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I'm working on a side project now that will eventually be an open source project. I think it could benefit a lot of people. My problem is that I have a full ti

• parasubvert 12y ago
  I've had a similar issue, and decided to treat it like a hobby - too risky to see as a job, but too interesting to ignore. If you have a hobby and part of the pleasure of the hobby is the end result, then I'd suggest carving time out daily to work on it like exercise. Even an hour a day and 2 hours on each weekend would triple the time you've put into it to date. That said, if you enjoy doing other things more, I wouldn't sweat it.
• deleted 12y ago
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• rday 12y ago
  2 kids, 3 freelance gigs (full time at this), a couple startups behind me (1 pivoted away, 1 still running). I would love to get 5 hours for an OSX app I really want to build. You really do have to shut out the rest of your life if you want to make a serious run at a project. When you are cramming a side project into you life, you really can "work" 80 hour weeks. The irritability you're experiencing will probably just get worse. I'm just starting to learn to cook. I began riding my bike last year. I'm 34. The grass is always greener of course. But it seems like you are enjoying a lot of the things I wish I had made time for earlier. Maybe shut out the art project. Turn your code into open source and let that be your art for the next few months.
  • bglazer 12y ago
    Thanks. I don't even have kids yet. I'm still ~5 years from having little ones I'd imagine. Both of the people working with me on the project have kids, and I admire them (and you) tremendously for fitting everything in.
    • blister 12y ago
      Once you have children, everything changes. I went from having 5+ hours of free time each day to -5 hours of free time every day. You have to get super efficient with everything in your life. Cut out the things that aren't the most important things. Kids (especially when they're between 0-7 years old) take up an enormous amount of energy and focus. You'll learn tricks to improve your performance and squeeze more time into the day. But the biggest thing that's worked most for me is staying up later than I normally would prefer. I get a few extra hours for passion projects and still get everything in the day accomplished that I'm required to accomplish. It's a tough slog. Immensely rewarding, but tough. Prepare yourself for the change in advance so that you don't go through the massive shock I experienced.
      • jtheory 12y ago
        Quite true; and it's oddly frustrating to me to notice how much time the pre-kids version of me wasted. There should be a way to borrow someone else's kids for 6 months or so, force yourself to carve the waste out of your life... and then wait another decade before having your own kids.
        • blister 12y ago
          Hah, I would have paid for that service. :)
      • tarellel 12y ago
        That's putting it down easy. I have 4 kids between 2 and 7, when at home I don't have very much free time at all. It seems like the best place to get stuff done is at work. So I always try to get everything done, so I'll have some productive me time in my office. It's sad to say going to work is where I get a break for myself. Don't get me wrong I love my children more than anything, but once you have children in order to get things done you really need to prioritize and compartmentalize things in your life.
• derekp7 12y ago
  I'm in a very similar situation -- got a pretty decent open source project out (a mad 2-week programming project over a Christmas holiday vacation). But I'll be darned if I can find time to work on it now (how does the average person find 5 hours a day to watch tv?) But here's what I'm starting to do now -- I set an alarm to make sure I remember to leave the office at 4:30 pm, instead of squeezing in that extra bit of work (or slacking off). That gets me a bit of a jump on the evening, instead of leaving work at 6:30 or so. Seems to be helping a bit.
  • vonmoltke 12y ago
    > how does the average person find 5 hours a day to watch tv? Watching TV is passive, which means you can do it while doing other things. I watch it while cooking, cleaning the house, doing the dishes, and other similar manual and low-cognition activities. In fact, I can't just sit and watch TV for very long.
• josephschmoe 12y ago
  The only way to do it is to have a job where you can complete the work in less than 5 hours a day. Preferably one that gives you the freedom to leave early/come in late so long as you're doing well on your work. No one actually works 8 hours a day and comes home to work 4 hours sustainably. I couldn't see someone doing that for more than two months without getting burned out.
  • bglazer 12y ago
    This is very interesting. I'm not sure how my company culture would tolerate my leaving early, but it does seem like the most practical option for actually getting work done. I feel like I probably have enough autonomy to do this, but it's tricky business.
