
You Don't Need to Quit Your Job to Make - stephsmithio
https://blog.stephsmith.io/you-dont-need-to-quit-your-job-to-make/
======
quickthrower2
> With approximately 16 hours of the day allocated to work and sleep, every
> individual has approximately 8 hours to allocate to “me time” and if used
> appropriately, a lot can be achieved in that nearly 3000 hours each year.

Really if you are going to go to the extreme of not eating, showering,
maintaining your health, zero human relationships, zero rest or time for
recovering from illness, then I assume you'd go the next step and just quit
the job too to unlock the other 2000 hours. After all if you don't need those
other things why do you need a job at all? If you are that extreme you
probably can save a years salary then live on a mate's sofa etc.

Edit: Later on she does mention her time budgeting and it isn't this extreme,
but I get annoyed with the statements that claim you have 8 free hours a day,
implying that you should be working your ass off for those 8.

~~~
xtracto
Yeah, that was my thought as well, I have a very tight schedule which allows
me only around 9~10 hours a week to dedicate to my startup.

Mo - Fri:

    
    
      . Wake up at 5:30 go to the gym (6 to 7.30)
    
      . 7.30 - 9.00 : Shower, breakfast, get ready to work
    
        9. - 9.30 : Commute to work
    
      . 9.30 - 6.00pm : Work
    
      . 6.00 - 6.30pm : Commute to home
    
      . 6.30 - 9.00pm : Tue/Wed: Startup,  MWF: Wife
    
      . 9.00 - 10.00pm: Dinner, prepare to sleep 
    
    
      ... repeat
    
    

Saturdays: 9.00 - 2.00pm . Startup

So 5 hours on saturday + 5 hours on Weekdays = 10hrs in total. I wish I had
more time.

~~~
mandeepj
> Wake up at 5:30 go to the gym (6 to 7.30)

Can you go to the gym on alternate days? Sometimes, I don't go to the gym for
the entire week; instead, work out at home for 20-30 mins - doing bodyweight
exercises

~~~
pattle
A good tip for saving time is to workout in your lunch hour if it's possible.
I go running in my lunch hour as it has a high time:reward ratio which free's
up a lot of time in the evenings or mornings.

------
soulnothing
I have gotten really serious at trying to start a business this year.

I devote Monday through Thursday to working on my business. After work I take
an hour to an hour and a half break. Then I work for five to six hours, then
thirty minutes break before bed.

Friday through Sunday, I devote to writing, resting, or other things. Honestly
it's mostly resting, because I'm way beyond burnt out.

The thing is I'm spent after my work day. I'm making more errors at night,
causing more rework and frustration. I was also concerned about layoffs/loss
of job. So I was dipping time into job searching.

That's not even getting into the existential what am I doing with my life. I'm
early 30s and wasting the bulk of my youth trying to start a company. It's
depressing to me to be locked to my computer for 13 to 14 hours a day. I love
working on my business idea. But I have music I want to work on, novels, etc.
Places I want to see.

This past weekend I went to a weekend startup accelerator. It has been years
since I felt like that. My brain was firing on all cylinders, and I was
working on a team. The past several years of my career. Have been death
marches, and projects that are cancelled mid stream, and I'm flying solo. This
is why I want to start a business, but I'm just so exhausted all the time.

I have done the quit and take a few months off in the past. Those were the
happiest I've been in my career. But something has yanked me back to a full
time job, because I need money asap.

Then the last portion as someone else mentioned. The inane invention
assignment clauses. My last role took ownership of everything past, present,
and future I thought. Irregardless of medium. My current role tried that, but
I got an addendum to the contract. I had a past employer try and sue me
because we left on bad terms, and they drowned me in legal fees.

Sure you don't need to quit. But if you want your sanity, and some legal peace
of mind it's the best thing.

~~~
WesleyLivesay
I don't have a business, but I have been working on a side project for almost
5 years after hours, I commit about 20 hours a week to it. At the beginning I
tried what I called 'super days' that sound a lot like yours. What I found is
that while I was 'working' those 5-6 hours at night I was not very productive
mostly due to mental exhaustion. Then on 'off days' I was way too exhausted to
do anything, and I never fully recovered. For my project (creative in nature)
this caused crippling Creative Productivity Anxiety and depression.

About 1.5 years into the project I broke my foot (long story) which meant I
had to change things, then I had a kid about a year later, which caused me to
change again. Both of those were really good developments

What I found is that a far better schedule for me was to spread things out.
Now I still put in about 20 hours a week, but it is in the form of 1.5 hours
at night on week nights and 6 hours on Saturday and 6 hours on Sunday. The
Saturday and Sunday time is generally split three ways (morning before family
wakes up, kid's nap time, evening after kid goes to sleep) I feel like I get
more work done because I have the mental ability to actually work for each of
those pieces of time.

Schedule may look different for you, hobbies, family, etc. But I would
definitely suggest with exploring smaller pieces of Second Work, especially on
week days.

~~~
claudiulodro
With kids, I've adopted a similar way of working on my projects. During the
week I really only have ~1.5 hours a day of focused time that I can spend on
my projects. I've found a great system that help a lot with that:

1\. Plan specifics and next-steps while watching the kids. This is not to say
you should ignore them or anything. An hour of dedicated play with the kids is
usually followed by an hour of them playing with each other or doing something
independent quietly (super important skills for them to learn IMO). When they
are watching Sesame Street or playing with each other I have a note-taking app
and Google Docs on my phone. I can plan next steps, write content, manage the
project's social media, etc. from basically anywhere while still keeping an
eye on the kids. I also make and maintain a TODO list broken down into bite-
sized tasks in the note taking app (the default notes app that comes with
Android). Using a phone in this way is more rewarding than surfing Reddit/HN
anyways, and it will fundamentally change your relationship with your phone
for the better.

2\. Since most planning is already done (see step 1), when I have dedicated
time to work on the project I already have a list of bite-sized tasks I can
accomplish. Doing even one tiny task a day adds up way more quickly than you
would believe. e.g. I do furniture, so on one day I photograph a completed
chair, another day I cut fabric for cushions, etc. Maintained over the long-
term, this adds up to a ton of progress without burnout. My guiding philosophy
for this is "consistency + effort = improvement".

This system also works great for people with long commutes (assuming you're
not driving)!

