

Ask HN: How do you stay focused on your 9 to 5 whilst bootstrapping a startup? - hackNightly


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mindcrime
It's hard, damn hard. For a quite a while I was lucky enough to have a very
boring, mundane, easy $DAYJOB where I could go in, slog through fixing a
couple of bugs, and go home, retaining most of my creative, emotional, and
intellectual energy for the startup. By my current $DAYJOB is a lot
different... more challenging, but also more fun. But it really makes it hard
to balance things.

I wish I could say I had some real solid advice for you, but all I can really
do is share some anecdotes in the hope that you can glean something useful
from that.

Basically, I try to compartmentalize my thinking as much as I can. During the
day, at the 9-5, I _mostly_ try not to let myself get drawn into thinking
about "startup stuff", except during lunch. I treat lunch time as "startup
time" and I often leave the office, go to a restaurant or coffee shop, and do
startup work for an hour there. The delineation isn't perfect though, as I do
keep a browser tab open all the time, with Gmail for my startup email address,
and I do answer and send a few emails or whatever, throughout the day.

I might also, rarely, pop into the wiki for the startup and make a few notes
about an idea that occurred to me, or a link I found or something.

Then, after work at the $DAYJOB, I immediately go back into "startup mode"
most evenings. I leave the office, drive to a Barnes & Noble or something, sit
in the cafe with my laptop and get back to work. Since I know I have "startup
time" built into the evenings, it reduces _some_ of the temptation to think
startup stuff while I'm supposed to be working.

Now the fortunate thing is, my $DAYJOB employer knows about the startup, is an
entrepreneur himself and is generally supportive. As long as I'm getting my
work done and not letting things slip, he doesn't mind if I leave work early
on occasion, or take a long lunch now and then, to have a meeting related to
the startup, or whatever. I will also sometimes just flat out take a vacation
day, to accommodate the need to do something for the startup.

I also allocate almost 100% of my weekend time to working on the startup. So
the toughest day to stay focused can be Friday, since I'm mentally preparing
to shift gears into startup mode for the weekend, and as Friday winds down, I
might start drifting that way a bit. Luckily, Friday afternoons here are
usually pretty relaxed.

The toughest part, really, is dealing with meetings during the day. Writing
code, market research, writing, etc. I can do anytime. But meeting potential
customers, investors, partners, etc., is a challenge since my daytime
availability is somewhat limited. Basically I just try to schedule meetings
for either A. over lunch (and just take a slightly long lunch), B. as early as
possible in the morning (so that, at worst, I come in a little late), or B. as
late in the evening as possible.

It's tough to balance both, but it can be done...

~~~
hackNightly
Wow, thank you very much for the insightful response. I too am currently
allocating 100% of my weekend time, and find that the statement about Friday
definitely holds true for me. I think the key term is 'balance'. I'll
certainly be working on finding more of that.

~~~
mindcrime
Yeah, it's a tough thing to do. I tell people I have 2.5 full-time jobs, as
the $DAYJOB is 1 full-time job, and the startup is one and a half (at least)
by itself. But I keep telling myself that the result of all this hard work
will be worth it someday.

BTW, I'd also caution anyone against taking much (or any) advice from me. I'm
one of those people who gets obsessive about things and will push things to -
and beyond - logical and reasonable boundaries and will do crazy shit.

Especially considering that I'll turn 40 this year, the way I look at it, I
don't have a whole lot of "at bats" left to achieve some of my dreams. I've
basically conceded that it's "desperation time" here and that pretty much any
option that doesn't violate some core ethical principle of mine, is on the
table, as far as pushing to make this startup a success. My lifestyle is
probably not normal, reasonable, or healthy by most standards. But, to my way
of thinking, it's either succeed, or "the water under the Golden Gate is
freezing cold".

------
DividesByZero
I did this for three months with Geddit, but mostly on creating the MVP with
my cofounder rather than sales.

Unlike mindcrime, my employer did not know what else I was working on, and I
did no work on my startup during 9-5 business hours. I had to keep everything
absolutely separate - not so much as IMing my cofounder about the startup
during working hours. I did keep a personal journal a work where I would write
down ideas and other startup related things, as well as general thoughts, but
that was it.

The 9-5 job was mind numbingly boring, and occasionally pretty stressful. I
developed some tactics to make sure I kept going with the startup while still
doing my 9-5 well. Firstly, I developed a routine together with my cofounder,
and stuck to it religiously. 9 to 5, we were at our day jobs. 6 to 7 we were
at the gym. 8pm we had had dinner and were ready to work on a weeknight. Work
had a midnight curfew, no matter what. This helped to establish
compartmentalised parts of the day, as well as an effective transition between
one and the other. At my 9-5, I could focus on my job since I knew no startup
business would enter. Weekends were devoted entirely to startup work, or
leisure activities about twice a month.

Secondly, we established a goal where we could switch to working on the
startup full time. For us this was saving the money needed to move to Berlin
plus 6 months runway. Having this in our sights made the harder parts of the
three months more bearable because we knew we were working toward a determined
fixed goal. We were able to execute on our MVP through this sort of discipline
and successfully switched to working full time on Geddit.

This stuff was very tough, but I had the support of my awesome cofounder and
we had each other's backs. If you're going at this alone your mileage may
vary, but we managed to succeed on the 'nights and weekends' route, at least
for some time.

Eventually you'll have to switch to working on your idea full time - probably
sooner than you feel comfortable - but it'll be worth it.

------
bcambel
At the time I was working for a .NET consultancy firm, every morning around 6
am I was learning and coding in RoR. 1.5 h uninterrupted time every week day
for 2 months makes a huge difference. Plus the weekends.

Don't forget to embrace a healthy down time. You body and mind need to relax.

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padseeker
I generally like my job, so it has not been too bad. But there are moments
when I'm way more excited to work on my startup idea as opposed to my full
time job. I think it depends on how much creativity and engagement your full
time job requires. I have had to push myself away from my startup for a few
weeks so I can catch up on sleep as well as focus on my creative energies on
my job.

I wish I had the time mindcrime has - I have wife and kids so my job is pretty
important. I find time late at night as well as on the weekends when I can.

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owksley
It isn't easy, although paradoxically I prefer the 9-5 to be interesting work
in its own right. It is surprising how many ideas can flow from your day job
into your own projects.

~~~
byoung2
_It is surprising how many ideas can flow from your day job into your own
projects._

I've definitely noticed that. At work, we have a few hundred EC2 instances
running at any given time, so we've had to deal with monitoring and
scalability issues. Now that I'm working nights and weekends on my own
project, I apply a lot of that expertise to a much smaller setup (5 instances
in my case). When I get to the point where I need to scale up to hundreds of
instances, it won't be foreign to me.

------
codenesium
I don't think it's possible. Just put 30 hours into the startup on the weekend
and try not to work on it too much during the week.

------
thoughtcriminal
If you're passionate about your startup, it's impossible.

~~~
mindcrime
If not "impossible" it's damn close, for sure. I guess for a lot of us, the
startup becomes our life in many ways. It's that way for me. I don't have any
children, but right now this startup is as close to having a "baby" as
anything I can imagine.

BTW, love the username!

~~~
thoughtcriminal
I did not copy off of you, I swear!

:)

~~~
mindcrime
I assumed you were an Orwell fan, actually. :-)

