As I’m sure many of you know, it’s difficult to launch new websites, manage the old ones and come up with new ideas to improve a site all while holding down a full time job. I personally work as a game tester at Microsoft (living the dream huh?), and have to commute to work for 3 hours a day round trip. I know just how tough it is to balance a full time work schedule, a marriage and find time to work on my websites. I will be making the move to full time web publisher eventually, but I haven’t figured out a time table for it yet.

For those of us that still hold down full time jobs while running forums or websites on the side you may ask yourself all the time, “How can I find more time to work on my websites?” Well, I am going to give you a peak into how I get website work done and hopefully you’ll be able to learn something from me. As I write this post, I’m currently sitting at my work desk after arriving 50 minutes early. I used to come into work earlier back when I first started this job 9 months ago, but slowly started leaving later and later until I got to the point where I would be late to work if one section of my commute took longer than scheduled. So I’ve decided to start coming to work early again so I can spend all of that time working on my websites. If you work at an office, I’d highly recommend doing this, you’d be suprised by how much you can focus on your website work by coming in early when most of your co-workers are still asleep or driving to work. If you commute in high traffic areas, you may also receive the benefit of avoiding some traffic that would have otherwise kept you on the road longer, thus wasting more of your time. The key is to try and find times to work on your websites that complement the type of person you are. As an example, I’ve found that I’m moving towards more of a morning person now that I’m out of college and so I find that it isn’t that hard to get up extra early for work knowing that I can use that time to work on my websites.

Another way I’ve found success in getting website work done has been by writing lists of work I need to do on a site by site basis. After having a detailed list, it’s easy to pick out the items of most importance and start working from there. I also don’t let myself stop working on a task until it’s finished. I’ve found that it’s important to never stop in the middle of a task because I often spend a fair amount of time figuring out where I left off and what left to finish it, so I make sure to avoid starting a task that I can’t finish within my allotted work time.

How do you find the time to work on websites while holding down a full time job?