  • vonmoltke 12y ago
    This has been my problem. I have spent my entire career at government contractors, so I need to record 40 hours of butt-in-seat time every week in order to make the auditors happy, regardless of the actual work done. That makes my days 10 hours from when I walk out the door to when I walk back through it, sometimes less if I spend less than an hour at lunch.
  • ibebrett 12y ago
    Actually I have been able to do this pretty easily, but its probably because I commute an hour and a half each way to work on a train. So I get 3 hours a day to work on things I want to work on.
  • someotheridiot 12y ago
    I've been doing that for 3+ years now. If you truly enjoy what you are doing in your side project it can work. If not, perhaps you are just doing it for the money?
• seiji 12y ago
  Please, step into my parlor of unsolicited advice for a moment... will eventually be an open source project. Lean Software people are right about one thing — you've gotta get software in front of users as quickly as possible. If the project timeline is "work for 6-8 months, then show people" it's possible you built an amazing thing only you know how to use and nobody else really wants. Release early, release often. My problem is that I have a full time job. When I come home at night The simplest hack here: wake up earlier and use your first (and best) 2-3 productive brain hours on your project then go to work. You'll use your best performance (refreshed, alert, not tired) for your project while still not being fired. I've considered quitting my job and diving into it for a few months. I have savings but this seems foolishly risky to me. Yeah, that seldom works. Practical advice is: don't quit a job unless your side project is demanding an increasing amount of time and resources from customers/users (meaning: it's becoming successful). Non-practical advise is: screw work, if you're not happy, save money and do what you want. If anyone has been in a similar situation, I would greatly appreciate advice. The world isn't HN. You won't be an overnight success. You will fail. Nobody will use what you make. Or, you could be the next person the media starts comparing others against as a measure of unexpected success: "Is this new kid the next bglazer?"
  • bglazer 12y ago
    > If the project timeline is "work for 6-8 months, then show people" it's possible you built an amazing thing only you know how to use and nobody else really wants. This absolutely terrifies me. > The simplest hack here: wake up earlier and use your first (and best) 2-3 productive brain hours on your project then go to work. You'll use your best performance (refreshed, alert, not tired) for your project while still not being fired. I really, really enjoy my sleep :). This is certainly very practical advice, but it requires that I'm disciplined enough to go to sleep earlier the preceding night. That's difficult but certainly possible. > Non-practical advise is: screw work, if you're not happy, save money and do what you want. It's incredibly tempting. The problem (that actually isn't a problem) is that I enjoy my full-time work as well. Thank you for the advice!
    • sstradling 12y ago
• tegeek 12y ago
  I've been in this situation for as long as I can think of. But lately I've found something which is working for the time being. I don't use my car to commute to office. It takes 25 minutes via public transport (one way), so I use that time and build all the complex logic/data structure/algos in that time for my hobby project. Cooking doesn't break my mental loop. So I keep thinking & solving things regarding my hobby project while cooking. (I also cook for my office lunch almost daily) Most of the labour work (putting up CRUD forms or repeatable things, some graphics work etc) I do mostly on weekends when I don't have to use much brain but just keep moving things which are important. Things are much better now than before. Even still my hobby project is slow moving but I can see it moving further.
  • bglazer 12y ago
    Thanks. Unfortunately public transit is non-existent where I live. I'd love to spend my commute time working on the project rather than hoping that a distracted uninsured driver doesn't smash into me. I do enjoy thinking about the project while cooking. Good luck on your project!
    • jsankey 12y ago
      Obviously moving can be a big deal, but IMO you should seriously consider it. You have a problem with available time, and commuting by car is a massive time sink. It's pretty insane how much "human capacity" is wasted this way!
      • infinotize 12y ago
        The grass isn't always that green on the other side. Commuting on the nyc subway is no place to get work done, just as stressful and/or boring as driving, and despite the numerous and comprehensive lines commute times are still as bad as many drives.
