How can you work full time while growing your business ?

[biophase]

I totally understand that you may be burned out after work. But ask yourself after work when you were just watching TV and relaxing, should you be doing that or working on your own business.

Now if you don’t want to code anymore in your brain is just fried. I would probably do this, I would slow down on my regular job. Meaning I would take more breaks into a little less work, meaning your productivity at work may drop down to 80%. Then when you get home do you have at least 20% more to work on your own business.

When I was working a 9-to-5, and I was remodeling my house, I would work on that remodel from 6 PM to 10 PM when I got home. And if that wasn’t enough I would take a week off for vacation and just work on my house.

Now I know that is not the same thing but that is a way to get things done when you don’t have the time or energy.

Bottom line is that all your coworkers are working as developers like you at their full-time job. If you want a better life and to make more money than your coworkers you simply have to work more whether you like it or not.

 

[Greg R]

Really thought hard about this one to capture the true essence of what is going on.

I also work 9-10 hours per day with a 2-3 hour commute in what would be considered a stressful work environment.

Working on the business is not easy and then trying to balance health and family makes it harder. But you already knew that.

Chosing to eliminate CHOICE is what keeps me going. Meaning there is no other choice BUT to work on the business.

1. The choice to work a job the rest of my life. Not going to do it.
2. The choice to default on business payments. Not going to happen. Need to find a way to make more sales...
3. The choice to break promises I made with my wife. Not a chance.
4. The choice to work on the business or lose the business. My mind is made up.
5. Letting down my Skype group... Get real.

@ZCP always told me that pressure makes diamonds and that really worked for me.

All of my big wins came when the pressure was on. And I mean really on. To the point where I would have failed on all five points above.

So maybe you need to create some added pressure for yourself to produce. Whether it is artificial pressure like accountability with friends or going all In financially.

Without knowing who you truly are it is hard to say if it will work. But it worked for me.

 

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[FreeMan]

I was a business analyst/UX designer for a software company and felt fried after work too for a number of months. Previously, I had worked on my business projects in the evenings and was reasonably effective working up to midnight and beyond as I have always been a night owl. But as my day job was getting more mentally intensive, I found that I was just sitting in front of my computer at nights and not really getting anything done. A simple 5 minute task was taking me 30-45min to complete now and not done very well to boot.

Feeling frustrated that I was giving my best mental energies to my job and not to my business & future, I decided to wake up earlier like many of the morning rituals approaches you hear about. It was a real struggle to get up an hour earlier and initially I wouldn't get that much done in that hour. But after a little while and getting into the early wake up routine, I was actually getting a bunch of work done in that time as I was mentally fresh and very focussed due to the limited time before I needed to head to work. Soon, I was getting up a little bit earlier and getting more done in that time. It wasn't always perfect as the kids would sometimes wake up early and I'd be interrupted. Or I stayed up too late one night and couldn't get up earlier. But I definitely made big progress waking up earlier and getting onto the critical task as the first thing in the morning. And I felt great knowing that I worked on my business first and didn't feel guilty at nights for not having the energy to work on my projects.

When I wanted to ramp things up, I also used part of my lunch break to work on my projects. So I brought my iPad/laptop into work and go out during lunchtime (with a packed lunch) every day to a public space (e.g. building foyer, library, food court) and hotspot my device to work on my projects. I didn't always gets heaps done as it was a bit of rush depending on how long I had for lunch, but at least I still had mental energy to work on my own projects at this time of the day.

 

[B. Cole]

Your venture should excite you beyond going home to watch TV or chill - you should look forward to it. After all, it’s going to set your a$$ freeeee...

Do you believe in what you’re doing enough, are you confident that it will effect change in people’s lives and ultimately transform yours? Or are you just doing the same thing you do at work, with the intent of one day just doing what you already do, only for yourself, in the same fashion just without a boss.

Go watch Jim Rohn’s motivational speaking vids until you find the one that addresses going home, eating dinner, grabbing tv and going to bed. It’s profound once you hear it - it’s the very stark, mental differentiator between those who make it, and those who won’t.

And on TV in general - just remember what TV is. At best, it’s you spending your life watching someone else’s. At worst, and more commonly - it’s you spending your life watching a fictional story about someone’s life who doesn’t even exist, but was made up by another entrepreneur to get you to subscribe to sitting your butt on your couch to watch their work. Working on ANYTHING that has the promise to transform your own life should be way more stimulating than TV.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Tagging @Greg R as he launched a business while working a full time job. And it's growing.

