I find I'm most productive in the morning so I try to dedicate the first hour to two hours of my day to my side project.
So I would try boxing time early in the day before your full time job, focus on your side project then. Work your full time job come home for family time, get a good nights sleep.
Occasionally I will work on it late in the evening if the family is out and I'm home, and sometimes on the weekend. I just find it easier to get things done early before everyone is up and going about their day.
Giving up TV shows and Video Games can give you extra time for your side project. Although everyone needs some down time so I wouldn't say you need to give those up completely if you enjoy them.
I agree. Working early on your side-project is kind of like the "pay yourself first" principle of saving money. It is also the same habit practiced by most writers before and after they publish their first book.
I've had the most success with this formula:
1. Every day, wake early and work on your project 1 - 2 hours.
2. Work your "day" job. If your job allows it, spend your breaks planning your side-project work.
3. Spend time with family and work some after dinner. In my case, I can usually code
and watch TV out of one eye while spending time with my wife.
4. Rinse and repeat
I used to strongly believe that side projects could only be done in four hour blocks of time without distraction but, often, that kind of time is in rare supply. However, when I got a job that required an hour train commute, I found that I could knock out some useful code even when my time between laptop-open and laptop-closed was 30-45 minutes. The tricks to making use of short blocks of time are:
1) Break the project into short, deliverable bits
2) Build placeholders/stubs as you go for things to flesh out later
3) Leave yourself lots of "do this later" comments with ample specifics.
Don't just say "finish this." Say "Use ABC parameter to lookup XYZ value to override the default."
Structuring the work for "resume-ability" makes it possible to squeeze short bursts of productive work into your day.
I find I need 4+ hour chunks to make any progress, so I find Saturday and Sunday mornings are the best times until around noon when people start waking up.
But this requires basically going to sleep early on Weekend evenings.
Another option is save a bunch of money and take 6 months to a year off in between jobs and work on side projects.
It's really hard to work full time, have a life, and work on side projects.
Understand and accept your schedule. How much time can you realistically spend on such projects?
Then, schedule and budget that time. Maybe you have an hour on Monday evening. Plan to do something that you can accomplish in an hour. Might be two thirty-minute tasks, or half of a two-hour task.
I used to have lofty ambitions for spending time on side projects, but I came to realize that I must of necessity limit my expectations. Weekdays, I might only have an hour or two. Sometimes zero. Weekends, probably more time, but maybe not.
So I work on smaller projects, or on larger projects that I can divide into smaller chunks. I am working on evaluating my mentality at the beginning of my project time; some days I am just too tired, but instead of accepting this, I sit there and pretend to work for an hour or two. That's a waste. I'd rather read, or exercise, if I'm not in a good frame of mind to actually work.
It can be tough! And the work output might not be as high as you like. But you can still do great things.
One option, if you can afford it, is to try reducing the time you spend at your full time job.
Ask about reducing to four days a week instead of five. I've recently done this and I find having one dedicated day to spend on side projects is much easier than trying to find a few hours here and there.
Block out time by the hour. If you only had one hour to work on a side project, what are the most important next steps you would attempt? Would it be organizing/making lists?--if so you're probably in a planning stage that could benefit from the efforts of even less than an hour. If you begin work and realize you spent 2 hours and 30 minutes... then it seems to me whatever you had scheduled for other hours was less important or you somehow "found time" amidst it. Block time out by the hour and bump what's not important when you're on a roll and maybe abandon the hour early when you're stuck to move on to (aka give time to) other things. Without blocking my time out by the hour there's no way I would ever be able to have so many hobbies.
I can't change my hours at work, and I'm not going to shut out my family so I can work on a side project. The only thing after that I still have control over is how much I sleep. I usually get 5 - 6 hours of sleep a night. My wife works as a teacher and has to go to bed pretty early for work. My kids are young and need a lot of sleep, so they are in bed pretty early. That usually gives me around 6 hours a night to work on something. I also work remotely, which helps a ton.
Not giving this as advice, but it is how I manage to do it.
So I would try boxing time early in the day before your full time job, focus on your side project then. Work your full time job come home for family time, get a good nights sleep.
Occasionally I will work on it late in the evening if the family is out and I'm home, and sometimes on the weekend. I just find it easier to get things done early before everyone is up and going about their day.
Giving up TV shows and Video Games can give you extra time for your side project. Although everyone needs some down time so I wouldn't say you need to give those up completely if you enjoy them.