Reader, It's impossible to balance your full-time job, personal life and build a side startup.

UNLESS you strategically plan your journey and optimise your free time.

In this email, I'll break down 4 core principles that helped me to launch 2 startups in 7 and 14 days while working full-time and living my normal life.

And if you like watching more than reading, you can watch the video version of this email here.

#1 - Systemise Everything 📑

It's hard to start from scratch.

When you have a startup idea, you don't know what to start with, and you end up doing nothing.

I was there.

But then I realised that launching a SaaS is an algorithm.

So I painfully went through this process once and documented every single step.

Now, when I need to validate an idea or launch a new SaaS, I just use my OWN templates, and the process feels simple and smooth, AND I don't have to do the work that I already did before.

I systemised the following parts:

• Code - boilerplate for the SaaS with payments and authentication
• Landing - boilerplate with the structure of a high-converting SaaS landing page
• Onboarding Emails
• Ads
• Validation Checklist
• etc.

With those templates, launching new SaaS feels way simpler.

So next time you'll be doing work for your SaaS, try to think if this work can be templatised and reused later on.

#2 - Gamify the process 🎲

The hardest part of building a startup while working full-time isn't the time, it's THE ENERGY.

After 8 hours of work, you feel tired and just want to eat, chill and rest.

But you truly want to build your startup idea, so what do you do?

You try to force yourself to work on your startup when you don't feel like working.

But in the long term, this approach will only lead to burnout, and you'll fail.

On the other hand, after 8 hours of work, you can easily watch Netflix or play on the PlayStation.

So you need to turn your startup into a game, and you'll have enough energy to keep making progress every day.

2 things that helped me to gamify the process:

1. TODO Lists. ​
   I know it may sound boring. But trust me, breaking a big task like "Create a startup" into small sub-tasks like "write an onboarding email", "brainstorm the landing page structure with AI" makes it WAY EASIER.
   ​
   And marking each small task as completed ✅ gives some dopamine and makes it addictive to go through your TODO list every day.
   ​
   So now I try to create a detailed to-do list for the whole week, every Sunday, and every day I try to complete as many tasks from this list as possible.
   ​
2. Changing locations.
   ​Instead of sitting at home for the whole day, when I finish my job, I try to change my location, so it doesn't feel like I'm still on the job.
   ​
   I love going to a new coffee shop and challenge myself:
   ​ - "I won't leave this place until I build a new landing page".
   Working from new places feels like completing a new challenge in the game.

#3 - Working blocks ⏱️

Study shows that you need 15-30 minutes to get to the peak focus level while working on a task:

So if you are constantly switching between tasks, you aren't getting productive work done on either of those tasks.

So instead of trying to make small progress with your SaaS and trying to combine it with your daily job, create working blocks.

If you start working at 9 AM, block notifications till 9 AM, and from 7 AM till 9 AM, focus on your SaaS.

Same thing in the evening, once you finish your job, before switching to personal life or other tasks, block 1-2 hours of productive work on your SaaS.

Even 1 dedicated hour per day will be moving the needle in the right direction.

#4 - Weekend is the king 👑

Even if you are dedicating 3 hours every day on your SaaS, from Monday to Friday, it's just 15 hours of work.

There are people who are working FULL-TIME on their startups, and have already done at least 40 hours of work, while you did just 15.

But if you are dedicating your weekends to your dreams, you'll be able to catch up.

If you wake up at 7 AM, till 3 PM you'll have 8 FULL HOURS DEDICATED TO YOUR SaaS, and you'll still have half of the day to rest and enjoy your personal life.

Weekend is 16 HOURS OF FOCUSED work over just 2 days.

So summing it up, 15 hours (done during the weekdays) + 16 hours (done over the weekend) = 31 hours of your startup work PER WEEK.

It's almost a full-time job! And with the help of AI and smart decisions, you can outwork other people who work on their SaaSes full-time.

Using those 4 principles on a weekly basis helped me to ship more stuff in 4 months than I did in a few years before. Try at least one of them and you won't regret it 😉.

Content Updates & Something New

This week, I decided to try a new approach. Turn one idea into a YouTube video and into an email newsletter, so you can either read it (you already did it if you are here 😅), or you can watch the video, here:

Also, I'm building something NEW 🆕.

I'll be talking more about it in the upcoming emails and videos.

If you are into building SaaS and startups, you can read more about this NEW THING here, but for now, I don't want to spoil too many things ☺️.

See you next week 👋!

Always yours,

Andrew "Building Stuff" Zacker