I Don't Have Time

You may have heard of paying yourself first to gain success in personal finance. Well, if you're looking to expend your energy on some passion project, you need to dedicate your first energy of the day to that passion project.<p>If you have to go somewhere you're not passionate about for your 9-5, it's unlikely you'll be excited about working on anything when you get home. If you wake up on Saturday and go straight to the yard work or laundry or other domestic tasks, you're not going to want to skip that family picnic in the afternoon to work on your novel.<p>Expend your first energy every day on your project. This is even easier if you're a consultant or similar entrepreneur and you can set your own schedule. 30 minutes, 2 hours, whatever, take your best and most productive work and put it into your passion. Then give your leftovers to the other stuff you do to get by.

Author here - I'd be keen to hear if anyone has had success with different productivity systems for breaking done the big goals into smaller items. I've had varying amounts of success with pomodoros and personal kanban - but always interested in trying out something new.

If you have time to be reading HN, you have time to do a chunk of work on <i>something</i>.

Easy to say for starting a project, but I find the "finishing touches" are always discouraging.

I first heard about Jonathan Hardesty and his journey in when I was still in high school. I started drawing everyday for about a year, but sadly I'm not as focused as him and shifted gears towards programming.<p>I have his thread bookmarked and show it to people who want to learn something new and what is possible with enough dedication.<p>I'm planning on revisiting art via "generative art", this time with code mixed in. Already bought Generative Design[1], and can't wait to get started.<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.generative-gestaltung.de" rel="nofollow">http://www.generative-gestaltung.de</a>

Absolutely true that gradual progress is very powerful.<p>I write 500 words a day on my personal site at <a href="http://kibabase.com" rel="nofollow">http://kibabase.com</a>. Some articles are not as good as others, but they can get better though mericeless editing. I estimated I have 19K words of content thus far.

A famous writer was asked to give a speech at a conference for people who were trying to get published. He agreed. On the appointed day he walked to the front of the auditorium, stood at the podium, and asked "Why aren't all of you home writing?" and sat down.

There is also the cases where you are so interested in something that you can't keep away from it. The 10,000 hours of practice happens by themselves. You don't need to "trick" yourself to do it, because it's so much fun so you do it anyway.

I love this idea. I have a few side projects that I'm working on, and while I can't work on them full-time, I still try to dedicate a small portion of time daily to help them progress.

Any form of art specially something like writing can't come out of shallow thinking. In age of productivity, we do thinking out of doing and less based in "calling."

True, but you're missing the main thrust of the "I could never do that, I don't have time!" comment.<p>It's an excuse for not trying. If you don't have time to try, you can't fail.

'I don't have time' is just an excuse!Just do it right now!

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