It's tough to start working on something after you just got home from an 8 hour stretch of work. Some of the things I've done are: - In the beginning, start pr

It's tough to start working on something after you just got home from an 8 hour stretch of work. Some of the things I've done are: - In the beginning, start projects on weekends or holidays. If you're not already burned out, you can get a solid start on something that will carry you through the work week. It's tough to start something at 9 PM, but if you've got a foundation, you can come up with 1-2 hours of work and not feel disappointed that you didn't do more. - Pick a project that will allow you to accomplish things in 1-2 hour work sessions. If you try to build the next Google, you probably will never have a working result. If you try to build a simple app, you can take it in small pieces, adding functionality in short work sessions. - Pick tools/projects different from what you do at work. Tired of lousy source control systems at work? Use Git for your next project. Tired of J2EE/Spring/Struts? Use Ruby on Rails or Python. The goal here is to make your project different from your work activities, so it doesn't seem like an extension of your work day. This also lets you pick up other technologies you might not have a chance to learn through work. - Find somebody else to work with. If you have a friend to encourage you, you'll be more motivated and can split the work, getting more done.