One question I get, probably more than any other, is how do I do stuff? At first, I thought this question was a bit silly. I mean, I do it the same way anyone else does. Just in my âfree timeâ, or something like that.
It wasnât until I took a step back and evaluated my output against the circumstances of my life that I began to understand why Iâm often asked this. Hereâs what I mean. Currently, I am:
- Married.
- A Dad with three children ages 8, 5 and 3.
- And have a full time job.
Amidst that, these are the extracurricular things Iâve been a part of:
- Iâve made and sold an app.
- I write a blog (probably obvious) that I sell sponsorships for.
- Iâve done online courses for Pluralsight.
- Iâve done guest posts for other websites.
- I write a book series.
- Iâm currently developing a new app for indies and soloprenuers.
- I (in the before times, anyways) would speak at meetâups, conferences, podcasts, etc.
- And probably some other tidbits which escape me now.
let concatenatedThoughts = """
To be clear, I don't want to brag at all, quite the opposite. This is just a "Here's what I've done, and here's how I've done it" kind of thing. In fact, I'm more proud of what I've not done (i.e. spend time with family over doing more stuff) even more so than what I have done.
"""
When I look at that, it may seem Iâm either a timeâmanaging savant, crazy or neglect my family altogether. When in reality, none of those things are true.
So, hereâs how I do what I do.
The Main Things Are The Main Things
The most important thing, above all else, is to set your priorities. Mine, obviously, are my children and wife. So, the number one takeaway you should have is this:
Keep the main things in your life, the main things.
And, as long as you do that, youâll figure out the rest. Figure out what those things are, and make sure that when it comes to your time, they always win. It seems obvious, but only because itâs incredibly easy to conceptualize what that means, but itâs often difficult to live that way.
And, figuring out how to live that way is probably the most important thing you can do as a parent who also enjoys their career or side projects. For a long time, I felt guilty that I enjoyed those things. But as Iâve grown as a parent, Iâve realized thatâs a silly line of reasoning. If anything, parents absolutely should have hobbies outside of their children, in my opinion, but the secret is all about the way you think about those.
To wit, itâs simple:
(kids || spouse) > hobbies
Thatâs it. Everyone has their own advice on parenting, and all of it varies. That used to annoy me a bit, âWhy does this person think they know how I should raise my children?â, Iâd wonder while reading all of the mountains of parenting advice thatâs out there. The reality is I have no idea how best to raise your kids, but I can tell you a bit about how I think about it as someone whoâs grappled with the immense juxtaposition that is inherent to building things and raising them.
So it is, Iâve come to see that there are âgolden hoursâ in life, and you must protect them at all costs. For parents, thatâs probably the 6â9 p.m. chunk of the day. They are out of school, you are off work and youâre together. This is where parenting happens, so I make sure development on my next thing doesnât.
But, true to the title, none of this means that you shouldnât work on side projects or that they arenât important. Quite the contrary, working on some app, blog post or book is a part of my D.N.A. â I adore doing all of those things. So now that weâve established that those canât come before my family, the obvious thing to ask is âWhen do they happen?â
The Nitty Gritty
Stop me if youâve done this before. Youâre driving down the road, taking a walk or showering. Youâve got time with your thoughts. And the thoughts? Maybe, if youâre like me, they go something like this:
âI canât wait to make this, I know this app would do great!â
âIf only I could get this website redesign done, I would write more!â
âI just need to brush off that SaaS project, I think that would be a money maker!â
And on and on.
Itâs very easy to stay in the mindset of what your projects could be, or become, instead of actually shipping them and facing the music. Hope always springs eternal when your app or thing hasnât launched yet, because you get to hang on to the potential that it might possibly have. In the end, though, thinking about apps doesnât launch them.
The thing that sucks about loving side projects is that the only way to make them happen is to spend quite a lot of time developing them đ . Finding that time, though, isnât as hard as you might think. It boils down to a few principles, for me at least.
Habits
Iâve written about this before, but itâs crucial. If you form some habits that youâll work on something when youâve got some time, you will likely hardwire yourself to eventually default to it. Thatâs either a really bad thing or great thing, depending on how you think about side projects when weighed against your other interests. For me, though, this has been a secret weapon to getting things going.