  • txu 12y ago
    My experience is I am more focused while on public transit because I feel a sense of urgency. "I am gonna be interrupted in N mins and I need to finish X". It works sort of like pomodoro technique I guess. Utilizing those time slots is key to achieving side goals (or our real goals?) in a busy life. :-D
• gdubs 12y ago
  "Or work on an art project" Well, you might want to ask yourself if this project is really something you want to work on. That is, do you love it? If you'd rather be working on an art project, why not do that? There's that famous Steve Jobs quote that goes something like, "you only make great things when you love what you do."
• smurfpandey 12y ago
  I have started many side-projects but left them half way, because i got bored or something else caught my eye. But with my latest project[0] I am following a simple philosophy by John Resig, "Write code every day"[1]. Even if i write code for 30 mins, it's okay. By following this i am always in touch with the project. It has helped me a lot in being disciplined. [0]: https://github.com/smurfpandey/mysqlweb https://github.com/smurfpandey/mysqlweb [1]: http://ejohn.org/blog/write-code-every-day/ http://ejohn.org/blog/write-code-every-day/
• sogen 12y ago
  Same boat here, IAmA designer, PM if you need anything!
• whatupdave 12y ago
  It can be tough to stay motivated while working alone. If you're happy to share the success with other people you could build it with the help of the assembly.com community.
• smattiso 12y ago
  I was exactly where you were and it didn't work for me. In my opinion the only way to build something substantial enough that is worth selling is to quit your job. If you put your whole mind to something you can accomplish exponentially more than being scattered about. I think a more realistic approach is to put all of your effort into saving money via a job, and then all of your effort into your own business. Jack of all trades, master of none and all that. Again that's my opinion YMMV. Whatever you are doing make sure you are enjoying it otherwise what's the point?
• register 12y ago
  I believe that the solution could be to try to find collaboration in a liquid organization like ttps://assembly.com. I think that it's a good model exchanging labour ( instead of funding ) for shares. I haven't joined any of these projects yet for two reasons: I am not excited by the one already available and was focused until 1 month ago on my new app for iPhone which unluckily is not going well from a sales perspective even if the little feedback from users is positive. Good luck with your venture.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• jldugger 12y ago
  > If anyone has been in a similar situation, I would greatly appreciate advice. You can't have it all. A wife & kids, a full time job, a social life and an open source hacker reputation. Many of the biggest names in open source have none of those other things.
  • vonmoltke 12y ago
    Then the industry should stop expecting people to have open source hacker reputations in order to be considered "good". I'm glaring at you specifically, "Github-is-your-resume" crowd.
    • ChuckMcM 12y ago
      Both of these things are profoundly important points. The first being that you cannot "have it all" and the second that putting the expectation out there that you should be a "rockstar" when it comes to open source code encourages unwise choices. One of the things I noticed at Sun early on it its life were that there were "types" of folks, people who were so invested in their work lives that they had no family (or in many cases lost their family) and people who balanced out family with work. Folks in the latter camp invariably were less well rewarded than those in the former camp. I found myself slipping into that "work is everything camp" and consciously chose not to go there, knowing it would limit the eventual arc of my career. I have never regretted that choice and am still happily married with kids I know and who know me, long after Sun has faded into history. It was a tough call to make. I talked it over with my wife (we were thinking about kids but didn't have any yet).
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  • Blackthorn 12y ago
    This is the most impactful thing I've ever read on Hacker News. No sarcasm. You made me stop and consider my own life and what I do with it. I don't have it all -- in fact, I have that "side project" (open source hacker reputation) that's languished for a long time and I've always felt bad about it. But I have a demanding job, a wife (no kids), and my social life and leisure time is very important to me. But now I've, mostly, made peace with that fact.