~~~
daxfohl
> them playing with each other or doing something independent quietly (super
> important skills for them to learn IMO)

+100 for this. Our kids just don't. Maybe 5 min, and then "mom! dad!". And we
drop everything and go relieve them of their duty to entertain themselves. I
feel like this is a failing on our part as parents. And it makes everything
worse for everyone.

I'm curious if you have any practical measures you've followed to get past
this.

~~~
Infernal
Everyone will have different experiences with this, but I wonder how old your
kids are? We didn't really experience a lot of the self-entertainment until
our kids were 5 and 3 - at that point they began being able to cooperate and
play well enough with each other that they could get engrossed (either in
parallel or together) and allow us to focus primarily on non-kid-stuff.

~~~
daxfohl
6 and 3 now. And yeah it _is_ getting better though we still have a way to go.

------
mac_was
When asked what surprised him about humanity the most, the Dalai Lama replied:

“Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he
sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the
future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not
live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die,
and then dies having never really lived.”

~~~
badpun
On the flip side, if no one was anxious and everyone was perfectly enjoying
the present, it could be that no one would ever bother to even invent the
wheel.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I bet the person who invented the wheel did it whilst idling one sunny day.

~~~
julius_set
I highly doubt a single person created the wheel out of nothing. The idea of a
circle is part of our innate biology we are hard wired to recognize or create
circular shapes.

Most likely several people tried to create the wheel and ideas on what to do
with a circular shape were thought of, some cross pollination from physics
resulted in it being used for transportation.

So I’d argue it was not done on a sunny day but mostly as an obsession just
like most every other game changing idea

~~~
amelius
The wheel is a natural invention. Just let something (not necessarily very
round) roll off a snowy hill, and see what happens.

~~~
spenczar5
The wheel isn't the hard part. The hard part is the axle bearings.

------
zackmorris
I'm beginning to think (after nearly 30 years of failing) that succeeding as a
maker may involve something larger than ourselves.

I think that we have major, structural, institutional problems throughout our
society and culture that prevent any individual from accomplishing much of
anything over the course of a lifetime that is outside the mainstream status
quo of participating in a nuclear family.

I think a possible way out of this predicament is shining a light on the
smallest of things that prevent us from moving forward.

For example, any student debt at all is a major setback. So our choice is
either to not go to school or to work a lot and pay it back fast. This is a
false dichotomy. If you flip the problem on its head, you see that this was
orchestrated by the owner class to keep people locked into the system (any
increase in ignorance being an inconvenience or even politically convenient).

The layout of our cities highly encourages car ownership, another huge cost.
The fossil fuel industry gets billion dollar subsidies while renewables do
not. We no longer have the room in population centers to grow our own food. We
don't have the disposable income to build robots to automate something like
that. Even dating requires cashflow.

Everywhere we look, at every level, we are blocked. So I think something more
useful than borrowing the hours and minutes of our leisure time for risky
ventures might be to form a vision of how we'd like our society to be. Name
each problem and attack it head on.

I don't mean to downplay the article because it has very good points about
self-discipline. But I would very much like to see us all start succeeding,
because if we try to do it alone, we will fail.

~~~
twic
Much of Europe has free universities, walkable cities with good public
transport, and culture and climate where a date can just be a picnic on the
beach or in the woods.

Europe is not notably more full of successful makers than the US.

(As for growing food - it would take you a lot more time to grow enough to
feed yourself than it would to earn enough to buy the food you need to feed
yourself)

~~~
rabidrat
Europe does seem to create a different class of 'maker'; consider Linus
Torvalds and Fabrice Bellard, both notable for their immense contributions to
open source software. Who in the US is creating on that scale and not doing it
for their employer or some other payout?

~~~
adventured
That's a slightly amusing post given the gigantic open source contributions
that US makers have had.

First let's get the obvious out of the way: you have to earn money somehow to
live. Linus Torvalds hasn't spent the last 20 years living in a ditch. He
monetized his work on Linux to his own benefit, as any sane person would do.

Prominent US examples of makers/creators in that mold: Dennis Ritchie, Ken
Thompson, Michael Stonebraker, Brian Behlendorf, Bill Joy, Vint Cerf, Bob
Kahn, Brendan Eich, John Resig, Ian Murdock, Richard Stallman, Brad
Fitzpatrick, Keith Bostic, Paul Vixie, Jon Postel, Eric Allman, Larry Wall,
Marc Ewing, Ray Tomlinson, Alan Kay, Robert Metcalfe, Douglas Engelbart,
Donald Knuth, Thomas Kurtz, Larry Tesler, John McCarthy.

One would have to include the contributions by Leonard Kleinrock and Lawrence
Roberts. They were critical to making the Internet happen.

Blake Ross and Dave Hyatt broke the IE monopoly with Firefox, an enormous
contribution. Dave also has several other relevant contributions.

Matt Mullenweg was instrumental in the creation of WordPress (and the
WordPress Foundation), which runs 1/4 to 1/3 of all sites.

John Carmack open sourced the id engines, which was a particularly abnormal
thing to do at the time. Especially given their commercial value and the fact
that id was in competition with countless other developers to lead the way on
cutting edge 3D tech. His open technical contributions to the industry are
immense, possibly larger than anybody else in gaming history.

Jimmy Wales created Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation. There have been
few greater positive contributions in the history of the Web than Wikimedia.

These examples keep going.

Linus Torvalds also happens to have spent the last two decades living in the
US and is an American citizen. Only five years after he began work on Linux,
he moved to the US. Out of the ~28 year history of Linux, for 22 of those
Linus has worked on it in the US.

By your own premise, the best maker you offered up, prefers being in the US
and has spent the vast majority of his adult life building in the US.

~~~
rabidrat
Many of these people are academics, doing it as their professional work--
academics do seem to have that same kind of European giving mentality. Most of
the others were paid by a company to do their work.

Stallman though I will grant you. Even with his academic 'support' he is
clearly giving heart and soul without any desire for compensation.