My habits are cheesy, and likely are far from a one-size-fits-all solution. But they do work. Itâs small stuff, too:
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I have a Siri Automation that opens a journal in Day One to start my day. In it, thereâs a bit that says the motivation behind what Iâm working on. The âwhyâ, if you will. Why do you work on what you work on? Why do you want to work on something that you havenât started? If you keep your motivational reasoning front and center behind your side projects, you feel the urge to do them.
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Have a strategy to handle interruptions gracefully. This one is key, youâve simply got to master it. Hereâs what I mean: Youâre super focused prototyping something or tackling a bug early in the morning. Nobody is awake, itâs going great! And then BAM! Your daughter woke up somehow and wants chocolate milk. They are now the priority, and your thing is not. So, figure out how to quickly leave a note or some sort of TODO: to give yourself context to pick things back up later. For me, I use Notes since itâs lightweight and syncs everywhere. When this happen to me, I just pop open my note I use for this stuff and leave something like âYouâre trying to fix a bug likely caused by X. I was looking at file Y. I think Z will fix it.â
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I set aside a certain times to do things. For example, my Monday morning. I always try to write then. I get up early and use about an hour to write something. Itâs timeboxed, so I donât over exert myself. Plus, it forces me to chunk up posts if they run long. As long as I get somewhere, though, I feel accomplished.
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Youâre likely to have to become, or already be, an early riser or night owl to some degree. Not to the extreme, as some might suggest. But a little. Those are the only two times Iâve been realistically able to work on things in earnest. Thereâs just too much to do during the day from family, child activities, house chores, etc. But, when everyone is sleeping at night or havenât woken up yet, I can dig in. This is where I do 90% of my side projects.
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Find wiggle room. Along with the above, I find time I know Iâll have throughout the week. My secret sauce is I simply âstackâ my workday at the start and end of it. My office hours are 8â4, and I use that. I get to the office early, usually around 6 but before 7, and (with my wife being okay with it) I sometimes stay an hour later too. So, I get to work around 6 and leave typically around 5. That gives me a couple of hours to work on stuff each work day.
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Create a deadline. This sounds like it would suck, but honestly, it helps you along. For my book series, if I hadnât promised updates every two weeks, then people wouldnât be getting updates every two weeks. Simple as that, really.
There are 24 hours in a day, and we always love to say thatâs not enough. I donât agree, I think thatâs plenty. But, youâve got to find where your pockets of time are. And, if there arenât any, well â thatâs honestly okay too. Iâve been there.
But I will say, you probably have more opportunities than you think.
As a parent, itâs easy to conflate having only a little time with having no time. You can do a lot with a little time, over time. So look for those small pockets, whether they are 30 minutes, once a week or even once a month. And have some habits in place to take advantage of them.
Keeping a Strong Mental Game
Taking care of yourself couldnât be more important when you build and raise children. Thatâs why I started this post how I did, because if you know youâre putting your family at the forefront you can sleep at night. I can only build stuff knowing that. A clean conscious needs no mercy, so when you take care of yourself and family first you open up yourself to feeling no guilt about spending time making stuff when the opportunity presents itself.
There is some nuance Iâve learned over the years as it pertains to your mental game. However, for me, the most paramount among them is this:
You canât possibly keep up with people who donât have kids. Straight up.
Say it again!
Because if youâre building things, youâre all but guaranteed to see a thousand other people building a thousand other things a thousand times faster than you. Make peace with it! They arenât you, and you arenât them. Give yourself some grace. In fact, Iâd posit that itâs amazing that you even have the dedication and passion to want to build something at all if youâre a parent, because parenting is exhausting.
So, listen to yourself. Youâve got to feel burnout before it hits. Youâve got to make sure you donât get caught up in an industry that wasnât really built for parents (though I am very thankful this seems to be improving). Youâve got to realize that your life is different, and your time is spoken for by and large.
Thatâs really okay. Just think of it this way, weâre building in reverse. If weâre still feeling that side project itch, I like to think weâll have time to do it. Just later on in life though. Iâm fine with that.
Desire
This last thought may seem terribly obvious, but one of the largest drivers of me doing any of this isâŚ..simply because I want to be doing it. When you finally get those gaps of free time, you have a choice. In my case, I could either watch a Netflix show, finally get back into Horizon: Forbidden West or I couldâŚmake stuff.
And, most of the time, I make stuff. And thatâs only because I just love making stuff.
