone will be able to build something good without quitting. I also don't think it's not impossible to build a business while having a job. I think what most people fail to recognize is that building a business can take years. Everyone thinks (including me, welp) that you can build next big SaaS in a couple of weeks. The truth is that you can't. It will take probably a couple of months at least. The sooner you realize it, the sooner you will succeed.
• LaserToy 8y ago
  Well, it depends on your job (and HR department). Our policies are very vague, and when i followed them and honestly notified my company that i want to try something on the side (even using my PTOs) which had no conflict of interest - i was denied. So, had to chose by current stable job and an adventure. I chose adventure.
• daxfohl 8y ago
  Here's the sequence that worked for me, though it may be possible to go straight to step 4, idk: 1. Stop drinking. Enough said there. 2. Get away from work for a week or two. Go on a vacation and remove all your VPN, Outlook, etc from your computer and your phone. Tell your coworkers you will be off the grid, and trust them to handle whatever might arise (they can!). Remove any bookmarks related to work. Do everything you can to keep work out of your mind and hard to access. 3. Get rid of other distractions while you're away. For me it's books. So don't take books with you or go anywhere near a bookstore. (My inlaws' house was great for this!). Remove time suck apps from your phone, bookmarks from your browsers, and set up website blockers for HN etc. 3a. Quit expecting to find enlightenment by reading. A quote from some "Einstein" guy: "Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking." 4. Get started. There was an article a few days ago about writing a book in 10 min per day. The important part is doing something each day. Start one day by writing 10 min of code toward the thing you've been thinking about. (10 min of thinking doesn't count). And make that dedication to do so every day. For the first few days you'll probably find 10 minutes going to ten hours, and you'll have made some meaningful progress on the thing you've been thinking about. Eventually life will take over again but you have to keep the commitment to the 10 minutes. And whatever it turns into each day. This can be done with work, school, kids, etc. And since you've already removed the distractions, don't bring them back for a while. You'll get used to life without them and eventually you won't need them anymore. And it's amazing how the quality of life improves without the constant tug to follow every inane analysis of every inane tweet by Trump or AOC (if you're not a billionaire there's nothing you can do about it anyway--sure vote and campaign etc but following tweets doesn't help that, and if it's important enough news you'll find out somehow), or every iPhone rumor or whatever else consumes too many neurons for you currently. And seriously, get away from work when you're away from work. Evenings included. The always-connected thing is not as necessary as it seems, and the modern ideal of it seems to be a bane on our individualism as a species. Make logging in, checking emails, etc during off-hours the exception to the norm.
• ctvo 8y ago
  The article should be titled: you don’t need to quit your job to make, just deprioritize everything else Tl;dr Take the 8 hours of free time you have and devote it mostly to make. Now you don’t need to quit your job. Really groundbreaking thoughts here.
• Animats 8y ago
  Is this "work harder, not smarter" day, or what? There's that other article on how to make your employees work harder, or at least look busier.
• sosuke 8y ago
  I made it as far as the picture of compound interest. https://xkcd.com/947 https://xkcd.com/947
• james_s_tayler 8y ago
  honestly, I worked it out between commute and family responsibilities, plus taking care of myself I have 500 ~ 750 hours of "me time". Not 3000. 500 ~ 750.
• tarikjn 8y ago
  In my experience, there is a missing piece which is this works if your day job and projects use a different part of your brain. Anytime I have had success having a day job and a side project my activities were different enough that they didn't share the same block of mental energy. E.g. once as a waiter working 10h/days and then maintaining a growing website 5h before sleep, another time as a programmer and then doing CAD design in the evenings. You will notice that the author and the personalities she gives as examples also all have this in common to a certain degree. The other thing is I don't think I would think as side projects time investments as a compound interest function just as passive investing. Before you can get there -- and it only applies to some projects, the commonality is attending to your basics like a series of buckets that you have to keep full enough for a long enough period that none deplete to jeopardize your plans. Some projects require a certain amount of momentum or time availability (as do some jobs), so sometimes maxing out your buckets and then going full time to test your idea is a better strategy. Failing is okay as long as you learn enough to make significant progress on the next try. One of these bucket is maintaining meaningful human relations (doesn't have to be significant other), so I wouldn't be taking the author's advise literally.
