How do you find time for your side projects?

#discuss

It's common for a developer to have side-projects, whether it's a blog, an app to build, an open-source library to maintain, or a course to watch or read. Aside from a full-time job, it can be hard to dedicate time to them.

Often, I like to get up one hour early and work on it. I often find myself working on Saturday morning if I feel like it. What about you? What are your strategies, tips and tricks to manage your time for your side projects?

Top comments (9)

E Dohring • May 19 '20 • Edited

Lately, I have very few things I keep myself accountable for doing: minimum amount of exercise and investing in my relationship. The rest I do as I have energy. To "hack" the energy, I try to find partners when I can, as that typically makes things more fun.

Naina Razafindrabiby • May 18 '20

free time will never come, you have to create it. For me I work some extra hours in the evening after work.

I keep a list of tasks I need to complete for that night so I will stay focused

ashish mandrah • May 19 '20

I have a 3 months old kid, full time work and had been trying to establish my startups. I in general try to leverage all the time I have in the world. I prefer to keep things fluid with lots of pipeline . whenever I get chance I try to close them 1 by 1.

Alba Silvente Fuentes • May 18 '20

I've only been doing personal projects for a short time and I still find it hard.

For now, what I do is focus on the projects of the company I work for full time during the week and leave the weekends for my side-projects.

But I would like to read what the rest does, I am exhausted during the week after work, I need to relax my mind, but maybe with a good organization you can manage to combine it.

Jérémy Basso • May 19 '20

I try to work on side-projects weekends afternoon, and during the week I work on the evening for few hours when I want it, so most of the time 2-3 days during working days.
What helped a lot is making sure the task of my side projects are easy to reach and last less than 2 hours, this way I can see progress even with small loads of work.
For the working days, working on side-projects helps making the cut after a day : I finish my jobs at time, take a one hour break, eat something, and then go back to my side-project.