Youâve got to give something to get something. Even now, as I write this, my kids have a friend over and they are all busy playing together downstairs. My wife is out with our daughter and her friend for ice cream. Even better, housework is all caught up. So, with that, Iâve got some time and I could spend it about 1,000 different ways â but Iâm choosing to write this.
And so it is, I hear people so often say âAh I would do that but I want to do this insteadâ, almost as if itâs a sign of defeat. They carry on like the fact that they enjoy doing something other than working on a side project as a pejorative nature of their work ethic.
Thatâs not the right way to think about things.
Instead, I say, play your video games, binge Netflix, do all of it! Thatâs a wonderful way to spend time. But youâve got to realize, apps donât ship themselves. And itâs also why, among my other priorities in life, I take so long to ship things. I love doing a lot of things besides making stuff.
But the thing is, Iâm completely okay with that. I have the rest of my life to make apps. I donât have the rest of my life to raise my kids, and since that is the majority of my life ââ the fact that I choose to fill the other bits with video games or Netflix every now and then is a perfect balance that makes me feel happy and not overworked.
Again, I kinda think that the internet and the addictive nature of âSomeone is always shipping on Twitterâ has made us all just a little bit anxiety ridden. We feel bad for not doing things, and we feel as if weâve always got to be doing something or weâre left behind. Weâre probably all too hard on ourselves, even if we donât elect to ascribe to the âhustle pornâ lifestyle that we already know isnât realistic.
On the other hand, if you find yourself working no matter what, please check yourself. Iâve been guilty of this myself. On vacations, I used to bring my laptop â eager to bust away on a new project. I love working on this stuff, as such, I believed that, because I was on vacation and should be doing the things I want to do, that it was perfectly valid. Iâve since 180âd there, and I enjoy time off in a brand new dimension.
What Iâm getting at is you canât slay the demons you enjoy playing with. If you want to do some mental gymnastics to convince yourself that itâs fine to work all the time, then youâll end up working on things all the time. Try to put things down. Itâs so, so true that youâll be even more excited to get back to them once theyâve been put away for a bit.
Size Up Your Progress
Finally, letâs be honest with ourselves â statistically speaking, our side projects or indie development endeavors might not be a financial success or give us runaway fame in our respective industry. Conversely, our family and children are beautiful guarantees gifted to us in this life, and pouring our time and attention to them will always be a win.
If your kids or significant other relate your side project or indie life as one that produces a lack of attention, overworking yourself and burnout â youâre losing both battles. Your side project is hurting you, and you are hurting those closest to you. Itâs a fine a balance to walk, and you wonât always do it correctly. But, you need to be trying to always be doing it correctly.
To gauge how youâre doing here; imagine yourself in this scenario I found myself in last year. It was a Saturday afternoon, and my wife and the kids went out into our backyard to play in our pool. For my wifeâs part, she was happy to take them outside and let me have a moment to myself.
Here is where the fork in the road comes. My personal rules for weekend side project development are that either Iâm up earlier or up later than everyone else in my house. But, in this case I decided to squeeze in some work. My wife okayâd it, my kids were busy â I had the time.
But then a humbling realization hit me â if my side project didnât exist, what would I be doing right now? Iâd likely be outside playing with them. So, that was a clear indicator to put things down and go spend more time with my family.
In a world where there are far too many absent parents, letâs endeavor to be different. Letâs show our children that there is tremendous value in hard work and chasing your passions. But, it pales in comparison to the time we get to spend with them. This may seem like Iâm being a little dramatic or particularly critical â but when weâve got kids looking up to us each day, can we really afford not to be?
Final Thoughts
To recap:
- Make sure you have your life priorities straight.
- Make some small habits to help yourself work on stuff.
- Donât compare your output against other people who likely have more time than you.
- Consider if you really want to take on a side project, or you just like the idea of having a side project.
- Find small parts of your day or routine where youâd have time to make some progress.
- Be okay with everything taking a long time.
If youâre a parent, realize this: Weâve got a lot of time to build products. We donât have a lot of time to raise children. And as long as you always keep that thought near and dear to your heart, and as long as you win that battle 99% of the time ââ then youâre probably doing it right.
It doesnât mean you donât build stuff. It doesnât mean you canât speak at that conference. Or write that book. Etc etc.
It just means youâve got something else to do before all of those things, and itâs way more important. So build stuff and raise youâre kids, just make sure you donât do it in that order đ.
Until next time âď¸