| There are a few ways . . . typically I'm so excited about a side project I'll skip watching TV and spend an hour or two on it at the end of the night. Time outside the typical 40 hour work week: Getting up an hour or two earlier than usual. Spending an hour or two at the end of the night on it. Same on the weekends, early or late, maybe schedule a 4 hour time on Sat or Sunday afternoon. Those are really the only three areas to find more time with a 40 hour gig. Obviously make your main job your priority. Be careful of any IP clauses in your contract if this is building something you want to profit from. One other possibility, depending on where you work. You could probably use your lunch hour to learn new things, do tutorials. You should probably bring in your own laptop and use your phone's hotspot for this to keep things completely off work hardware/bandwidth. If it's something you enjoy doing it won't feel like work or like you're missing something. Make sure you balance this with spending time with family and friends. I was working full time as an engineer in another field, started doing websites for family and friends, then moved on to developing web applications for clients along with my own side projects during the time slots listed above. It can get tiring along with a 40 hour job. Now I'm consulting full time remote so I work on client work 40 hours a week and use any extra time for my own side projects. The holidays is a good time to kick off a side project as you'll typically be taking vacation days so you'll have some extra time that you would normally spend commuting, eating lunch, working that you can use for a side project. Good luck hacking away on your side projects. |