Your life will get less hectic as you will get used to the pace of it, and that 1-2h gap will be productive again, in about 3y or so. That's how people with kid

Your life will get less hectic as you will get used to the pace of it, and that 1-2h gap will be productive again, in about 3y or so. That's how people with kids find time for side projects. That said, if you hate your job, change jobs. Right now no programmer should put up with being "bored out of [their] mind". Everybody's hiring. Your therapist is right. If you're not quitting you have to find it in you to be mostly engaged at work, otherwise it will destroy you from the inside. If you like your job, but think not doing a startup is throwing away your youth, consider you definitely don't have to be young to be an entrepreneur, and plenty of people's first successful startups are when they're 45. It's not a race. Don't do a startup unless you have an idea, and you really want to pursue it.