I think this is a bit of a depressing take. Even committed parents and spouses take alone time for themselves and have hobbies. Just treat your side project as your hobby and you can still have a healthy family.
Also, think about how much time the average person wastes day-to-day. Total up all the time watching television, reading articles, browsing online. Outsource your chores and improve the efficiency of your day job (e.g., work remotely to eliminate a commute) and you'll have plenty of time left over for a side project.
You might say — how can a side project be successful on 5 hours a day in the early morning? — but consider that someone pursuing a startup for 10 hours a day isn't going to have a significantly higher probability of success relative to other factors that make a larger difference (ability to interact well with other people, product-market fit, etc.) Sure, you might reduce your probability of success a bit, but you are essentially buying a lottery ticket anyway when you decide to start your own company, so would it really bother you much if your already small odds of success are 60% of what they would have been if you committed to the startup full-time?
The parents I know with kids younger than 7 have no time for themselves or their hobbies. They're lucky if they can scrape together a few hours a week for basic self-care. In the mornings the kids demand full attention and after the kids go to bed there's maybe time for a single TV show which one person falls asleep during.
> how can a side project be successful on 5 hours a day in the early morning?
So from 4am-9am a person is grinding away on their side project or startup while their spouse takes care of getting their kids ready. And then at 9am they just slide right into work for a cool 8 hours, eating lunch at their desk and then checking out at 5pm for a nice family dinner.
This sounds like a robot's advice to a human to how to organize their life. Completely not feasibly and devoid of lived experience.
If anything, being a parent taught me how to be very efficient with my time and how to cut things out that were meaningless. The arrangement I have with my spouse is that on weekdays I take care of the morning, and she takes care of the night. That means I'm responsible for getting breakfast ready, getting my daughter ready and sent to school, and my wife is responsible for dinner and putting my daughter to bed. On weekends our arrangement is usually that Saturday morning I get to sleep in and my wife mostly handles the day, and on Sunday it's the opposite.
I can't speak for everyone, but as I said before when I became a dad I realized there are just soooo many little things that consume 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there, some procrastination here and there and I could cut them all out and add on the order of an additional 120 minutes per day, which is not at all trivial. It used to take me 40 minutes to an hour in the morning to shower, use the bathroom, brush my teeth, get dressed... now all of that is done in about 20 minutes. I used to do various daily errands during busier times of the day and get stuck in lines, now I do them during less busy times of the day.
Finally, changing my life in this way not only has given me more time, it also makes me a much more organized person and a more effective business leader.
I've reduced my hobbies down to: 1) reading before I fall asleep at night, 2) exercising during my lunch hour on work days. That's it. I managed to change jobs earlier this year but it was challenging and it remains a challenge to remain ahead with my current role due to my family obligations.
My situation is somewhat unique but is certainly not an outlier.
My experience is that with two parents, both working full time at demanding jobs, challenging kids under 7, there is hardly time for even the necessities. That said, we do know one-earner families with easy kids, and they do seem to have time for it all.
There’s a theoretically spare hour or two in the evening after bedtime, but at that point both parents have been going flat-out for about fourteen hours, so exercise and passion projects are only going to happen through sheer grit- which both parents have pretty much used up over the last half decade.
And even if you can, you very likely won’t get five hours of productive time in every morning. But you can get one or two on most days, and that might be enough to build something that’s making enough to take a leap and go full-time. If you’re lucky. It’s hard, but not impossible.
A lot of people want to eat their cake and have it too though though.
Hopefully building a money printing startup is enough of a hobby :)
tldr; You can get funding and have balanced pursuit and resources. For the 98% of founders who can’t, won’t or don’t get funding, self-funding and bootstrapping is a way to build the thing to free your time to then swing for the fences - same transferable startup skills required.
With kids, I realized I traded a lot of time wasting for two amazing beings and it’s optimizing my time with and ultimately for them. People make expensive decisions that lock them in to cost time in addition to kids. Minimizing those has been a blessing. You can get back many hours. I’m going to share here so other parents can share with me here and I can learn from them.
On to trying to paint an alternative picture:
One thing missing in this post is it’s more about the effectiveness with your time than the quantity of it as you get older. When starting out, few are effective with their time but we have lots to waste. If we can admit it’s needed we can become more effective quicker.
Today, every minute matters. I’m not perfect, but nothing gets easier, you just get better. Everything’s a grind.
Kids can help prioritize in a big way for some. If you think you have an idea based in hearing from parents it’s not super accurate because everyone’s life situation is different.
- 4-9 am isn’t a guarantee. Kids will be sick. Late nights can be tiring. I find I can just go to bed at 8 or 9 most nights and wake up at 2 or 3. Works great if I have a few devs overseas helping because am in my 30s and probably have a few thousand to get help with. When I slip in my schedule I start over.
- Being hyper organized with every little step that needs to be done next helps make the most of small pockets of time. This was hard for me and I’m still learning to get better every day. If I don’t casually get 4-8 hours straight on the weekends to work on something I still am able to find ways to be more effective.
- Startups are a business not coding alone: Time away from the keyboard can actually be valuable to stop and get perspective. Often I don’t need hours anymore to do something where it can be done in 60 minutes while thinking about it away from the keyboard. Thinking can actually be a lot of the work to be done in some steps. I never would have designed and simplified a great deal in my startup if it wasn’t for those late nights.