He might have some insight here.

Additionally, we're also having an INSIDERS conference call later this month with Greg to dig into it his process deeper. (Details here [INSIDERS subscription required]).

It can be done.

Some highlights we can expect on the call...

1. Six figure purchase order from one of the worlds largest men's subscription boxes
2. How he leveraged the purchase order to secure a six figure SBA loan (which would have been ten times less if he never had the purchase order).
3. Landed one of the largest wholesale distributors in the industry and they have recently reordered!
4. Products are now sold nation wide. Greg's lost count of the stores and can no longer keep track of who is selling his products.
5. Have been able to get his products into four different subscription boxes
6. Has done two trade shows both of which are really hard to get to booth space at and are among the largest trade shows in the United States.
7. Amassed an Influencer network of around 40 Influencers with a total reach of 2 million+ people.
8. Since buying the business, we've been able to grow the email list from 1,000 people to over 15,000.
9. When he bought the business, he closed on it with lighting speed. From first phone call to when the inventory showed up at my storage unit was about 28 days.
10. He also was able to convince the original owner to sell the business to me for 60% less than he was asking.

One of the biggest feats is that this all was done while having a full time job.

 

[justacar]

hey, i was in a similar situation.

here is the deal: whatever you do, it's a family decision. some of the comments and answers here seem to be from people who don't have that responsibility. you want this and you want to make the sacrifices, but you don't know how. well, here is the how: it's a family decision.

that might mean moving someplace cheap and finding remote work. it might mean quitting and having your partner earn the income until you make it. it might mean something else. whatever it is, you ain't gonna find it here on your own. you need to work as a team.

for me, that is getting up at 5, working 2 hours. then kid time. then work 9 - 15, then kid time, then work again 20-22 at 6 days a week. sundays off (well, maybe a bit of work). sometimes its odd hours like now (officially we are on vacation but everyone else is asleep, so...). i am dumping all revenue back into the company. my wife is supporting us. we don't go out much. i do a gaming session once a month with friends for 5-6 hours. that's the entertainment. we eat at home. we cut spendings as much as we can.

for you, it'll be something else. but you know the bottom line: cut costs, maximize use of time, be super focused, reinvest and grow like hell. also: work on the business, not in the business, as much as possible

 

[Everyman]

Hey Man nice to meet you. Great problem / challenge you have.

I'll get straight to the point. I am in a similar situation....

typical 9-5 job + 2 hours commute daily

Is it possible to 'work faster' during 9-5? Are you able to outsource that? Or do your job in 4hrs and then focus on your side business? 2hrs of commute is a lot daily (weekly 10hrs? yearly around 400-500hrs?)? Can you use this time to learn? Or can you use it to do physical 'work' (cycling to work or running that would make you more 'fresh' afterwards?)

it is really hard to have desire to code more or do other business operations after a long work day

I totally get you. I wake up at 5am and my mind turns off around 12am-2pm completely unless I do some physical. Then I can get back to mental work (and sometimes not even then). I myself don't think it's possible to work with your brain 100% for more than 6hrs a day and be efficient (same with any other muscles? try heavy lifting for more than 4hrs a day?). In the long term.

quitting the job is not an option due to high expenses that might quickly eat all my saving .

What are the expenses? Can they be reduced so you can switch to physical job or go part-time? Unfortunately working with your brain at work and then demanding from yourself to perform mental tasks after using your brain for 4-8hrs is impossible... Ok maybe not impossible but maybe unproductive... Depending on person.

I have been considering e.g. driving a taxi or doing anything else than office work to follow my 'passion' or 'dreams' (whatever you call what you want to add to this world and make it better).

The people who make it do whatever it takes to succeed.

Exactly. It just takes years or decades sometimes. But it's worth pursuing than 'resting' in mediocrity and 'coasting' the rest of your life wondering 'what would it be like?"...

 

[astr0]

I'm working for 12-16 hours a day for the last 2 months on a clients project (not recommended).
Took a two-week vacation to build the MVP and get it to the market, you can do the same if you're building a product.
Finding good freelancers to outsource the product is another option. They would require much less time for managing and feedback than cheap but crapy ones. It may look more expensive, but you should know that one hour of a good developer is much more than one hour of a junior, so the total costs might be pretty close in the long run.