• zackmorris 8y ago
  I'm beginning to think (after nearly 30 years of failing) that succeeding as a maker may involve something larger than ourselves. I think that we have major, structural, institutional problems throughout our society and culture that prevent any individual from accomplishing much of anything over the course of a lifetime that is outside the mainstream status quo of participating in a nuclear family. I think a possible way out of this predicament is shining a light on the smallest of things that prevent us from moving forward. For example, any student debt at all is a major setback. So our choice is either to not go to school or to work a lot and pay it back fast. This is a false dichotomy. If you flip the problem on its head, you see that this was orchestrated by the owner class to keep people locked into the system (any increase in ignorance being an inconvenience or even politically convenient). The layout of our cities highly encourages car ownership, another huge cost. The fossil fuel industry gets billion dollar subsidies while renewables do not. We no longer have the room in population centers to grow our own food. We don't have the disposable income to build robots to automate something like that. Even dating requires cashflow. Everywhere we look, at every level, we are blocked. So I think something more useful than borrowing the hours and minutes of our leisure time for risky ventures might be to form a vision of how we'd like our society to be. Name each problem and attack it head on. I don't mean to downplay the article because it has very good points about self-discipline. But I would very much like to see us all start succeeding, because if we try to do it alone, we will fail.
  • twic 8y ago
    Much of Europe has free universities, walkable cities with good public transport, and culture and climate where a date can just be a picnic on the beach or in the woods. Europe is not notably more full of successful makers than the US. (As for growing food - it would take you a lot more time to grow enough to feed yourself than it would to earn enough to buy the food you need to feed yourself)
    • rabidrat 8y ago
      Europe does seem to create a different class of 'maker'; consider Linus Torvalds and Fabrice Bellard, both notable for their immense contributions to open source software. Who in the US is creating on that scale and not doing it for their employer or some other payout?
• asien 8y ago
  Strongly disagree with the arguments made in this paper. In my opinion this post is fundamentally biased due to the author professional situation. From what I understand she currently works « remotely » meaning she doesn’t spend 2H commuting per day. Hence she seems to be a « lead xxx » at toptal. That’s great for her. I’ve worked for many large corporations , every where I went « lead » means you are generally not in « touch » with the operational reality of what the job is about. So often as a lead your job is basically to keep a spreadsheet with people reporting to you because supposedly you understand what they do and can solve their issues if they have some. Maintaining a spreadsheet is fairly easy, on the other hand solving 10 years legacy code without any sort of documentation is a competely different topic. This is a well know issues in modern societies , where the higher you go in the hierarchy the less people are actually working and the more are actually doing bureaucracy and the more you are disconnected from reality. I don’t see how an engineer in a service company working 40-50 hours per week can have any sort of motivation during his weekends to create something new while he just gave every bits of his brain for 5 days straight trying to fix someone else’s bugs , issues and legacy code. This is an example of course, but I’m sure many people on HN are on this situation. They just stay at this job because it pays theirs bills or they can’t anything better but they just wish they had their own business doing something completely different. Reading this type of article somewhat buggers me. I guess a « content writer » can probably work on a side project on his free time but what about the lower worker class ? What about the higher class like surgeons , lawyers etc.. These peoples often already work on the weekends to complete the work they were assigned... now they should also start a company on the side ? Some job are more demanding than others , this is why some people must quit if they want to succeed.
  • Vekz 8y ago
    Strongly agree with you. Some of the most successful people I know spent a few years in 'coast mode' jobs. Where they received large salaries to maintain spreadsheets of other workers and fake work meetings. These roles offered them ample downtime to study, plan, research, network and invest in personal growth projects without having to sacrifice much leisure time. Granted the article has some fundamental tips, the author seems to be biased in one of these situations.
