How many hours per week do you work?
How many hours per week do you work?
I used to do ~40 per week, but have been investing a lot more time into work for the past 8 months and it's really amazing how much you can achieve in a week by putting in a few extra hours.
A typical day for me is:
6am - wake up
7am - start work at my main business (Get Invited)
10am - gym
11am - continue work at Get Invited
3.30pm - finish at Get Invited, take a break
4pm - work on Gravity + other product ideas
6pm - cook dinner
7pm - continue working on other products
8/9pm - youtube/read to switch off
10pm - sleep
Sat/Sun I'll wake up about 8am and do max 6 hours of work. Every 2nd/3rd weekend I'll take 1-2 days off. I travel 9 months of the year so I also have random days off to do activities or go to new places.
My schedule sounds crazy to most of my friends, but when you're working on your own ideas, it rarely feels like work.
I bounce between 75-hour workweeks and 30-hour ones. It depends on if I'm having fun or feeling burnt out.
80% of your results come from 20% of your work, so I try to find the 20% and work mostly on that.
If you want a crazy schedule, try building a company with a 2-year old running
around the house. When I look back, being a founder, single, was easy
in comparaison.
Haha, I can imagine!
I measure my work hours in terms of 25 minutes pomodoros. I aim to do 50 pomodoros per week, and sometimes fail to do that. Which seems an awfully low amount of work, and it might be.
There are exceptions, if I have huge number of support requests and there are big problems with my app, I can have the energy to work almost nonstop for a while (5-7 days). Also, if I'm working on a really cool feature I can also code non-stop. However, at the time, I'm focusing on sales which is a tremendous drag for me and it takes up a huge amount of effort for me to concentrate on that.
I think the fact that my work week is so short, comes down to other factors too. I have been grinding to reach success as an Indie Hacker for five years now. At one point I realized I couldn't put my live on hold until I reached "success". The other factor is that my dad got a disability last year and I have had to take the reigns for him.
Another detail, is that I personally provide support. I respond to support or sales emails at anytime, except when I'm sleeping.
Have you considering outsourcing the sales/support to free up your time and energy to focus on product?
Since I'm doing the first sales ever, outside of my current customer, I want to experience it first hand and see what works. What has worked for me is getting freelancer developers to help with the product, but my budget is limited.
That's really impressive and I'm sure this schedule could sound crazy to someone who doesn't work on their own ideas and dreams but I'm sure you too have some difficulty to overcome some hard period maybe when the products didn't get enough traction. How do you manage this part and there was a time when you work a lot more hours on the products?
I've had quite a few failed products, the key is not to get attached to ideas until they have traction.
I test, build an MVP and test again – if it doesn't get traction I trash it and move on.
I think too many people fall in love with their ideas and products too early, pour years of their life into it and when it fails they're crushed.