I get asked this question a lot. Usually with a tone somewhere between genuine curiosity and thinly veiled accusation. Where do you find the time? You have a full time job. You have kids. You have a wife. You have this blog. You have side projects. You take on contracting work. You contribute to open source. When do you sleep? Are you okay? Is this a cry for help?
The honest answer is that I have an incredibly understanding wife.
She gets it. She understands that my brain does not work like a normal brain. I have ADHD, which means I have two modes: completely unable to focus on anything, or hyperfocused on something to the exclusion of all else. There is no middle gear. When I am in the zone on a project, I need to ride that wave or it disappears and I spend the next three weeks unable to look at the code without feeling vaguely nauseous.
My wife has learned to recognise when I am in one of those phases. She gives me the space to work on whatever has captured my attention, whether that is a side project, a contracting gig, or some problem I cannot stop thinking about until I solve it. In return, I try very hard to be present when I am not in the zone. To actually be in the room with my family instead of mentally debugging something while pretending to watch Bluey.
It is a balance. Not a perfect one. But it works for us.
The other part of the answer is simpler: I love what I do. Not in a toxic hustle culture way where I think everyone should grind 80 hours a week and sleep is for losers. I mean that programming genuinely does not feel like work to me most of the time. It is a puzzle. It is creative. It is satisfying in a way that scratches an itch in my brain that nothing else quite reaches.
When you love something, you make time for it. Nobody asks a golfer where they find the time to play golf on weekends. Nobody interrogates someone about their fishing habit. Hobbies are allowed to take time. My hobby just happens to also be my job, which means I do not clock off at 5pm and suddenly lose all interest until 9am the next day.
I work on side projects in the evenings sometimes. Not every evening. Not even most evenings. But when something has its hooks in me, I will stay up late tinkering. I will wake up early thinking about it. I will sneak in half an hour here and there when the kids are occupied. This is not discipline. This is what happens when your brain latches onto something and will not let go.
People who treat their job as purely a 9 to 5 probably find this baffling. And that is fine. Not everyone needs to be passionate about their work. A job can just be a job. You do it, you get paid, you go home and do the things you actually care about. There is nothing wrong with that. But if you are wired like me, the boundaries blur. Work and play overlap. The side project feeds the day job feeds the blog feeds the next idea. It is all connected.
The ADHD helps, weirdly. When I am interested in something, I have access to a focus that neurotypical people describe as superhuman. I can sit down at 8pm and look up at 2am wondering where the time went. That is not healthy if it happens every night, but in bursts it is incredibly productive. The trick is harnessing it without burning out, which is a skill I am still learning after all these years.
So where do I find the time? I do not find it. I make it. I have a partner who supports me. I have a brain that occasionally cooperates. I have work that I genuinely enjoy. And I have accepted that I will never be the guy who finishes work and does not think about code until the next morning. That is just not how I am built.
If you are someone who gets asked this question a lot, you probably already know what I am talking about. And if you are someone who asks this question, the answer is usually less mysterious than you think. People make time for what they love. The hours exist. You just have to decide what to fill them with.
I fill mine with code and side projects and the occasional blog post at weird hours. My wife rolls her eyes affectionately and makes sure I eat dinner. It works.