------
chaostheory
I heard this advice from various people over the years. It's not bad advice,
but it's missing some details

This advice only works if your side project and your day job aren't equally
intense ie. if you're programing for your day job and your side project
involves more programming, you will burn out. You can pretend that you relax
with even more programming, but your body will disagree.

To make this work beyond a few months or a year as a programmer, you will
either need to do an easier side project where ideally you're not doing the
programming; or better yet you will need a very easy day job that doesn't use
up the bulk of your daily creativity and problem solving stamina. Yes, it is a
finite resource. The true ideal situation is being able to work on your
personal projects during down time at your day job...

Also as someone else already mentioned, read your employment contract. Outside
of places like California, the IP portions of that contract are draconian ie.
your employer will own any idea that you generate whether it is on the job
during office hours, or in your sleep or free time at home. This is even more
important to keep in mind if you work remotely even just part of the time.

~~~
movedx
> if you're programing for your day job and your side project involves more
> programming, you will burn out.

Then as stated in the article, only work on the side project for an hour a day
over 365 days. Time is on your side and it's OK if it takes a year to get to
an MVP. Look at Stardew Valley, for example.

> better yet you will need a very easy day job that doesn't use up the bulk of
> your daily creativity and problem solving stamina. Yes, it is a finite
> resource.

This is a fair point. That being said you can always focus on side projects
that aren't related to the day job (and in some cases that might have to be
the case contractually.) For example I'm a DevOp by day, but my business is
moving into VR.

~~~
chaostheory
> Then as stated in the article, only work on the side project for an hour a
> day over 365 days. Time is on your side and it's OK if it takes a year to
> get to an MVP. Look at Stardew Valley, for example.

That's actually not true. According to the GQ interview:

"It took him four and a half years to design, program, animate, draw, compose,
record, and write everything in the game, working 12-hour days, seven days a
week."

Stardew Valley is the antithesis to the article. Eric Barone worked full time
on the game while his girlfriend supported him.

[https://www.gq.com/story/stardew-valley-eric-barone-
profile](https://www.gq.com/story/stardew-valley-eric-barone-profile)

imo if you're programming, it'll take a lot longer to finish anything if
you're only doing it in 1 hour daily increments vs a few hours in a single day
a week. Flow is important. That's not counting the mental stamina that's been
drained by the day job.

The other scenario that can happen is that your performance at your day job
will suffer, if you continue programming after your typical 10-14 hour
programmer work shift.

~~~
movedx
You misunderstand me.

I never said it took him 12 months to complete the game. I never stated he
worked on the game on the side. My point is simply that it's OK for something
simple to take a long time; it's OK to work on something over a long period of
time, on the side or otherwise.

If you want to make something and it takes five years: OK. If you want to make
something and it takes five months: OK. The point is: do it, and do it by
managing time better and staying focused.

------
robbrit
Sounds like Toptal has some good employment agreements. One restriction
keeping people from making, side hustles, etc. are the onerous rules that
larger tech companies place on their employees. There are agreements around
non-competition, intellectual property ownership, conflict of interest, and
other little gotchas. These can be very broad since modern tech companies
sprawl across a lot of industries, so even if your specific role is far from
the side hustle you want to do, your company might be quite close to it and
therefore that is a conflict of interest.

I've actually had the situation where I was blocked from getting paid for
tutoring on Codementor.io because it was "getting paid on the side to use
skills and know-how that is part of his job".

Of course, this probably doesn't apply for things like bike shops or other
types of maker activities that aren't technical. It also probably doesn't
apply for pro bono things like open-source contributions.

[EDIT]: added "probably doesn't apply" since it seems like in some cases it
can cause problems.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I worked for a Fortune 100 company whose backbone was intellectual property
(involved in 100,000+ products) and as you might imagine, their view of what
constituted "intellectual property" and any reasonable human being's view were
quite different.

During onboarding someone asked about building a table and selling the plans
and were told that "they would definitely need to talk to legal".

~~~
lowercased
I've run in to places that wanted to pull "all your intellectual property
belong to us", but I don't really think they really wanted this. I think they
just want the right of first refusal. If I developed something illegal, then
said "well... my employer owns it technically because I did this during
working hours" they definitely would try to wriggle out of that IP.

~~~
scarmig
Half the reason for these agreements is because they generally do want all
your intellectual property: it means that there's less risk of one of their
entrepreneurial employees quitting and starting a competitor, even in an
ostensibly unrelated sector.

~~~
lowercased
I don't think they really want to be legally liable for everything I make
outside work, even though they might say that.

------
stephsmithio
There's this typical entrepreneur story-line that everyone loves to tell. VC-
backed entrepreneur that went "all in", quit their job, and produced a
unicorn. TechCrunch loves this stuff.

I feel like this is so misleading and makes people feel like they need to quit
their jobs in order to be successful in making side projects or businesses. In
general, I feel like we need to eliminate dichotomies in life.

So I wrote from another point of view: one that I am currently living, working
FT and building side projects. In many ways I think it's: 1) Doable 2) Perhaps
the most healthy and thoughtful approach.

Interested to hear other people's thoughts. Do you really need to quit your
job to build a successful business?

~~~
parthdesai
Not really. Remember DHH started and built Basecamp 1.0 and rails while still
working on his consultancy business 40 hours a week.

Not every company needs to be next Fb/Google/Amazon. Nothing wrong with having
revenue in millions and not billions if you are profitable.

~~~
madamelic
> Remember DHH started and built Basecamp 1.0 and rails while still working on
> his consultancy business 40 hours a week.

I don't want to assume anything, but from what you've said, it seems like
scaling his time up and down as needed would've been very easy.

People with hardset 35 - 40 hour / week jobs where they aren't their own boss
can't really scale time commitments that easily.

Otherwise, I definitely agree.

~~~
parthdesai
Apparently he only worked one hour a day on it after working hours everyday.
And by one hour, he meant proper one hour, without any distractions.

------
fzeroracer
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that are legally not allowed to make
in their free time because the company they work for owns the rights to things
they make, even if made fully using their own time. Or the company may forbid
working on open source projects under fears of developers sharing ideas that
said company believes they're entitled to.

Until the law is changed so that companies don't own things developers make
like that, there are many people that lose the motivation to make things in
their free time.