• nathan_f77 8y ago
  This is an interesting perspective. People usually say "You shouldn't quit your job until you've validated your idea and you have enough MRR, savings, or freelance work to support yourself." You don't often hear people say "You shouldn't quit your job if you enjoy it." I think lots of people are working on side projects because they really don't like their jobs, and would prefer to have freedom and passive income. I've been working on FormAPI [1] for about 18 months. I was able to work on it full time for about 3 months while I built the MVP. I've still needed to do some contract work over the last year, but now I'm able to work on it full-time. Part-time contract work has been really great, especially while living in Thailand. I probably couldn't have done it if I had a full-time job. If you're building a product that has paying customers, you need to respond to support requests, give product demos, do sales. Part-time contract work is a much better fit so that you can always be on call. I don't know if I would call myself a "maker" for FormAPI. I started the company because I wanted to make money, and it wasn't because I wanted to build a fun project or learn something new (although both ended up being true.) I do love making things though, like little games and websites, electronics projects, etc. Actually now that my side-project became my full-time job, I have to find more time to build some fun projects. Sometimes I just do everything under FormAPI and write a blog post about it. For example, I had an idea for a little CSS game that I wanted to build. I was building a Bitcoin puzzle as a marketing exercise, so it was a good excuse to build that CSS game as well [2]. [1] https://formapi.io https://formapi.io [2] https://pixelperfect.formapi.io https://pixelperfect.formapi.io
  • stephsmithio 8y ago
    That's awesome - thanks for sharing your story. I think one of the key points that I was trying to get across is that you don't need to live the narrative that the world tells you is right and instead progress with what works for you. Even if you didn't start your company out of pure passion, it ended up becoming that for you. Congrats
• SomethingOrNot 8y ago
  > Moreover, I’ve always found it strange how people like to put things neatly into boxes or associate with a single label. … > Before jumping in, I should clarify that these views are my own and don’t necessarily represent the views of Toptal. Indeed.
• crushcrashcrush 8y ago
  This aligns with Gary Vaynerchuck's tactics - what are you doing the 8 Horus you're not sleeping and the 8 hours you're not working for a company? There's time there. Stop watching game of thrones and build something!
  • alexpetralia 8y ago
    Are we talking about robots or people?
• golemiprague 8y ago
  What is it with women these days that they don't understand about biological clock and the joy of having children. Is the feminist propaganda so strong that people forgot the basic premises of life? This woman is going to be lonely and sad for most of her lifetime.
• president 8y ago
  Author probably has one or more of the following: - a non-strenuous job - sacrificed health and well-being - great genetics allowing for ample energy with minimal sleep - no life responsibilities (possibly wealthy or can afford paying others to take care of mundane tasks)
• velcrovan 8y ago
  From the article: “The average American works 8.8 hours, born out of the industrial revolution and carried through to the twenty-first century out of routine, rather than active consideration. Robert Owen crafted the saying ‘Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.’” I just need to point out: it's super wrong to give the industrial revolution credit for the 8-hour day. It took several decades of strikes, protest, organizing against factory owners and legislators of the industrial revolution to normalize the 8-hour workday down from 12–16 hours! Robert Owen didn’t invent the idea either...but he did promote it because, surprise, he was a passionate socialist. edit to add: in the above passage, the author links to a HuffPo article on the topic that is even worse, implying that the 8-hour day was the idea of factory owners to “run factories more efficiently” — hell no!
• fxleach 8y ago
  TLDR: You don't need to quit your job to make, you just need to work more.
• zestyping 8y ago
  It seems unlikely that a person who has 8 hours of "me time" every day finds it necessary to spend time taking care of personal health issues or disabilities, supporting friends, relatives, or communities that may be going through rough times, or mitigating injustices that affect them or those around them.
• thorwasdfasdf 8y ago
  The biggest problem isn't even lack of time or talent. the biggest problem is lack of opportunity. we're not in 2007 anymore. Just look at ProductHunt, where 100s or 1000s of top-notch applications and software are released every week. How many of those do you think produce any kind of financial success? It's a very small number of them indeed. How many times have you thought of a great idea to solve a problem only to discover it's already been done a bazillion times? There are still many unsolved problems, but those are the ones that can't be solved, either due to regulation, barriers to entry or cost of distribution.
  • quickthrower2 8y ago
    This is why I, as a coder, am spending my spare time learning about marketing, not making things. The value is in the audience. I'd even consider paying someone else to make the damn thing!
• GoToRO 8y ago
  The problem is that she is talking about time. The problem is not time but lack o energy. Of course if you just manage people then you might have energy.
• quickthrower2 8y ago
  > With approximately 16 hours of the day allocated to work and sleep, every individual has approximately 8 hours to allocate to “me time” and if used appropriately, a lot can be achieved in that nearly 3000 hours each year. Really if you are going to go to the extreme of not eating, showering, maintaining your health, zero human relationships, zero rest or time for recovering from illness, then I assume you'd go the next step and just quit the job too to unlock the other 2000 hours. After all if you don't need those other things why do you need a job at all? If you are that extreme you probably can save a years salary then live on a mate's sofa etc. Edit: Later on she does mention her time budgeting and it isn't this extreme, but I get annoyed with the statements that claim you have 8 free hours a day, implying that you should be working your ass off for those 8.