Reaching the same profit as your current salary won't always be enough. Businesses are full of ups and downs, things may be going great for 3 months and completely bad later. I would start thinking of quitting the job after profits from side business would be at least 2-3x of your current expenses. And yes, try to cut the expenses.

I really love programming, so coding for 16 hours is not a big deal. Yes, not 100% efficient, but 30% is more than enough for the most time. But I do get very tired after long exhausting meeting with the client on my 9-5, can't work more after that. Also, my job is great because I usually do have a lot of free time there. Maybe you can finish your 9-5 tasks faster and spend the rest of the time on your business?

There will be sacrifices. Are you ready to make them?

 

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[awestbro]

I'm in the same boat. Programmer for a startup and trying to build/ launch a SaaS business in my spare time. The things I've found that have the most effect so far on regenerating mental energy are diet and exercise. Come home and workout for 30 minutes to an hour to give your brain some time to relax before programming again. If I go straight from work programming to home programming, my brain feels like absolute garbage. Also if I eat a big lunch of greasy carbs or have a beer, I can guarantee that night will be unproductive.

TLDR: Diet, Exercise, Sleep, Water. Original, I know.

 

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[Longinus]

Go to sleep early and wake up earlier (4-5 AM) to work on your venture. Said this here before.

 

[Matt Hunt]

Sounds like coding is your expertise, but have you considered doing something different for your business? Perhaps something completely unrelated will be easier to work on, rather than doing the same thing you already did for 8 hours at your job.

I'd suggest finding a way to cut your expenses first. Maybe you need to move out of Toronto. So be it. With lower expenses, you may be able to switch to just a part-time job, leaving you more time to work on your business.

 

[Jsoh]

How do you guys do that?

You gotta ask yourself what's more important... Do you want to work for somebody else your whole life or do you want to get serious and push yourself hard to win?

I have tried to outsource, but they still require to be managed and followed by details .

Software Dev would always have to be managed or you could end up with something completely different than what you're looking to build. During the build process you either need to be heavily involved, or have somebody involved on your behalf that reports to you for project updates.

Anyways, I think it's a question of finding your real motivation. The people who make it do whatever it takes to succeed.

 

[100ToOne]

To be honest, don't listen to anyone that'll tell you to quit your job. Or you can, it's your choice. ESPECIALLY like you said you have lots of expenses. What will happen then is that you will find yourself very anxious on getting money NOW whilst working on 'creating a business' which can easily take months if not years to make money that will pay for your expenses. Imagine that shit situation. A lot of my relatives have been through that.

However I was thinking the other day since you guys (people with similar situation) have, and I'm just assuming now, a high/medium pay job, why don't you save the most you can and save it to build a product based business which usually requires lots of money but also less time? Such as Amazon-FBA. You could easily start with $10k dollars and just work 1/2-hour a day on it and make it going until you can live off the profits where only THEN you could quit your job and focus on different time-consuming businesses such as building a app or whatever?

 

[RazorCut]

@Everyman asked this question:

2hrs of commute is a lot daily (weekly 10hrs? yearly around 400-500hrs?)? Can you use this time to learn?

I might have missed it but how do you commute? Can you travel by train and use that time with a laptop building your business?

I think it was Tim Ferris in The Four Hour Workweek who suggested you do whatever you can to convince your boss to grant you permission to work a day from home. Then expand that once they see you are more productive in that environment.

If that is not possible (and you never know until you push hard enough) then maybe look for a similar paying job that will allow remote working or less hours for similar pay.

A friend of mine really wanted to set up his own business. He was a database manager for a large company. He said to me that once he had made that decision he basically worked on building his business from work. Did as little as possible for the company paying him, just scraped through his work day providing them with the bare minimum. Eventually after several 'chats' to encourage him to up his act they made him redundant so he left with a business ready to launch and a nice lump sum to fund the first several months.

That's not something I would recommend or condone but he was working for the banking industry so he was just sucking back some of the blood those leaches had extracted from the rest of mankind. (Not that I hate bankers particularly).

 

[Siddhartha]

Echoing the others here, I'm in the same boat, and glad to see other people finding or who had found a way to leverage against it.

I started waking up around 4am (thanks miracle morning) to get about 2 1/2 hours to myself to work on leverage (freelancing) before going to work; between the drive-home commute f*ckfest, Cooking a fresh and healthy dinner, and jiu-jitsu, I have 0 time in the evenings at the moment.