~~~
icedchai
I have freely ignored these agreements in the past without any consequence.
Once I got a "talking to" by a VP about my level of commitment. I also had one
employment agreement claim I was not allowed to have any sort of side
business. I disagreed, and actually sold services to my current employer while
I was there. Many employers don't even know what is in their own contacts.
It's boiler plate.

~~~
Pfhreak
Who assumes the risk in this scenario? Hint: It's not the company you work
for.

~~~
icedchai
This was in the past and there was not much risk. These days I freely disclose
my outside endeavors before the offer is signed. It’s never been a problem.

------
asien
Strongly disagree with the arguments made in this paper.

In my opinion this post is fundamentally biased due to the author professional
situation. From what I understand she currently works « remotely » meaning she
doesn’t spend 2H commuting per day. Hence she seems to be a « lead xxx » at
toptal. That’s great for her. I’ve worked for many large corporations , every
where I went « lead » means you are generally not in « touch » with the
operational reality of what the job is about.

So often as a lead your job is basically to keep a spreadsheet with people
reporting to you because supposedly you understand what they do and can solve
their issues if they have some.

Maintaining a spreadsheet is fairly easy, on the other hand solving 10 years
legacy code without any sort of documentation is a competely different topic.

This is a well know issues in modern societies , where the higher you go in
the hierarchy the less people are actually working and the more are actually
doing bureaucracy and the more you are disconnected from reality.

I don’t see how an engineer in a service company working 40-50 hours per week
can have any sort of motivation during his weekends to create something new
while he just gave every bits of his brain for 5 days straight trying to fix
someone else’s bugs , issues and legacy code.

This is an example of course, but I’m sure many people on HN are on this
situation. They just stay at this job because it pays theirs bills or they
can’t anything better but they just wish they had their own business doing
something completely different.

Reading this type of article somewhat buggers me. I guess a « content writer »
can probably work on a side project on his free time but what about the lower
worker class ? What about the higher class like surgeons , lawyers etc..

These peoples often already work on the weekends to complete the work they
were assigned... now they should also start a company on the side ?

Some job are more demanding than others , this is why some people must quit if
they want to succeed.

~~~
stephsmithio
Thanks for the feedback and while I can understand your point to some degree,
I am not a << content writer >>, or someone that sits in a spreadsheet
watching other people work. I was part of my team before leading it and
continue to be an individual contributor.

I too have encountered leaders who operate in the way you described, but I
think it's actually a really unfortunate viewpoint to have of leaders overall.

One of the key points of the article is that you _do_ have more time than you
think. This amount of time varies per person based on their life, but I would
argue that everyone does have at least 30 minutes per day that they could re-
allocate to something more effective.

~~~
notafrog
I think your article has some valid points. But I think time available is not
the only thing in the equation, as a few other commenters have pointed out.
For example, I also work remotely, but I've found myself suffering from
burnout lately because of hectic schedules. This has been a mentally draining
experience, and as a result I've not been able to even begin thinking about
side projects, let alone work on them. I do have more time available to myself
than when I used to work in an office, but the time available to me now is
worth way less than when I was working in an office because of my current
job's intensity.

------
29athrowaway
> every individual has approximately 8 hours to allocate to “me time”

8 hours of "me time" means:

\- you spend no time getting ready

\- you work part-time or work remotely and have no commute

\- you don't cook and multitask while you eat

\- you never take breaks

\- you don't exercise

\- you either don't live with a family/special other/pet or spend no time with
them

The median human being doesn't live like this.

~~~
martin-adams
\+ doing chores around the house

\+ grocery shopping

\+ speaking to / visiting friends and family

\+ appointments

\+ paying bills, getting insurance quotes, remortgage paperwork, etc

\+ budgeting and managing personal finances

For me, I'd rephrase it as:

every individual could scrape a minimum of 1 hour to allocate to “me time”.

So that's what I work with.

------
austincheney
I see people fail at this a lot. Often it isn't a matter budgeting time
appropriately, but a matter of focus.

I have two jobs. I am normally a full time developer with a major bank and a
part time officer in the Army, though right now I am full time Army. I also
have a spouse and two teenage children. Yet, I still manage a couple of
moderately large open source applications.

The most important realization is that not every minute of your day is
actively occupied just because it is budgeted. You have empty time here and
there, and sometimes a huge ton of it. Use it. If I am not actively engaged at
work I think of my open source projects. If I cannot work on my open source
projects at work, due to policy restrictions or security barriers, then I work
on self-education. Right now I cannot work on my software at my military job,
so instead I am reading educational material and studying for PMP so that I
can focus on writing software outside the office.

A huge mistake I have made recently is sacrificing exercise for increased
personal software writing time in the morning. When I first made this decision
a few months ago it made sense, because I was supremely focused on shipping
the next major version of one of my apps. I used this extra time wisely and
was able to push my app out the door. That was 6 weeks ago. Now that extra
time in the morning is largely wasted and I am gaining weight. I still have
more software to write, but I have lost the necessary focus to use this extra
time wisely. It is easier to be well focused when you are in better shape,
high energy, and are living at a high state of wellness.

------
shruubi
If you are happy making sacrifices in your life like cutting out relationships
then all the more power to you, but I personally find it kind of crazy that
we've reached a place where people think that their business idea is so
important that they are willing to sacrifice basic human needs like social
relationships etc to try and strike rich.

------
mlillie
A few fallacies as I see them in this article.

One is that everyone, like the author, is starting from a 'clean slate'. This
is an extremely privileged position. Almost no one in this country is
completely out of debt AND mentally/physically healthy AND able to 'choose' to
not commute to work.

Another is that everyone has, or can afford, an appropriate 'makerspace' in
their place of residence.

Finally, this article simply takes the 8 hour workday for granted, rather than
asking the extremely obvious question: Yes, Robert Owen _did_ coin the phrase
"Eight hours labour, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest", _in 1817_.
With labor productivity skyrocketing since then, why have we not reduced this,
even to 6 hours?

------
throwaway-1283
This post is entirely premised on being single and not having kids.

~~~
jamst174
Yeah, that's the first thing I thought of when I read that everyone has 8
hours a day of "me" time. Nope, no we don't.

