What do you do on the weekends?

I touched on this in a recent post but my weekends don't look meaningfully different from my weekdays: I'm constantly working on various projects.

Of course, my 9-to-5 friends tend to want to do more things on weekends, so on average that means I get more project work done Monday through Friday.

Weekends used to be when I would get the most done on my side projects. But as a new parent, I've been learning to give time to my son on the weekends and spend time on my products during the weekdays. It's an adjustment for sure but rewarding.

This might get downvoted (unless I'm reading the room wrongly), but I don't work at all on the weekends.

I also don't work Wednesdays.

In fact, I moved my bed out of my bedroom into my living room and moved my desk into my bedroom, so now I have a dedicated office for only work purposes (which would also allow me to claim the home office deduction on my taxes).

It has increased the separation between my work life and personal life, and personally I found it to be an invaluable productivity hack.

When I close the office door on Friday night, I don't reopen it until Monday morning.

As a solo founder, I know my business would never be sustainable if I have to over-extend myself and work on the weekends, depriving myself not only of valuable recuperation time for my mind and body to rest but also the opportunity to actually live my life, nourish my relationships, nurture my hobbies, engage in physical activity, etc.

If giving up my weekends is what it takes to grow faster, then I don't want it.

Of course I understand that I'm quite fortunate to work full-time on my business, without day jobs or other competing commitments to drain my time and energy. I simply don't have it in me to do both at once.

I've tried even just a part-time job + indie hacking with disastrous results. I can't imagine how it is for those who juggle full-time jobs + indie hacking + family and kids. It must be brutal.

As a matter of fact, without unemployment income during Covid in 2020, which allowed me to bootstrap my business to ramen profitability without having to work a full-time job at the same time, I don't think I would be able to survive without a day job today.

Keeping the weekends to myself is simply my way of rewarding myself for actually crossing the ramen profitability hurdle.

Generally, I have been working hard even on weekends to make my product ready for internal testing. Yay, we did it. So this weekend I took a break and spent time with my kid in the pool. Was quite relaxing and joyful indeed.

I have the rule that the weekend is mine; since last night I made it 4 am, I think I will spend the rest of the day vibing, doing a couple of chores, and playing some games.

Tomorrow I want to gather more data for my database and prepare for next week. But I think that will only take two hours, maybe three tops.