I’m in the process of moving back to full-time employment, but the step away from being self-employed doesn’t mean that I am abandoning any of the side projects that I have been working on. I’m putting a few ideas together for DailyMuse, and there’s another more significant project that is a work in progress. Working on these in my spare time can be difficult especially when I have to consider other important things in life.

In the last few weeks though, I’ve been making smaller sprints for my side project, and instead of scheduling big blocks of time, I’m picking up the work when I want to work on it.

Zach Holman’s post on staying productive as a solo founder puts it in a better way.

There’s something to be said for focus, of course, but life’s too short to constantly throw yourself at the wall day in and day out. If you really believe in your product and think that generally, it’s something that can get you stoked, then taking a break for a while is usually worth it, and is more productive in the long run. It’ll draw you back in again in the future; don’t worry about it too much.

— Staying Productive as a Solo Founder by Zach Holman

As a programmer I know I’ll always have the itch to be building stuff on the side. From experience, I’ve learnt that working on side projects when I want to is a much more effective way of working on them than consistently plugging away at them and getting depressed about them.