630a - 8a: get myself ready, get kids ready

8a - 630p: commute and work (yes, the author does say she eliminated her
commute, but this isn't feasible for everyone)

630p - 8p: dinner, get kids to bed

8p - ~9p: dishes, general cleanup, pay bills, etc...things most adults have to
do to live

9p - 1030p: 1.5 hours of "me" time if we're going for 8 hours of sleep...no,
more like...

9p - 12a: really the only window I have to live. often spent doing more work
and really, usually too brain dead to start a side project. again, adulting
and parenting are hard and energy intensive. Netflix sounds really good at
this point.

1030p - 630a: 8 hours of sleep (haha - i'm really trying to live somewhat of a
life so 1130/12 is a more regular bedtime)

I've been considering the 10p bedtime/5a wake up so I can do side projects in
the morning, but this still only adds 1.5 hours of time for a total of 3 hours
a day.

~~~
madamelic
>I've been considering the 10p bedtime/5a wake up so I can do side projects in
the morning, but this still only adds 1.5 hours of time for a total of 3 hours
a day.

Do it.

3 hours per day, 5 days a week for an entire year is 720 hours. It's a
marathon, not a sprint. And it's not like you need to always do it. Try it
out, see if it is for you, worst case you cross the idea off your list.

~~~
cellularmitosis
My only important personal goal this year is to spend 500 hours working on
personal goals. Pretty conservative pace (1 hour on 4 weekdays and 6 hours on
the weekend), but sticking to anything consistently for an entire year would
be a huge personal achievement.

~~~
stephsmithio
This is awesome. A lot can be accomplished with 500 hours and yes, perhaps the
best achievement is sticking to that goal consistently.

~~~
cellularmitosis
Irony of ironies, I'm actually coming to understand the importance of having
"tickets", a backlog, and revisiting progress on a bi-weekly basis (sprints)

------
ivanhoe
In my view, instead of cutting down on your fun time and activities, you can
cut down on your expanses, so that you need to work less and thus create more
free time for yourself. It's much healthier to work half-time or 3 days a week
or something like that - and then use that extra time for your own projects
and still have enough of it left for a normal life, family, friends, reading
books, going out. What author proposes is certainly doable, but not something
I'd really want to do to myself: no relationships, no tv (or books or games or
sport), no much social life, just work and sleep. Maybe I'd do it for a while
if I had a really promising, unicorn kind of idea, but just to fool around
with side-projects and learn new stuff it seems like a hell of a sacrifice on
his side.

------
tarikjn
In my experience, there is a missing piece which is this works if your day job
and projects use a different part of your brain.

Anytime I have had success having a day job and a side project my activities
were different enough that they didn't share the same block of mental energy.
E.g. once as a waiter working 10h/days and then maintaining a growing website
5h before sleep, another time as a programmer and then doing CAD design in the
evenings.

You will notice that the author and the personalities she gives as examples
also all have this in common to a certain degree.

The other thing is I don't think I would think as side projects time
investments as a compound interest function just as passive investing. Before
you can get there -- and it only applies to some projects, the commonality is
attending to your basics like a series of buckets that you have to keep full
enough for a long enough period that none deplete to jeopardize your plans.
Some projects require a certain amount of momentum or time availability (as do
some jobs), so sometimes maxing out your buckets and then going full time to
test your idea is a better strategy. Failing is okay as long as you learn
enough to make significant progress on the next try.

One of these bucket is maintaining meaningful human relations (doesn't have to
be significant other), so I wouldn't be taking the author's advise literally.

------
checkyoursudo
My problem isn't time. My problem isn't energy. My problem isn't desire.

I would like to make something. I would love to make money making something.

My problem is that I don't know what to make.

~~~
gukov
The So Good They Can't Ignore You book should help.

------
movedx
(From a comment I made, but I'll post as a top-level comment as well.)

I plan each day the previous day. Planning the whole week hasn't worked for me
as things change, meetings move, etc. Instead I plan on a day-to-day basis.

0500-0530: Wake, Put eggs on boil, shower whilst they boil, dress after
shower, blend Soylent lunch (M-F), kiss wife goodbye for the day

0530-0545: Commute to office

0545-0830: Work on business, looking at Trello for the current or next task

0830-1200: Commute to client's site and do work

1200-1300: Dine, read/research and or chores

1300-1600: Work for client

1600-1615: Commute back to office

1615-1800: Work on business

1800-0900: Commute home, read, work on fiction, spend time with wife

0900-0500: Sleep.

Rounding the figures, that's about four hours per day on the business whilst
working full time for a client (I contract.)

Saturday and Sunday are either spent at social events or on the business in
the office (if the wife is busy working on her own projects.) So I manage
about 25-30 hours per week.

I think Steph's article is excellent. She's right, too. You do need to
priorities your focus points. And you do need to be strict and have
discipline. There's no two ways about it.

Sorry but you can't have your success (overnight or otherwise) and not plan
for it.

------
billfruit
I do recommend Arnold Bennet's 'Living on 24 hours a day', though written
almost a hundred years ago, his ideas are even more effective today.

------
nathan_f77
This is an interesting perspective. People usually say "You shouldn't quit
your job until you've validated your idea and you have enough MRR, savings, or
freelance work to support yourself." You don't often hear people say "You
shouldn't quit your job if you enjoy it." I think lots of people are working
on side projects because they really don't like their jobs, and would prefer
to have freedom and passive income.

I've been working on FormAPI [1] for about 18 months. I was able to work on it
full time for about 3 months while I built the MVP. I've still needed to do
some contract work over the last year, but now I'm able to work on it full-
time. Part-time contract work has been really great, especially while living
in Thailand. I probably couldn't have done it if I had a full-time job. If
you're building a product that has paying customers, you need to respond to
support requests, give product demos, do sales. Part-time contract work is a
much better fit so that you can always be on call.

I don't know if I would call myself a "maker" for FormAPI. I started the
company because I wanted to make money, and it wasn't because I wanted to
build a fun project or learn something new (although both ended up being
true.) I do love making things though, like little games and websites,
electronics projects, etc. Actually now that my side-project became my full-
time job, I have to find more time to build some fun projects.

Sometimes I just do everything under FormAPI and write a blog post about it.
For example, I had an idea for a little CSS game that I wanted to build. I was
building a Bitcoin puzzle as a marketing exercise, so it was a good excuse to
build that CSS game as well [2].

[1] [https://formapi.io](https://formapi.io)

[2] [https://pixelperfect.formapi.io](https://pixelperfect.formapi.io)

~~~
stephsmithio
That's awesome - thanks for sharing your story. I think one of the key points
that I was trying to get across is that you don't need to live the narrative
that the world tells you is right and instead progress with what works for
you.

