I only skimmed everything before "From Theory to Practice: A Framework for Research as Leisure" and read everything after that, but it doesn't seem this covers

I only skimmed everything before "From Theory to Practice: A Framework for Research as Leisure" and read everything after that, but it doesn't seem this covers actual obstacles to doing research on the side that I face. I do want to note that to the author, "research" seems to be basically a learning process, whereas I'm interested in building something, which I think is more involved. Here's my perspective on the obstacles towards this form of deeper research: 1. Lack of time and energy. This to me is the largest obstacle for any of the research side projects I've had since finishing my PhD. My day job gets the best of my time and energy and everything else gets scraps. What I do on the side tends to be more superficial than I'd like for this reason. (More specifically: Lots of reading and writing, little implementation of my ideas.) I simply don't have the energy to do much deeper work. I recently concluded that to make progress on the one side project I'm prioritizing, I'm probably going to have to take leave from my job. And it's also been necessary to think like a startup, to limit the scope and focus on a MVP. But even the MVP is still challenging. 2. Intellectual property assignment agreements. A lot of technical folks' employers made them sign agreements that arguably give the employers' full rights to what their employees do in their free time. If I'm working on a side project that could turn into a business, it's simply risky if my employer could swoop in and claim ownership of the entire thing. I think even the "favorable" versions of these agreements that limit what employers can take to things related to what the company does are still overreach. A lot of companies do tons of things and could find justification to take nearly anything for that reason. 3. Lack of collaborators and community. I think the linked article discusses "community of knowledge" in a superficial way. I haven't tried, mind you, but I think it would be really hard to find a group of people online with similar research interests to mine. I think people who have more common or less specific interests would not have a problem, but for anything more specific, finding collaborators is going to be a challenge. I think I won't find a close collaborator until I publish something (could be journal article or even a web page) and they come to me.