• Arjuna 12y ago
  I can completely empathize. I have a family, and so it takes even more effort to create the time and find the space to make things happen. I just launched a game into the App Store. The journey was incredible, and filled with joy, sweat, and tears. I've written about what I've gone through. It might be helpful for you. A small caution... these are relatively long posts, but hopefully they are enjoyable, insightful, and personally beneficial for you. My experiences with what I felt while developing the game: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8888070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8888070 An older post that I wrote about work, embracing the grind, and driving through. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7076143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7076143 I wish you every success. P.S. I figured I should do a TL;DR since those posts are even more epic in length than I realized, so I snagged some salient points: 1. You may look at your project and think, "I'm never going to make it. I'll never finish." Please, I urge you to set these thoughts aside and push through. Think about the analogy of building a wall. A wall is built one brick at a time. Watch a mason build a wall one day. You will observe that he or she lays one brick at a time. This is how you have to view your project. Sure, it would be amazing to have an entire day, every day to devote to your project. However, the reality is that most of us simply do not have that luxury. So, strive to think of it as a mason: lay one brick at a time, and eventually the wall will be built. Every character that you type into Xcode, Visual Studio, etc. turns into a keyword, a variable name, etc... that subsequently turns into a line. Those lines build up, day by day, and before you know it, you have a program, and you look back and think, "Wow, why did I ever think I could not finish?" 2. You have to fight. This is paramount. I will say it again... you have to fight! What I mean here is fighting by engaging your Will. Engage your will to get up, to get moving. Engage your will to eat right, to exercise and go to bed on time so that you have the energy to get up and bring it. 3. You never know where your work will take you. Do not forget that, you have to dream it first in your mind before you can see it in your life. And to see it in your life, you must work. You may not be able to see things clearly now, but you never know what doors could open for you that you did not even know existed. 4. I find that I read this story at least once a month; it's just incredibly encouraging to me: http://whatshihsaid.com/2013/02/26/ang-lee-a-never-ending-dream http://whatshihsaid.com/2013/02/26/ang-lee-a-never-ending-dr...
  • bglazer 12y ago
• thebouv 12y ago
  I'm with you on this and will hungrily lap up any advice on the subject. I write code that can't be open sourced for work, but want to contribute to OSS projects. But dammit, at the end of the day or week of coding all the time for my full time job, it is hard as well to sit down in front of the screen again without going mad. Life, kids, wife, non-coding hobbies, coding hobbies -- whirlwind of competition for my time. Ugh.
• compwron 12y ago
  What I do is to sometimes take a 'sanity day' to sit at home or in a library and get some serious work done. 9-5 (or whatever) just like work. You even get to sleep in instead of commuting. I realize that this is partially because I've been lucky to have jobs where taking one day won't be a vacation/sick-day disaster-overreach.
• maaku 12y ago
  I did the quit and focus thing. It ended up working out, but just barely. I was underwater for a while and my marriage about to fall apart.. I'm not sure I'd recommend the same path even though it did have a happy ending (co-founder of a well funded startup, a cash bonus that wiped out my worst debt, and my wife and I are back on good terms). Wish I had better advice, but it is a hard problem. If you only have 3-5 hours per week, perhaps you should consider going to meetups instead, and networking outside of your existing communities? You might get more results out of that, or find an opportunity you are willing to leave your current job for.
  • makeset 12y ago
    That sounded like your wife was going to leave you because you were underwater doing what you wanted, and she changed her mind because you were solvent again. If that's case, assuming you already knew the kind of person you were married to, the quit-and-focus option was quite a gamble. I'm glad it paid out.
    • maaku 12y ago
      No, that would be an incorrect reference: it wasn’t about money issues at all. Not directly. You see, when you are bootstrapping your revenue is contingent on making deliverables, getting customers (or in my case, donors), and otherwise doing time consuming work. Once you have depleted your savings and maxed out your credit cards, then you really start to feel the life-or-death, make-it-or-die pressure. At every given moment there is permeating risk that if you don’t push this update, if you don’t win that customer/donor, if you don’t make such a looming deadline, you will fail. And failure means the bank taking your house, losing all credit for 7 years, being unable to put food on the table, living on the street, and—let’s face it—owning up to defeat. If that weren’t complicated enough, my wife started her second pregnancy at exactly the same time. Every moment that I was asking my wife how her day was, what the doctor had told her, playing with our other toddler, cooking dinner, or generally just being present was progress not being made towards that deadline, that customer, or a completed product. There’s a pressure and a mentality here not too dissimilar from the gambler that keeps betting double-or-nothing with exponentially increasing risk, chasing the Martingale of success. Before long your entire life is on the table, and you’re rolling the dice. I made it to that point… and then rolled a natural 20. I got lucky. Sure, I “made my own luck” in the sense that a positive outcome was only possible because of all that work I’d put in. But possible does not mean probable, and the upward-trending outcome I am currently enjoying was very, very low probability. I got lucky, and I recognize that. But a year ago? I was deep in a hole and doubling down, while totally ignoring other responsibilities and being unavailable to my wife, daughter, and newborn child. I was trading time now for an imagined future, at terrible odds. I think it was her who had more reason to wonder what kind of person she was married to, and I am eternally grateful that she stayed long enough to make it through. We’re now well funded, making waves, and gathering customers. I’m pulling a steady paycheck and have wiped out the worst of my bad debt. I have a good comp plan with not insignificant equity. But with the information available to me at the outset, I don’t think I would make the same decisions again. I certainly wouldn't recommend someone else to do something so foolhardy. Some things are just not worth risking, no matter the reward.