Even if you didn't start your company out of pure passion, it ended up
becoming that for you. Congrats

------
dqpb
> _Consistently improving your business (or life) by 1% every day for a year
> is double as impactful improving by 10% each day for a month. Consistency
> plus compounding is powerful._

This is such a trope, I don't think the author really knows whats she's
saying: _If you want to be successful, don 't improve your life linearly,
improve it exponentially!_

Ok. Who out there truly knows how to improve your life exponentially -
systematically and reproducibly?

------
president
Author probably has one or more of the following:

\- a non-strenuous job

\- sacrificed health and well-being

\- great genetics allowing for ample energy with minimal sleep

\- no life responsibilities (possibly wealthy or can afford paying others to
take care of mundane tasks)

------
ohm
The Onion has an article on this [https://www.theonion.com/find-the-thing-
youre-most-passionat...](https://www.theonion.com/find-the-thing-youre-most-
passionate-about-then-do-it-1819584843)

------
pacifika
Nobody commutes, has kids or pets, shops for groceries, cooks food and cleans
up anymore? That all comes off the 8 hours.

~~~
asark
Yeah kids and commuting eat at least half that. Take another hour off,
minimum, for basic chores to make sure you have food and your house doesn't
turn into such a disgusting mess that makes the nightly news.

Also all hours aren't created equal and congratulations, you now have what are
probably your three—at most—worst hours left to try to "make" in, without
cutting into sleep. BTW unlike a job the time commitment is barely better on
the weekends. Hope you can work productively while having 1-10 minute
interruptions every 1-10 minutes. If not then the math's identical to that for
a weekday.

------
Madmallard
I feel like the problem isn't time... it's energy.

If you slack enough at your main job to have the energy to push your side
project you're doing a disservice to your employer.

~~~
fwip
For me, this statement is definitely true. I can manage about 3-4 hours of
concentrated problem-solving a day at work. While I do do side projects, I
have noticed that the energy I spend on them takes some of the energy I
normally spend on work.

In the evenings I sometimes don't have enough mental energy to even decide
what dinner to cook, let alone work on side projects, so I do most of that on
weekends "for fun." Personally, I can't imagine trying to monetize that - I'd
burn out way too fast.

Different people are different, though.

~~~
madamelic
>I can manage about 3-4 hours of concentrated problem-solving a day at work.

>In the evenings I sometimes don't have enough mental energy

Here's my solution: Take your most valuable hours for yourself. Work in the
morning and sell your less valuable hours. Is your employer going to notice?
Extremely likely not.

I am sure your job isn't just heads-down code monkey and involves meetings and
other planning that aren't as draining.

~~~
haswell
> Meetings and other planning that aren't as draining

These are generally the MOST draining activities.

------
kalesh
Gotta agree on don't have enough time argument. I think there are ways to
manage time more effectively. There are so many distractions now-days, social
media, whatsapp etc, people waste time too much. An ex-Google Tech Lead talks
about this here -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W_VsLXmjJU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W_VsLXmjJU).

------
jasonkester
I get the feeling that most people don't want to be entrepreneurs. But places
like this seem to value signaling otherwise, so you get weird reactions like
the comment section on this post.

Nearly every top level comment is some form of dismissal explaining why
building something while working full time is in fact not possible, and how
the author is completely wrong because of X. X varies somewhat, but it's
always some minor detail that wouldn't be in any way an obstacle if you really
did want to build something outside work hours. But it makes a nice excuse if
what you really want is an excuse not to try.

It's a shame. It'd be so much healthier to simply internalize and own "I don't
want to be an entrepreneur". I'm sure those folks would be a lot happier, if
they didn't have to constantly prove this alternate reality where the thing
they think they want to do is in fact impossible, and thus they're OK not
trying.

Just don't try. That's fine.

But it looks silly trying to prove that it's impossible. There's lots of us
out here doing it.

~~~
stephsmithio
This is something that I've been thinking about a lot recently, and even
moreso after seeing the comments on this post.

I question why people are spending time on HN proving that they don't have
enough time to do things because of X, Y, Z, instead of using that time for
something more effective. Don't get me wrong - I'm here on HN commenting and
reading and posting, but I recognize that as a choice and not an excuse for
why I couldn't accomplish something else.

------
quickthrower2
I am applying some of the concepts in this post, but with 2 young kids I can't
simply dedicate as much time as this person but:

1\. I rarely watch TV now, maybe 1/2 episodes a week

2\. Given up alcohol and caffine mostly (occasinal drink for special occasion
but not getting drunk)

3\. I'll let my body get the sleep it needs but if I wake up early I'll just
go do some work.

4\. Laser focused plan around producing content, improving my writing skills,
and marketing. I am not allowed to code in my spare time except for the odd
bit of JS or whatnot related to marketing.

5\. I am writing about stuff that is bread and butter from my job. I can legit
learn more stuff about this subject during work hours as it will improve my
job.

6\. I think I could probably commit to 10 hours a week of work. Like I said I
have 2 young kids, and I do want to spend time with them.

The article has got me thinking about

1\. Arranging to have no commute, at least some days

2\. Using KPIs or some kind of "Star Chart" to track my effort and efficiency.

~~~
stephsmithio
This is great. I don't expect that everyone spends 8h a day on projects (I
definitely don't manage anywhere close to this), but even 1h per day is really
solid and will compound over time. I've personally found the KPIs super useful
in keeping me accountable because without them I have no way of judging my own
progress (or lack of).

I've started doing some of what you mentioned above, but have a few new things
to try as well!

------
thorwasdfasdf
The biggest problem isn't even lack of time or talent. the biggest problem is
lack of opportunity. we're not in 2007 anymore. Just look at ProductHunt,
where 100s or 1000s of top-notch applications and software are released every
week. How many of those do you think produce any kind of financial success?
It's a very small number of them indeed.