I'm working right now to take back my weekends, so far they've just been "recovering" (isn't that a bullsh*t concept?) from the workweek and, getting my mind out of a fugue state, and dosing with dread for the next week. If I can kick the sleep-in habit and keep up miracle mornings on sat+sunday, I just might start seeing some real change.

Good luck to everyone else fighting the fight.

 

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[vitaliy.podoba]

When I just started my work as a programmer I was 22. Up to 28-30 I was super-motivated and loved programming all day long. So there was no problem coding 9-6 at the job, and then 7pm-2am at home freelancing.

But after 30 things changed a bit

I don't have that much energy to stay late at night anymore.

Also, I'm not coding anymore but doing mainly sales, marketing and running my dev agency. So that also might be the problem. Programming is usually a hyper-focused activity that won't let you sleep be it 1 or 2 am.

And now I found the other workaround how to add 2-3 extra hours to my schedule daily.

I'm waking up at 4:30 am. At 5am I'm in front of my PC and having 3 strong working hours before 8am.

Surely, I need to be in my bed at 9pm, latest 10pm. But that is much better for me these days than staying late hours.

But I forgot to tell you the main thing here.

All these things to tweak your daily schedule make no sense if don't have strong WHY.

I don't really enjoy waking up at 4:30 am or staying late at night working. But what I really enjoy is seeing results from investing these 3 extra hours/day.

So I'd definitely start from setting high enough goal that would help you put these extra hours on a daily basis.

 

[John F.]

I am in a similar situation when it comes to the number of hours available in my day to work on my business. Kids, wife, full time job, building the business, etc...

My current job is the first job that I haven't hated. It gives me no reason to want to hurry up and build my business so i can be free from corporate control. HOWEVER, I know that this will not last and a terrible job is just around the corner. It's past experience working hard to make other people rich that motivates me to use whatever time I can to build my business.

It takes SACRIFICES. In cases like ours, lots of them. Here is some of what I gave up to have the time to build my business.

1. Partying/staying out late (more time and money for business)
2. Eating out a lot. (reduces expenses)
3. Sports coaching. This was a big one for me and very difficult to leave. I had coached sports for over 10 years and I was very good at it and loved every minute of it.
4. Vacations (more time and money for business)
5. TV/Entertainment (more time and brain power for business)
6. Living in a nice house. I sold a nice house in a fantastic suburb. Moved into a crappy rundown house with only 1 bathroom for the 4 of us (3 girls....) just to reduce spending so I could invest more into the business. As the only male in the house, sharing a single bathroom with 3 girls puts you at the bottom of the priority list. It's all about sacrifices...

One thing I have learned from reading all of the great knowledge shared on this forum is that there will always be something that can be changed or sacrificed in order to reach your goals. Evaluate your day and figure out where you can improve the efficiency of your day.

You have to want it bad enough. You need to have your reasons for wanting to be free. Write them down. Print them out. Plaster them on your walls to remind you of WHY you need to build your own business.

My office and bedroom walls remind me why I'm doing this. My wife thought I was nuts when I started putting random stuff on our walls. Now we are about to launch our first product and she sees how important those things were to keep me going.

When it hurts bad enough, you will find a way to make it happen. Listen to "Unscripted " during your daily commute. That might get you thinking differently about the situation.

 

[AppMan]

I am software developer who work typical 9-5 job + 2 hours commute daily, what I found is it is really hard to have desire to code more or do other business operations after a long work day. the only days I have energy for my personal projects are weekend or off days. other than that I find it hard to do any useful work .
My plan was to reach profit equal to my income but that look too far and require more dedication.
How do you guys do that? is it only software job that take all your attention and leave you have no desire to more work or what ?
quitting the job is not an option due to high expenses that might quickly eat all my saving .
I have tried to outsource, but they still require to be managed and followed by details .
any suggestions or opinions will be welcomed, however dont suggest to leave my day job without suggesting how to make up the financial dip that will be caused .

 

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[Ampatch]

I was a business analyst/UX designer for a software company and felt fried after work too for a number of months. Previously, I had worked on my business projects in the evenings and was reasonably effective working up to midnight and beyond as I have always been a night owl. But as my day job was getting more mentally intensive, I found that I was just sitting in front of my computer at nights and not really getting anything done. A simple 5 minute task was taking me 30-45min to complete now and not done very well to boot.

