Break your tasks to small chunks. Aim for 5-15 minute work. Personally, I found that when I put noise canceling earphones and shut the door or know I will not get distractions, then I will zone in instantly. See what works for you.

10am-6pm job
6-8pm social stuff (family, friends, etc..)
8-9pm exercise/gym
9-10pm potato mode (tv/anime)
10-2am side projects (while watching tv usually)
2-9.45am sleep

+-15 min into any of the periods. This is only possible because remote but allows 2-4 hours a night of work on stuff.

If you don't have kids whats taking up so much time?

I don't have a regular job, but I'm a freelance writer + marketing consultant working way more than 8 hours a day, plus I'm learning game development as a side project.

I'm also a single mom of two kids.

Since it's not a normal job, I can really optimize my schedule for what works best for me, based on the type of work I'm doing and what I'm interested in at the moment. Since you don't have that, just get clear on the time you do have for your side project. Think about the kind of work you need to do for your project and if the time you've allotted for it is when you do that kind of work best.

From there, figure out what your end goal is and define it.

For me, it's to create playable games. It's not necessarily to learn everything about C# or Unity. It's not even to make a high-quality commercial game.

(Let's be real: I'm not creating the next Dark Souls as a solo creator lol.)

Once you know your end point, think about the big rocks that get you there -- the stuff you absolutely can't skimp on.

(For me, it's learning the game engine, game logic, mechanics, animation, audio, etc. The stuff that goes into actually making the game.)

If you know people who've already done what you're trying to accomplish, talk to them and see what common things they did to make meaningful progress quickly. Think broad strokes of doing the thing, not perfecting the thing or adding details.

Focus 80% of your effort on these big things.
Focus 20% of your effort on the nice to haves that make whatever you're doing sparkle.

That's not literally dividing an hour into 48 mins doing the big stuff and 12 mins doing the details. We're looking at this macroscopically, in terms of weeks, months, or even years.

Most people waste a LOT of time learning and obsessing over the little things that don't actually matter right now in accomplishing their goal and feel discouraged when they don't have a lot to show for their time/effort.

Also, I have ZERO work-life balance, and I'm okay with that. We all have seasons in life, and there's nothing wrong with you if you shut out the world for a few months (ahem a few years, if you're like me) to throw yourself into your goals and passions to build something meaningful.

So if finding balance to be able to still work, play, socialize, build, gym, other hobbies, cook from scratch every meal, etc is important to you, that's okay, but my approach wouldn't be the best.

Also, for deep work, people experience great flow sessions between 90 mins and 3 hours. That's probably why you're feeling frustrated. Task switching is incredibly taxing for our brain, and 45 minutes might not be enough.

Are there hours elsewhere in the day for you to devote to this?

Personally, I didn't and don't recommend it for people doing coding related startups that require intense concentration.

It's very hard or impossible, or at the very least massively inefficient to produce any useful code with fragmented time blocks.

My weekday schedule with a full time technical leadership job in big tech in NYC was:
- Wake up at 8:30-9 AM, shave and eat small breakfast
- First meeting at 9:30 AM
- Work 10 AM - 8 PM with a day full of Zoom meetings and 1-1s and intermittent 15-20 minute intervals to write code which was also expected of me. I needed to lead projects with people in different timezones as part of my job expectations hence the late hours.
- 8 PM - 9:30 PM: late dinner (I lived in NYC so I went out to restaurants a lot) or meet a friend
- 9:30 PM - 10:30 PM: gym
- 10:30 PM - 11:30 PM: respond to fires on Slack, finish some code I didn't have time to do during the day because I was doing too much leadership shit - or decompress/youtube/video game
- 11:30 PM - 12 AM: shower, get ready for sleep
- 12 AM - 1 AM: go to sleep

Could I have cut out all restaurants, social obligations, batch cooked the same meal for the whole week and mixed in an hour or two of dev on side projects during the day and spent my entire weekend doing side projects?