How many times have you thought of a great idea to solve a problem only to
discover it's already been done a bazillion times? There are still many
unsolved problems, but those are the ones that can't be solved, either due to
regulation, barriers to entry or cost of distribution.

~~~
quickthrower2
This is why I, as a coder, am spending my spare time learning about marketing,
not making things. The value is in the audience. I'd even consider paying
someone else to make the damn thing!

------
wrestlerman
I think it depends on the business you are building and also on yourself. I
don't think everyone will be able to build something good without quitting. I
also don't think it's not impossible to build a business while having a job.

I think what most people fail to recognize is that building a business can
take years. Everyone thinks (including me, welp) that you can build next big
SaaS in a couple of weeks. The truth is that you can't. It will take probably
a couple of months at least. The sooner you realize it, the sooner you will
succeed.

------
Animats
Is this "work harder, not smarter" day, or what? There's that other article on
how to make your employees work harder, or at least look busier.

------
daxfohl
Here's the sequence that worked for me, though it may be possible to go
straight to step 4, idk:

1\. Stop drinking. Enough said there.

2\. Get _away_ from work for a week or two. Go on a vacation and remove all
your VPN, Outlook, etc from your computer and your phone. Tell your coworkers
you will be off the grid, and trust them to handle whatever might arise (they
can!). Remove any bookmarks related to work. Do everything you can to keep
work out of your mind and hard to access.

3\. Get rid of other distractions while you're away. For me it's books. So
don't take books with you or go anywhere near a bookstore. (My inlaws' house
was great for this!). Remove time suck apps from your phone, bookmarks from
your browsers, and set up website blockers for HN etc.

3a. Quit expecting to find enlightenment by reading. A quote from some
"Einstein" guy: "Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from
its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too
little falls into lazy habits of thinking."

4\. Get started. There was an article a few days ago about writing a book in
10 min per day. The important part is doing _something_ each day. Start one
day by writing 10 min of code toward the thing you've been thinking about. (10
min of thinking doesn't count). And make that dedication to do so every day.
For the first few days you'll probably find 10 minutes going to ten hours, and
you'll have made some meaningful progress on the thing you've been thinking
about.

Eventually life will take over again but you have to keep the commitment to
the 10 minutes. And whatever it turns into each day. This can be done with
work, school, kids, etc.

And since you've already removed the distractions, don't bring them back for a
while. You'll get used to life without them and eventually you won't need them
anymore. And it's amazing how the quality of life improves without the
constant tug to follow every inane analysis of every inane tweet by Trump or
AOC (if you're not a billionaire there's nothing you can do about it anyway--
sure vote and campaign etc but following tweets doesn't help that, and if it's
important enough news you'll find out _somehow_ ), or every iPhone rumor or
whatever else consumes too many neurons for you currently.

And seriously, get away from work when you're away from work. Evenings
included. The always-connected thing is not as necessary as it seems, and the
modern ideal of it seems to be a bane on our individualism as a species. Make
logging in, checking emails, etc during off-hours the exception to the norm.

------
trynewideas
Suggested new title: "_I_ Don't Need to Quit _My_ Job to Make"

~~~
_pmf_
Yeah, what a patronizing piece of trash.

------
skc
I have a 1 year old. Maybe I'll revisit this article when I can leave the kid
to his own devices for 8 hours a day.

Good article all the same.

------
alfonsodev
You can't give same advice to everyone, we all have different skills, and life
circumstances.

If you feel you can't get around the 8-8-8 schema, then realize that those 8
hours at work are way too important to just do random stuff at work.

Try to work for someone you admire, that you can learn from, that has
"succeed" before, people that know how to build products, in a _efficient_
way.

Work on yourself, improving your productivity during working hours, learn from
your colleagues. Eventually if you become so knowledgeable, efficient, skilled
and confident then Pareto principle is your friend.

\- Manage to get 20% raise for same hours...

\- so you that you can work 20% less time and put that to your project.

\- Find a setup that works for you and your employer, it could be 1 day per
week or 2.4 months per year.

By unlocking the 20% of the time from working hours you should be able to make
80% progress in your project. Now don´t ask me how you finish that last 20%,
that's the next level of struggle :D

------
Xelbair
yeah.. you are already spending more than half of your awake time(assuming 8h
sleep, ad 8h + commute work day) not on yourself.

You also need to do chores which cut into your 'me time' even more. then there
are social obligations etc.

Plus your total 'me' time is usually fragmented - due to aforementioned things
- so you still cannot do things that take longer time to do, and sadly making
things(dosen't matter if it is a startup, software, painting miniatures or
even a woodworking project) require concentration(which is already drained at
work), and decent time-windows(which happen rarely, because your time is
fragmented).

counting that you have 8h per day, every day, available to you for pursuing
improvement is naive. Especially that people do need to rest - even to keep
your performance at acceptable levels at work.

------
m0zg
"Making" anything non-trivial takes a surprising amount of time. You just
don't notice that it does, but the time pressure is real. Here's how I
discovered this: I started tracking how much time I spend on doing various
things, using Harvest. That simple bit of code that you thought would take
half an hour at most? 2 hours and it's not 100% done. That soldering job that
you thought would take an hour? 3 hours in total. And so on and so forth. I
was surprised, frankly. Now I track every bit of work I do, and track commute
as well. The results are quite eye opening.

------
hprotagonist
I just have a bike shop in the basement, man.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I keep saying if you spend your day on intellectual work then it’s probably a
good idea to do something with your hands in your own time.

------
ericmcer
This is just another attempt to reckon with the chaos of reality by applying a
bunch of formulas and half baked concepts to a fictional life she probably
aspires to but doesn’t actually lead.

Life is chaos, our emotions are unpredictable, energy and motivation levels
are unreliable. I think the most important thing is you have clarity around
your goals, you pursue them at your own pace, and forgive yourself your
failings. This type of min/maxing can only lead to undeserved guilt, give
yourself a break, we are all just humans.