• lugg 12y ago
  Sounds like a scheduling issue to me, you either have to go full tit and code for 3-5 hours a night, every night, or you dont see progress. That is the wrong way to tackle the problem, and you probably know it. Attempt to set aside 30minutes to an hour a night to work on it, but no more, and you have to stop yourself from working more. This is the only way I found worked for me. You dont have to set time every day (that part just helped in my case, I need consistency to build a habbit)
• megablast 12y ago
  Well, you can hire someone to work on it for you. You can upload the project to github and try to get people to help you for free.
• someotheridiot 12y ago
  Wife and 2 kids with full time job here, trying to build a side project currently worth approx $1-2k/month. If you're not prepared to spend the hard hours to build it up, you're not going to succeed. Suck it up if you believe in it. Sorry to be so harsh, but most people don't get fairy tale success stories.
• ctrlrsf 12y ago
  I'm in the same boat. All programming effort was for work and no time for side projects. Until recently. I've started making projects open source by default and committing something at least once a day no matter how insignificant. This has kept my motivation going and hard to find an excuse not to fix or add this one little bug or feature. README file clearly states its alpha work in progress so others know what to expect. Something about putting your work out there that makes you want to maintain and improve upon. Good luck, start small, make a few commits. Oh, and if not open source software, try getting minimum product out so you can feel that sense of obligation to improve and develop further
• prawn 12y ago
  Are you in a position to negotiate four days/week with your employer?
• capisce 12y ago
  > My problem is that I have a full time job The tyranny of the 40+ hour work week. Why is it that so few people are willing and/or able to negotiate working fewer hours in a week, for example 6 hours a day or 4 days in a week? Is it fear of being fired for making such a request? Are the employers so powerful and the employees in such a weak bargaining position? Or the fear of having to take a pay cut? Maybe people get used to too expensive life styles instead of keeping living frugally when the money starts rolling in. They're then in the fragile position of not being able to afford a slight reduction in income. It's kind of sad that there is not a lot more individual variation in working hours, when people are simultaneously lamenting their lack of free time.
  • bglazer 12y ago
    > Is it fear of being fired for making such a request? Are the employers so powerful and the employees in such a weak bargaining position? Frankly, yes. I would be literally the only person I know who has such an arrangement. Have you negotiated reduced hours? If so, I'd be interested in hearing your experience.
    • capisce 12y ago
      > Frankly, yes. I would be literally the only person I know who has such an arrangement. Yeah, I guess the norm is too strongly ingrained, and employers like to keep it that way. If there was a "free" labour market you'd expect more variation, as it can't be right that the standard amount of working hours are perfect fit for everyone. Ditto with number of vacation days in a year, etc - in an ideal world it would all be negotiated based on individual preference. The status quo causes symptoms such as rush hour traffic, overly expensive flights and hotels as everyone goes on vacation at the same time, and people who are wealthy in monetary terms but starved of leisure time. It seems like this often leads to making up for it through overconsumption - to spend the extra income that the full time worker might not really need to satisfy his basic needs and wants. Unfortunately I haven't made such attempts, and I'm currently a freelance contractor which already means I have more spare time when I want as I decide myself how many hours I work. I know about ex-colleagues who negotiated a four day working week for a commensurate reduction in salary, though that was in Norway.