Feeling frustrated that I was giving my best mental energies to my job and not to my business & future, I decided to wake up earlier like many of the morning rituals approaches you hear about. It was a real struggle to get up an hour earlier and initially I wouldn't get that much done in that hour. But after a little while and getting into the early wake up routine, I was actually getting a bunch of work done in that time as I was mentally fresh and very focussed due to the limited time before I needed to head to work. Soon, I was getting up a little bit earlier and getting more done in that time. It wasn't always perfect as the kids would sometimes wake up early and I'd be interrupted. Or I stayed up too late one night and couldn't get up earlier. But I definitely made big progress waking up earlier and getting onto the critical task as the first thing in the morning. And I felt great knowing that I worked on my business first and didn't feel guilty at nights for not having the energy to work on my projects.

When I wanted to ramp things up, I also used part of my lunch break to work on my projects. So I brought my iPad/laptop into work and go out during lunchtime (with a packed lunch) every day to a public space (e.g. building foyer, library, food court) and hotspot my device to work on my projects. I didn't always gets heaps done as it was a bit of rush depending on how long I had for lunch, but at least I still had mental energy to work on my own projects at this time of the day.

I highly recommend op follow this advice. I changed my development time from the afternoon to two hours in the morning and it's helped a lot. There's nothing taking your attention away and you are at your most energy. I develop 4:14 am - 6 am and then start work at 7am. Add another 6 hours Saturday and Sunday mornings each. You get used to it.

 

[NMdad]

How much do you want it?

And how long do you want it to take (before your business can support itself and pay your bills)?

Some jobs have more wiggle room so you can do a little work on your biz during your day job. If not, you have to make time outside your day job for your biz.

Yes, you can use vacation time to work on your biz, but I believe it's better (and typically faster) to work on your biz consistently, every day. That way, you build a habit of consistently executing, pushing past your comfort zone to build mental toughness, and will make more consistent progress as opposed to intermittent progress.

Like @FreeMan, @Everyman, & @Longinus said, you might consider working on your biz in the morning--BEFORE you get depleted by your day job.

 

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[Andy Black]

Firstly, you don’t have to replace your salary, you just have to cover your expenses. Reduce expenses where you can. Build up some MRR if you can.

I was an IT guy. I went contracting first off (self-employed on a daily rate doing the same work but without the sick pay, holiday pay, annual appraisals, etc). After a few years I put myself on 3 day weeks and worked on other stuff on the 2 days off.

I gradually moved from IT to digital marketing. I also then gradually weaned myself off having one big client, to having a few medium sized clients, to now having many smaller clients.

It was a step-change improvement to work from home and no longer have to commute and work on client sites. Not only did I reclaim 3 hours a day, but I could take prospect or client phone calls during the day - something I couldn't do onsite.

As for working from home when you're mentally exhausted from the day job... I ended up finding something that used my IT skills and experience, but was sufficiently different for it to be a break from my day job. I was fascinated to be working on it (and still am) and hours would pass without me knowing it. It sounds like you haven't found your WHY or something that grabs you. Is your motivation to not have a boss, or are you compelled to do something?

The two radio interviews in my signature may interest you.

Also... @Almantas asks me about my own story in this chat here:

• AndyTalks with @Almantas about Making Plans and Making Progress

 

[Timmy C]

Obsession

 

[Process]

I am software developer who work typical 9-5 job + 2 hours commute daily, what I found is it is really hard to have desire to code more or do other business operations after a long work day. the only days I have energy for my personal projects are weekend or off days. other than that I find it hard to do any useful work .
My plan was to reach profit equal to my income but that look too far and require more dedication.
How do you guys do that? is it only software job that take all your attention and leave you have no desire to more work or what ?
quitting the job is not an option due to high expenses that might quickly eat all my saving .
I have tried to outsource, but they still require to be managed and followed by details .
any suggestions or opinions will be welcomed, however dont suggest to leave my day job without suggesting how to make up the financial dip that will be caused .

My experience in sales has taught me people always find the time and money for what they really want.

The same goes for entrepreneurs.

 

[biophase]

This might sound like an old dad talking to his kids...

But I have a memory of coming home from work and driving an hour through a snowstorm to get to the south side of Chicago where a real estate investor group was meeting back in 2002 just after I read RDPD just to learn about real estate investing.

I didn't realize it back then, but looking back it my actions now... from a more enlightened perspective... I definitely did what it took to get out of the rat race. From this perspective now, I can easily tell who has it and who does not about 2-3 months after meeting someone.