Sure, but my brain was completely fried from having a stressful job and I wasn't in the best mental position to concentrate and be creative on new startup ideas. Besides, that kind of schedule isn't sustainable and will only work for a few months max before some kind of burnout sets in.

IMO, best to commit to one thing at a time as it relates to work. If you're employed full time, stack cash and quit when you have the right amount of runway to focus on a startup full time for a few years. Helps if you can move countries as your runway will be massively extended doing that if you come from a western country with a high COL.

Don't try to half ass a startup while also inevitably half assing your job.

What I did while I was at a 9-5 was work early in the morning and on weekends (I'm a morning person).
So basically Mo-Fr
5-5.30 Wakeup
6-8 AM Sideprojects
Then moveon with my other life and meet friends/sports etc. after work.
That gives you 2h/day or 10h/week on focused work plus some hours on the weekend.
I did not have a partner or family/kids, so it was pretty straight forward.
It took time to adjust to this and I knew it was only for a limited time before quitting my job, so it went for about a year (where I was not super strict with my times).

you do what you can, usually I wake up early in the morning, do some trolling on the internet and get to work on my side stuff before my day job starts.

Great question! I wish I had asked this question before I quit my job.

I'm one of those people who quit their jobs to pursue personal interests. DON'T DO THAT!

I was struggling to do both 9-5 and startup. And I was so obsessed with my idea, that I couldn't focus on my day job. So I quit, and joined an accelerator.

Startup failed, and I was jobless. Truth hurts.

If I can go back in time, I would try my hardest to find a way to juggle the two.
Like asking this type of questions on the internet.😉

Funny that, after all that happened, being self-employed makes me a better time-manager. Weird.

I greatly respect people who can do it, especially with kids (I don't have them).
I tried it so many times and just couldn't. My quality of life fell dramatically when I did it; my work struggled, and I was losing weekends completely. I also cannot function properly after 5-6 pm, so the mornings and weekends were the only way.

So, I went another way: I worked, saved, and invested, eventually allowing me to go on a mini-FIRE for several years. I started it three months ago and couldn't be happier that I did it. If I struggle, being a freelancer or consulting is always the way to get some cash.

Regarding savings, the best way to do this is to go to LCOL country and work for HCOL country company.

But I think I am in the minority with this approach. Most people will tell you that quitting your job is a bad idea. I'd argue that life is too short to spend it working for someone else and have a bad quality of life.

About 3 years ago when i started working solo, I gave it a go working after my SWE job. Failed miserably because the SWE work was too draining and my biz moved too slowly.

Then I tried waking up at 6:00, so that i can work on my business before my job. Eventually I quit my job because I realized that nothing was really stopping me from focusing full time on my business than the fear of 'not making it'. The goal was to be self-sufficient, so might as well pull the band-aid asap.

In other words: I was never able to manage my side projects with a 9-5

Timeboxing worked well for me. Find a time that works five or six days a week and put it on your calendar. The length of time matters less than doing something every day. Then, figure out when works for you—starting or ending your day. You can slip in 30 minutes over lunch. Either way, the goal is to build a new muscle while forming a better habit.

I also don't beat myself up if I only get 15 minutes to create new issues, research, or clean up a confusing area of the code. Those small daily chunks add up over time, and they help build some clarity on what you should be focusing on.

As a parent, kids made it easier for me to focus. Kids don't care if you are in the flow or not, which made me realize flow is mostly bullshit. They also gave me an excuse to be home more and not feel like I needed to be at every social function. Kids also sleep pretty early, giving me a nice block of time at night to work on anything I want. I'm not saying, "have kids to be more productive," but as someone with kids, it's easy to make up excuses when I didn't have kids for why I couldn't focus or why I wasn't making time for it.

Wake up before everyone else, commit to 15 minutes of work, that'll turn into more over time, then start your regular day.
The first thing you do in the morning should set the priority.