------
velcrovan
From the article: “The average American works 8.8 hours, born out of the
industrial revolution and carried through to the twenty-first century out of
routine, rather than active consideration. Robert Owen crafted the saying
‘Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.’”

I just need to point out: it's super wrong to give the industrial revolution
credit for the 8-hour day. It took _several decades_ of strikes, protest,
organizing _against_ factory owners and legislators of the industrial
revolution to normalize the 8-hour workday down from 12–16 hours! Robert Owen
didn’t invent the idea either...but he did promote it because, surprise, he
was a passionate socialist.

edit to add: in the above passage, the author links to a HuffPo article on the
topic that is even worse, implying that the 8-hour day was the idea of factory
owners to “run factories more efficiently” — hell no!

------
dgudkov
Here is an alternative, less extreme and more viable approach: spend one half
of a weekend day working on your goals.

Typically, it's hard to squeeze out free time during work week, especially of
you have kids. But weekends for most people are usually loosely planned, plus
you're not tired by having worked a full workday. So all you need is to find 4
hours of uninterrupted time when you can focus on something interesting
without being distracted.

------
aussieguy1234
I write code best in short 1-3 hour bursts. For Libr
([https://librapp.com](https://librapp.com)) I work on it whenever I feel like
it, which is most nights and weekends. I'll finish a feature/fix a bug then
rest and come back later or the next day.

Like the post says if you need rest or you're not having fun, just rest or do
something else.

I still watch tv, while having dinner.

------
blancheneige
if that can make anyone reading this feel better, most of the side projects
you'll never have time to work on are probably useless anyways.

------
zestyping
It seems unlikely that a person who has 8 hours of "me time" every day finds
it necessary to spend time taking care of personal health issues or
disabilities, supporting friends, relatives, or communities that may be going
through rough times, or mitigating injustices that affect them or those around
them.

------
LaserToy
Well, it depends on your job (and HR department).

Our policies are very vague, and when i followed them and honestly notified my
company that i want to try something on the side (even using my PTOs) which
had no conflict of interest - i was denied. So, had to chose by current stable
job and an adventure.

I chose adventure.

------
harimau777
The problem I've found is that many manufacturers of raw materials and
components are unwilling to sell to anyone other than businesses. That's put a
major damper on my attempts to Make while working my day job. Has anyone found
any solutions?

------
SomethingOrNot
> Moreover, I’ve always found it strange how people like to put things neatly
> into boxes or associate with a single label. …

> Before jumping in, I should clarify that these views are my own and don’t
> necessarily represent the views of Toptal.

Indeed.

------
sergioisidoro
> For example, I don’t watch TV. I don’t commute. I am currently not in a
> relationship. These were all active choices.

Ok so you don't need to quit your job, but you have to end your relationship.
I do find this questionable.

------
C1sc0cat
One problem most peoples contracts forbid out side work and the fact the
article doesn't say exactly what these side projects are make me think its
going to be on of those ghastly MLM schemes.

~~~
chosenbreed37
I think the author has a list of the projects on her main page. For some
reason they weren't true hyperlinks so I went to her twitter profile. She's
built a few sites. She may well have done other things that she's not
publicizing

------
GoToRO
The problem is that she is talking about time. The problem is not time but
lack o energy. Of course if you just manage people then you might have energy.

------
Grustaf
I rmember when “make” was a transitive verb. Nowadays it seems you can just
“make’ in general. What is the poster actually making?

------
rdiddly
part 1: try not squandering your entire free time

part 2: a day job is challenging, educational, provides variety, and frees
your side projects from the burden of supporting you in the short term; also
risk has no inherent value

part 3: false dichotomies are bad (yet inexplicably new dichotomy of "meta"
vs. "absolute" tasks); be patient

------
foobarbecue
I presume when she says "extortionate" she means "inordinate."

------
auxten
Not in China where we work 12+ hours per day, 6+ days a week.

------
james_s_tayler
honestly, I worked it out between commute and family responsibilities, plus
taking care of myself I have 500 ~ 750 hours of "me time". Not 3000. 500 ~
750.

------
winniephan
we quitted our jobs to make, it is a very challenge but fun journey. Now we
make a decision to come back to work and still being makers. Nice article
Stepth!

------
ctvo
The article should be titled: you don’t need to quit your job to make, just
deprioritize everything else

Tl;dr Take the 8 hours of free time you have and devote it mostly to make. Now
you don’t need to quit your job.

Really groundbreaking thoughts here.

------
kyoob
Ctrl-f `kids`, `children`, `family`

Nothing. Next!

------
tuananh
this is all about priorities and time management.

------
Asooka
... But It Helps.

------
fxleach
TLDR: You don't need to quit your job to make, you just need to work more.

------
jrs95
Just work 70+ hours a week!

Yeah, no thanks.

~~~
darkpuma
It's not work if you enjoy it.

That's quipy but it's true. Some people enjoy burning time in front of a
television, but other people have hobbies they enjoy just as much (if not
more) and which can be made to break even or even generate a profit.

~~~
icebraining
You might stop enjoying it when it burns you out, though.

~~~
jrs95
I've seen this happen to everyone I've known that's tried it.

------
pcvarmint
make -j65536

Clickbait title?

------
sosuke
I made it as far as the picture of compound interest.
[https://xkcd.com/947](https://xkcd.com/947)

------
jowiar
The one MAJOR caveat I have with this is that, depending on what you have
signed with your employer, there’s a pretty good chance that your employer can
claim ownership of what you’re doing. And it’s one thing if you’re making art
or something in my spare time, but a side-business may well turn into working
for free for your employer.

~~~
Hydraulix989
Not true in California:

[https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2011/lab/division-3/...](https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2011/lab/division-3/2870-2872/2870/)

This supersedes anything stated to the contrary in employment contracts.

~~~
jowiar
“Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to
the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or
development of the employer” — for large enough employers, this encompasses a
lot.

~~~
Hydraulix989
I believe the precedent is that this is actually enforced with a very narrow
scope in these cases.

------
crushcrashcrush
This aligns with Gary Vaynerchuck's tactics - what are you doing the 8 Horus
you're not sleeping and the 8 hours you're not working for a company? There's
time there. Stop watching game of thrones and build something!

~~~
alexpetralia
Are we talking about robots or people?