  • marsrover 8y ago
    Pretty sure if you're that extreme you don't have any mates.
  • sanderjd 8y ago
    This is also more like one or two hours for people with kids (which is a lot of people).
    • Swizec 8y ago
      That’s 356 hours per year. You can do a lot in that many hours.
      • antisthenes 8y ago
        Depends almost entirely on how they are spread out. It takes at least 30-45 minutes to get into a task that requires deep thought and concentration. Even for tasks that don't require deep thought, there is prep work. Working out? Gotta commute to the gym or at least get changed. Gotta make sure you're not hungry but not full at the same time. Gotta make sure you're hydrated. Gotta make sure you have music ready to go. Woodworking project? Don't even get me started on that one. Whoops, you just lost 75% of your 'free time'. I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but a lot of projects require a lot of prep work and people vastly underestimate the amount of prep work required. At least anything that's complex and sufficiently rewarding to warrant working 365 hours on. Basically 365 free hours != 365 hours of working on your project.
• quickthrower2 8y ago
  I am applying some of the concepts in this post, but with 2 young kids I can't simply dedicate as much time as this person but: 1. I rarely watch TV now, maybe 1/2 episodes a week 2. Given up alcohol and caffine mostly (occasinal drink for special occasion but not getting drunk) 3. I'll let my body get the sleep it needs but if I wake up early I'll just go do some work. 4. Laser focused plan around producing content, improving my writing skills, and marketing. I am not allowed to code in my spare time except for the odd bit of JS or whatnot related to marketing. 5. I am writing about stuff that is bread and butter from my job. I can legit learn more stuff about this subject during work hours as it will improve my job. 6. I think I could probably commit to 10 hours a week of work. Like I said I have 2 young kids, and I do want to spend time with them. The article has got me thinking about 1. Arranging to have no commute, at least some days 2. Using KPIs or some kind of "Star Chart" to track my effort and efficiency.
  • stephsmithio 8y ago
    This is great. I don't expect that everyone spends 8h a day on projects (I definitely don't manage anywhere close to this), but even 1h per day is really solid and will compound over time. I've personally found the KPIs super useful in keeping me accountable because without them I have no way of judging my own progress (or lack of). I've started doing some of what you mentioned above, but have a few new things to try as well!
• shruubi 8y ago
  If you are happy making sacrifices in your life like cutting out relationships then all the more power to you, but I personally find it kind of crazy that we've reached a place where people think that their business idea is so important that they are willing to sacrifice basic human needs like social relationships etc to try and strike rich.
• blancheneige 8y ago
  if that can make anyone reading this feel better, most of the side projects you'll never have time to work on are probably useless anyways.
• mlillie 8y ago
  A few fallacies as I see them in this article. One is that everyone, like the author, is starting from a 'clean slate'. This is an extremely privileged position. Almost no one in this country is completely out of debt AND mentally/physically healthy AND able to 'choose' to not commute to work. Another is that everyone has, or can afford, an appropriate 'makerspace' in their place of residence. Finally, this article simply takes the 8 hour workday for granted, rather than asking the extremely obvious question: Yes, Robert Owen did coin the phrase "Eight hours labour, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest", in 1817. With labor productivity skyrocketing since then, why have we not reduced this, even to 6 hours?
• trynewideas 8y ago
  Suggested new title: "_I_ Don't Need to Quit _My_ Job to Make"
  • _pmf_ 8y ago
    Yeah, what a patronizing piece of trash.
• dqpb 8y ago
  > Consistently improving your business (or life) by 1% every day for a year is double as impactful improving by 10% each day for a month. Consistency plus compounding is powerful. This is such a trope, I don't think the author really knows whats she's saying: If you want to be successful, don't improve your life linearly, improve it exponentially! Ok. Who out there truly knows how to improve your life exponentially - systematically and reproducibly?
• ohm 8y ago
  The Onion has an article on this 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...
• kyoob 8y ago
  Ctrl-f `kids`, `children`, `family` Nothing. Next!
• ericmcer 8y ago
  This is just another attempt to reckon with the chaos of reality by applying a bunch of formulas and half baked concepts to a fictional life she probably aspires to but doesn’t actually lead. Life is chaos, our emotions are unpredictable, energy and motivation levels are unreliable. I think the most important thing is you have clarity around your goals, you pursue them at your own pace, and forgive yourself your failings. This type of min/maxing can only lead to undeserved guilt, give yourself a break, we are all just humans.
