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Ramen Road #3: Balancing Full-Time Work and Side Projects

How to juggle a demanding job, a life and a side-project

Author

Clemente
October 08, 2024

Welcome back to Ramen Road, where we analyze, comment and experiment strategies to get traction in early-stage projects.

Today we're tackling how to progress on your side project while managing a full-time job.

🥢 Slurp-worthy Strategy of the Week: Juggling a Full-Time Job with a Side Project

If your project is just starting out, you probably have other obligations: full-time job, freelancing, school or just life in general.

With these come horrible weeks where you can’t find time to do anything for your side-project.

I just had one of those weeks.

After asking other founders and googling, here are some strategies I found to get your side-project going even while having a full-time job.

Lock-in a productive schedule

Find the right time to advance on your side-projects. This could be an early morning session before your job starts, when it ends, after spending some family time or it could be a set amount of hours during your weekend.

It may even be a mix of all.

Having a structured and planned out time forces you to focus and get stuff done. Block your calendar and make sure your only focus is your side-project.

I’m personally trying out having a block every weekday from 19:30 to 20:30 and 11:00 to 13:00 on Saturdays.

Choose high-impact tasks beforehand

One of the biggest blockers when getting stuff done is deciding on what to work on.

You probably are already short on time and your to-do list is huge.

The solution is to plan your week ahead of time and choose your highest impact tasks. To do this, I’m focusing on three steps:

  1. Keep an idea bank with things you want to do (new ideas, marketing strategies, bugs, etc.). I personally just use a Notion database, but your notes app works great.

  2. Rank your ideas by highest-impact. You can use ICE method, DIE, RICE or just your gut.

  3. Once a week, revisit your ranking and plan for the next week

On your next work slot, you’ll have a task defined and can focus on getting it done.

Get the ball rolling and keep it rolling

Habits are tough to break once they gain momentum - so make working on your side-project a habit!

Commit to a frequency and have a visual check whenever you get it done. It could be your Github contribution graph, a calendar or a streak counter.

A Github contribution graph

Breaking a streak sucks - visualize it to make it harder to break it.

Getting your side-project off the ground while also dealing with a full-time job and having a life is tough.

Whatever it is that motivates you, remind yourself of it. Keep a photo on your desk, meditate and make it your mission statement. Just focus on reminding yourself of it.

🍥 Startup Showcase: Cool Tools from Other Indie Hackers

  • Creator: Jim Raptis (@d__raptis)

  • Description: image, mockup and screenshot editor.

  • Noteworthy: it’s the best tool I’ve used for fast, great looking screenshots.

  • Creator: Michael Yagudaev (@yagudaev)

  • Description: convert text to audiobook quality sound.

  • Noteworthy: high-quality sounding AI text-to-speech which is very hard to find)

Let me know if you have any strategies to help juggle a full-time job with your side projects. You can head over to X and send me a DM.

Best of luck with your week!

Clemente from Ramen Road

P. S. Know a founder who needs help getting stuff done? Share this newsletter with them!