It's all about how you choose to spend your 6pm-12am time. You make the decision.

 

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[softwareRules]

Software development is particularly hard because you don't get any kind of morale boost until your app or service is out there and this can take months or years.

...

2) We scale back our dreams and focus on a completely unrelated industry, say ecommerce, services etc

Exactly. This is why I started blogging years ago and it's evolved into content marketing for everything else. Usually a tech blog is a few bucks in the Amazon Affiliate account or a *great* point of interest for an interview (thankfully have a great job right now and don't have to deal with that), and a few times content marketing and tech blogging has gotten me enough cred to sell video courses and software developer training courses.

But! None of that is exactly software. It's usually prototypes that take a month at most to build out.

It's like @MJ DeMarco pointed out in the Fastlane book, there's 5 seedlings and if the day job is software, the other seedlings like content and distribution can work. The human resources one is tricky because even hiring a VA (virtual assistant) requires some time to track details and to delegate.

 

[biophase]

Some of the developers do that, and I suspect two coworkers doing that here to save energy for their side business, the thing is usually they will not stay long unless they are under paid.

What was your day job if you dont mind ? For me doing physical job is easier after my day job , but doing any brain related thing such as thinking , focusing , etc is very hard.

I was a project manager for a cellular company. I managed the network build outs.

 

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[FierceRacoon]

@AppMan , do you do machine learning, or at least data engineering? Do you know the open source stack (python, java, git, linux?) Are you good at what you do? At a minimum, can you get a job at Google/Facebook?

Can you sometimes travel to NYC?

If yes, especially if you do machine learning, PM me, and I may have a job for you. The pay may be slightly below the market, given what you are asking for, but in exchange I'll make sure you have time & energy to spend on your entrepreneurial projects. (By the way, the same offer is extended to everybody else who has the skills.)

 

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[Everyman]

2- Workout after work and have good diet , this is also good, however usually I cannot go to exercise until late night .

I don't know your actual routine, so it might be bad advice/assessment from my side.

You can workout everywhere all the time. There are exercises that you can do everywhere that don't require weights etc... I'm stretching now in the office leaning against a radiator. I have a rubber band (pink, obviously). I have a grip exerciser for guitar players. And many many more.

You can also save time on eating - every 24hrs or even more etc etc etc.

Great you are making changes and progressing!

I'm working right now to take back my weekends, so far they've just been "recovering" (isn't that a bullsh*t concept?) from the workweek and, getting my mind out of a fugue state, and dosing with dread for the next week. If I can kick the sleep-in habit and keep up miracle mornings on sat+sunday, I just might start seeing some real change.

Yeah, 5+2 is the top ridiculous concept today, 9-5, and more and more. Like the time is separated, while it just flows continuously. We are doing it to ourselves.

If you maintain your routine of getting up early 5 days a week then you will do it on Sat+Sun no problem. Just don't drink late the night before and do what you do on the 5 days.

I think 8-12 days of working and then 4-5days 'weekend' could be much more productive. And 4-5hrs of working towards one goal (e.g. programming or working out), then switch.

You cannot even unwind in 2 days if you do something you hate. This is why it's important to do things you like daily. Not once a week 10hrs, once a day for 1.5hr.

 

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[AppMan]

I'm working for 12-16 hours a day for the last 2 months on a clients project (not recommended).

Is this project to your own business or part of your employer business ?

Took a two-week vacation to build the MVP and get it to the market, you can do the same if you're building a product.

I did the same thing and built some face-book tool for marketers , however by my last vacation day Facebook refused to approve my app for public use because they have a list of criteria need to be met, which I was planning to do it in the second phase as I didnt know it is mandatory , and then my tool staled there.

I really love programming, so coding for 16 hours is not a big deal. Yes, not 100% efficient, but 30% is more than enough for the most time.

I love programming and building applications too , I am also into machine learning , but for me 8 hours of programming is too much for me to start another session at night.
I would like to share more experience as you are very similar to my case, except you have the energy to continue coding after a long day of coding.

 

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[AppMan]

Meaning I would take more breaks into a little less work, meaning your productivity at work may drop down to 80%.

Some of the developers do that, and I suspect two coworkers doing that here to save energy for their side business, the thing is usually they will not stay long unless they are under paid.

When I was working a 9-to-5, and I was remodeling my house,

What was your day job if you dont mind ? For me doing physical job is easier after my day job , but doing any brain related thing such as thinking , focusing , etc is very hard.