• rdiddly 8y ago
  part 1: try not squandering your entire free time part 2: a day job is challenging, educational, provides variety, and frees your side projects from the burden of supporting you in the short term; also risk has no inherent value part 3: false dichotomies are bad (yet inexplicably new dichotomy of "meta" vs. "absolute" tasks); be patient
• tuananh 8y ago
  this is all about priorities and time management.
• movedx 8y ago
  (From a comment I made, but I'll post as a top-level comment as well.) I plan each day the previous day. Planning the whole week hasn't worked for me as things change, meetings move, etc. Instead I plan on a day-to-day basis. 0500-0530: Wake, Put eggs on boil, shower whilst they boil, dress after shower, blend Soylent lunch (M-F), kiss wife goodbye for the day 0530-0545: Commute to office 0545-0830: Work on business, looking at Trello for the current or next task 0830-1200: Commute to client's site and do work 1200-1300: Dine, read/research and or chores 1300-1600: Work for client 1600-1615: Commute back to office 1615-1800: Work on business 1800-0900: Commute home, read, work on fiction, spend time with wife 0900-0500: Sleep. Rounding the figures, that's about four hours per day on the business whilst working full time for a client (I contract.) Saturday and Sunday are either spent at social events or on the business in the office (if the wife is busy working on her own projects.) So I manage about 25-30 hours per week. I think Steph's article is excellent. She's right, too. You do need to priorities your focus points. And you do need to be strict and have discipline. There's no two ways about it. Sorry but you can't have your success (overnight or otherwise) and not plan for it.
• m0zg 8y ago
  "Making" anything non-trivial takes a surprising amount of time. You just don't notice that it does, but the time pressure is real. Here's how I discovered this: I started tracking how much time I spend on doing various things, using Harvest. That simple bit of code that you thought would take half an hour at most? 2 hours and it's not 100% done. That soldering job that you thought would take an hour? 3 hours in total. And so on and so forth. I was surprised, frankly. Now I track every bit of work I do, and track commute as well. The results are quite eye opening.
• aussieguy1234 8y ago
  I write code best in short 1-3 hour bursts. For Libr (https://librapp.com https://librapp.com) I work on it whenever I feel like it, which is most nights and weekends. I'll finish a feature/fix a bug then rest and come back later or the next day. Like the post says if you need rest or you're not having fun, just rest or do something else. I still watch tv, while having dinner.
• harimau777 8y ago
  The problem I've found is that many manufacturers of raw materials and components are unwilling to sell to anyone other than businesses. That's put a major damper on my attempts to Make while working my day job. Has anyone found any solutions?
• foobarbecue 8y ago
  I presume when she says "extortionate" she means "inordinate."
• alfonsodev 8y ago
  You can't give same advice to everyone, we all have different skills, and life circumstances. If you feel you can't get around the 8-8-8 schema, then realize that those 8 hours at work are way too important to just do random stuff at work. Try to work for someone you admire, that you can learn from, that has "succeed" before, people that know how to build products, in a efficient way. Work on yourself, improving your productivity during working hours, learn from your colleagues. Eventually if you become so knowledgeable, efficient, skilled and confident then Pareto principle is your friend. - Manage to get 20% raise for same hours... - so you that you can work 20% less time and put that to your project. - Find a setup that works for you and your employer, it could be 1 day per week or 2.4 months per year. By unlocking the 20% of the time from working hours you should be able to make 80% progress in your project. Now don´t ask me how you finish that last 20%, that's the next level of struggle :D
• 29athrowaway 8y ago
  > every individual has approximately 8 hours to allocate to “me time” 8 hours of "me time" means: - you spend no time getting ready - you work part-time or work remotely and have no commute - you don't cook and multitask while you eat - you never take breaks - you don't exercise - you either don't live with a family/special other/pet or spend no time with them The median human being doesn't live like this.
  • martin-adams 8y ago
    + doing chores around the house + grocery shopping + speaking to / visiting friends and family + appointments + paying bills, getting insurance quotes, remortgage paperwork, etc + budgeting and managing personal finances For me, I'd rephrase it as: every individual could scrape a minimum of 1 hour to allocate to “me time”. So that's what I work with.
