At any given time, I maintain the details of about 7 to 9 projects in my head with about 20 to 300 ideas on the back-burner. This annoys my wife since I'm always "on", so I try to make sure my wife has a time in the reserve.
So, how does time work into this hectic and crazyness. Well, there are 168 hours in a week. You should sleep for 56 of those hours. You should eat a good lunch and relax for 7 of them. You should eat a good dinner and relax for 7 of them. You should shower for 3 of them. You should take a long bath for 1 of them. You should also probably have about 3 hours of sexy time a week. You can rush your breakfast in about 2. You need to exercise about 9.
This gives 80 hours.
I live in an apartment, so I don't have to maintain a house. Houses cost me time.
I live in the city, so I don't have a long commute. Driving everyday is not for winners, and it is bad for the environment.
I don't have kids nor do I plan to have them.
My wife doesn't work outside the home, so I can have as much time as possible from life. I love having a house-wife! It's awesome.
My life is structured such that I'm not wasting precious time on stupid things that don't add value to my life.
Now, the rub is this. You can't focus all your time in one thing. You will burn out. You need distractions. Your distractions need not be a loss.
Instead, you need to manage your projects and manage your goals. Everyday, make progress.
As long as the progress bar moves towards 100% somewhere, you are winning. Now, you may not find the win you expect. For instance, moving projects forward slowly means they may become irrelevant or uninteresting. But, that doesn't mean the process of moving things forward was a waste of time. I learn things everyday, and I like that. I like to learn. Because of this, my life is in a constant state of win.
For instance, this blog could be considered a waste of time. But, I'm writing words and composing sentences trans-coding my thoughts from my disorganized grey matter. My writing style is developing. This helps my professional activities by improving my communication with others as well as opening up discussion with people. It's helping me express myself in a way that isn't code.
As long as you gain something from an activity, you win. It's as simple as that.
The key to keeping motivating is having the daily option to change your priorities. This is why work can be stressful because you are not in full control of the priorities. Your hobbies should not have priorities except to just try.
This is why my wife's business is not a service business. Service businesses require you to adjust your priorities to the people you are servicing (duh!). Instead, my wife's business is all about content. When the creativity is available, inventory is built. When the creativity is distracted, inventory is going stagnant. I'm looking forward to about a week every summer where I can sell inventory. I can hustle it at pike's place, and that helps me professionally in understanding want. Understanding want is the key to making customers happy.
So, if you want to be a part-time entrepreneur, then make sure the venture is compatible with it. Example part-time ventures: Making video games, writing books, composing songs, making youtube videos, teaching kids, mentoring college graduates, make swords, build a giant robot of death, coaching little-league, doing odds and ins for people, design board games, giving city tours, etc.
Now, the ultimate question is: What makes you happy?
I think this is the ultimate question. Once you answer it for yourself honestly, you can determine the path you really want to be on. How do you make it work for you? That's a different question which I don't have the answer for. I do know that what-ever you do, it at some level needs to make money.
This is the cruel reality of capitalism. At the end of the day, some of your projects need to bear fruit. The things you want to do may not bear fruit. A challenge for the social web is to make it possible so that more and more people can make a living doing things that they want to do. For instance, look at Etsy. It opens up a lot of doors for people that would of had to sit in tents during fairs; now those people can reach a global audience.
This is the challenge for full-time entrepreneur: make me more effective. Make sure I'm spending my precious time producing what makes me happy. Make it easy. Unblock me. Provide me a service that lets me jump over hurdles. Provide me marketing. Provide me sales. Figure that shit out, so I can win!
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