
Ask HN: What do you do with your time in between projects? - 1k
This goes out all the consultants, freelancers and project-based developers on HN.<p>I find myself with a nice little idle period coming up. I will be completing a project soon and it looks like the next job could start anytime in the next 2-8 weeks.<p>I&#x27;m curious, what do you guys do with free time like this? I guess most will do some travelling or reading or learn a new tech.<p>Personally I would like to start a profitable, self-sustaining side project but I don&#x27;t suppose that is realistic in such a short period (2 weeks to 2 months).
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jasonkester
All the things you mention are good options. I spent a lot of years traveling
and rock climbing in between contract gigs (though I tended to maximize the
time between those gigs on purpose).

I built both of my day-job-replacing products in between gigs as well.

Don't sweat the short time period. The stuff you build now will still remain
built even if you don't touch it for another six months. (Be sure to pick a
tech stack where that is in fact the case!) Chip away at it when you can spare
time from the day job and get it running (and charging money) in the
background as early as possible. SaaS often takes several years to spin up
into something to replace your job (mine took upwards of 10 years), so the
earlier you launch the better.

I wrote an article about this not too long ago:

[http://www.expatsoftware.com/Articles/guy-on-the-beach-
with-...](http://www.expatsoftware.com/Articles/guy-on-the-beach-with-a-
laptop.html)