- Face yourself. Generally ppl who weren’t the best with their time before kids might have a hard time after. Everyone Has run to improve but not everyone realizes discipline leads to improvement and freedom.
- Learn to change better than you are: A lot of people aren’t as good with change as they imagined themselves to be too. It’s why advice sucks sometimes. If you’re good with changes and improvements you’ll love meeting the next version of you on the other side of kids.
Things I’ve done against the grain as a entrepreneur and new parent..
- Big problems and opportunities often attract to small problems that get solved: the initial idea should be strategic, disciplined and calculated enough to be successful. This means small enough and able to win $ and be part of the big picture to grow into. Buy my time back with a small team that I pay for or get tinyseed type funding for. Maximize return, lower risk, build momentum, failure is not an option.
To pursue this in my personal life:
- Don’t buy things that I’m buying a ton of maintenance time with. Cars, houses, pets (pets usually becomes dads pets) should all be thought about a little more. Buying boring things or none at all saves your time. Let your friends have fun taking their Audis to the shop all the time. But boring so you can spend your time on interesting things.
- Eliminate commuting as much as possible. Actually most driving. But have a car. 2 hours a day driving is 10 a week, ~40 a month. Imagine getting 1 extra week per month back. Get a vehicle with room to get more stuff done near by. Batch. Save time wasting for a planned times of fun.
- Social Invitations- it can be hard to imagine but people do end up in their lives just over times. if they won’t come to you sometimes you don’t always have to go to them.
- Setup an above average remote work setup and build the space it into your home life. Get multiple ergonomic proper work setups, put gaming stuff in its own dedicated space. Two 2k monitors minimum if not 3. Slightly better screen resolution gives more working pixels which helps work much faster. Buy different keyboards including economic and cycle them through. Every little thing saves your energy a bit longer for work or family. Every desk should be a standing desk they are super inexpensive now. Our home has multiple spaces with multiple monitors that can plug in a mac or surface pro. If it’s the open room there’s a noise cancelling headset so people hear kids less if they were ever home sick. ready to go. Keeps everyone calm and cool. One workspace is the room between mine and kids. If someone’s up at night they can be super close by. It’s a sound proofed room so calls can even happen. All to say it takes seconds to plug in and get going instead of minutes. Adds up too. Buy extra power adapters.
- Improve mobility: Carry a big screen phone + iPad mini in a sling, or ideally a MacBook 12” in your baby bag. So much down time in vehicles or appointments can be easily recaptured. Again if you want it all your might have to be creative to get at it. My 12” MacBook is the best for unexpected waits or delays time. Wish I had it as a 2nd laptop when it just came out. Priceless.
- Location should create free time; we left the burbs and came back closer to downtown. Pick up times our kids now has an extra hour or two of flexibility for work (!), And most days we’re done and drive home in 8 minutes. Dinner is cooked served and done before rush hour is over. Most of my friends are usually still driving home. Doing this sooner in the day helps wind down for kids with quality time and energy easier, and there’s still energy to start back up on work. The alternative is I could go do the things I’m supposed to and get a house far in a suburb and kids are under pressure to sleep. Not always a good feeling not a possibility for everyone.
- food. Your energy is what you eat. Meal prep until you have enough meals in fridge and meals prepped in the freezer before cooking any nightly meals. Buy 2 instant pots to do rice and food at the same time or 2 meals at the same time. Did prep Sundays and Wednesdays if needed. Eat out less and feel sluggish less.
- ask for and take help and pay for it if you need: if you can live closer to your family, work and startup it can be life changing. One of my friends lives next to their parents. Siunds crazy but no vehicles to load or unload. Kids can be kicked out to grandparents for last minute night out. Kids are also standing outside to help grandma/pa to load and unload groceries. It doesn’t matter if something isn’t packed or forgotten. I understand this isn’t possible for many of us but I am happy for those who it works for.
- have everything you can delivered on subscription, spend the saved shopping time to adjust frequency of times.
Message for above poster / in general: Please, don’t tell or imply people they aren’t capable of something. Innovation can only happen in a mindset of possibility and the world isn’t a toilet for doubt worshippers wanting to externally validate their doubts by painting them on others.
Everything has opportunity cost. I try to remember what kind of example and memory I want to be for my kids and let it balance and inform my presence with them. My spouse reminds me the only ppl who will care long term that I’m dead is my kids and hopefully her lol. It gives some a focus to live and achieve for that can magnify and accelerates a lot.
I’m not telling you to have kids or not.
Be open to seeing the good and you will. If you want to see the bad and worries you’ll see it too. You might just discover most things are like lifting weights at the gym, you get stronger the more you do it and not from the sidelines.
However, I will admit my bias here, the OP explicitly talked about "a startup", and I don't believe I know of too many hobbies that allowed someone to replace their income and retain their standard of living. The people I know who have done this have, regularly, done so with significant risk, commitment, and single-mindedness of purpose. I'm sure there are exceptions as those you listed, but I personally haven't experienced them.
Source: 2 kids, 4 and 6.
I've been kinda weaseling lately and just working on my startup during my best hours before work. Mr. Fangman will be satisfied even if I just "meet expectations", and I'd rather put my best efforts into something that can pay off bigger than a 5-6 figure yearly bonus