• jasonkester 8y ago
  I get the feeling that most people don't want to be entrepreneurs. But places like this seem to value signaling otherwise, so you get weird reactions like the comment section on this post. Nearly every top level comment is some form of dismissal explaining why building something while working full time is in fact not possible, and how the author is completely wrong because of X. X varies somewhat, but it's always some minor detail that wouldn't be in any way an obstacle if you really did want to build something outside work hours. But it makes a nice excuse if what you really want is an excuse not to try. It's a shame. It'd be so much healthier to simply internalize and own "I don't want to be an entrepreneur". I'm sure those folks would be a lot happier, if they didn't have to constantly prove this alternate reality where the thing they think they want to do is in fact impossible, and thus they're OK not trying. Just don't try. That's fine. But it looks silly trying to prove that it's impossible. There's lots of us out here doing it.
  • stephsmithio 8y ago
    This is something that I've been thinking about a lot recently, and even moreso after seeing the comments on this post. I question why people are spending time on HN proving that they don't have enough time to do things because of X, Y, Z, instead of using that time for something more effective. Don't get me wrong - I'm here on HN commenting and reading and posting, but I recognize that as a choice and not an excuse for why I couldn't accomplish something else.
• skc 8y ago
  I have a 1 year old. Maybe I'll revisit this article when I can leave the kid to his own devices for 8 hours a day. Good article all the same.
• Xelbair 8y ago
  yeah.. you are already spending more than half of your awake time(assuming 8h sleep, ad 8h + commute work day) not on yourself. You also need to do chores which cut into your 'me time' even more. then there are social obligations etc. Plus your total 'me' time is usually fragmented - due to aforementioned things - so you still cannot do things that take longer time to do, and sadly making things(dosen't matter if it is a startup, software, painting miniatures or even a woodworking project) require concentration(which is already drained at work), and decent time-windows(which happen rarely, because your time is fragmented). counting that you have 8h per day, every day, available to you for pursuing improvement is naive. Especially that people do need to rest - even to keep your performance at acceptable levels at work.
• austincheney 8y ago
  I see people fail at this a lot. Often it isn't a matter budgeting time appropriately, but a matter of focus. I have two jobs. I am normally a full time developer with a major bank and a part time officer in the Army, though right now I am full time Army. I also have a spouse and two teenage children. Yet, I still manage a couple of moderately large open source applications. The most important realization is that not every minute of your day is actively occupied just because it is budgeted. You have empty time here and there, and sometimes a huge ton of it. Use it. If I am not actively engaged at work I think of my open source projects. If I cannot work on my open source projects at work, due to policy restrictions or security barriers, then I work on self-education. Right now I cannot work on my software at my military job, so instead I am reading educational material and studying for PMP so that I can focus on writing software outside the office. A huge mistake I have made recently is sacrificing exercise for increased personal software writing time in the morning. When I first made this decision a few months ago it made sense, because I was supremely focused on shipping the next major version of one of my apps. I used this extra time wisely and was able to push my app out the door. That was 6 weeks ago. Now that extra time in the morning is largely wasted and I am gaining weight. I still have more software to write, but I have lost the necessary focus to use this extra time wisely. It is easier to be well focused when you are in better shape, high energy, and are living at a high state of wellness.
• dgudkov 8y ago
  Here is an alternative, less extreme and more viable approach: spend one half of a weekend day working on your goals. Typically, it's hard to squeeze out free time during work week, especially of you have kids. But weekends for most people are usually loosely planned, plus you're not tired by having worked a full workday. So all you need is to find 4 hours of uninterrupted time when you can focus on something interesting without being distracted.
• C1sc0cat 8y ago
  One problem most peoples contracts forbid out side work and the fact the article doesn't say exactly what these side projects are make me think its going to be on of those ghastly MLM schemes.
  • chosenbreed37 8y ago
    I think the author has a list of the projects on her main page. For some reason they weren't true hyperlinks so I went to her twitter profile. She's built a few sites. She may well have done other things that she's not publicizing
• Asooka 8y ago
  ... But It Helps.
• sergioisidoro 8y ago
  > For example, I don’t watch TV. I don’t commute. I am currently not in a relationship. These were all active choices. Ok so you don't need to quit your job, but you have to end your relationship. I do find this questionable.
• pcvarmint 8y ago
  make -j65536 Clickbait title?
• Grustaf 8y ago
  I rmember when “make” was a transitive verb. Nowadays it seems you can just “make’ in general. What is the poster actually making?
• auxten 8y ago
  Not in China where we work 12+ hours per day, 6+ days a week.