I'm not going to answer all that stuff as I think you're overcomplicating things :)

Just try and commit 30 minutes a day to do something

But most importantly turn off all distractions. For me I am such a hopeless procrastinator so i need to turn off slack, twitter etc (i also find music distracting so I turn that off too). Then just commit to the time of work and give yourself a "reward" at the end. If you have more time, repeat.

This basically: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Tec...

Other tips I would add would be

• Try and have a "backlog" of stuff you want to work on do. Having a plan for your 30 minute "sprint" will help
• Don't try and learn too many things at once. Dont try and learn a new programming language, learn a new editor and explore a new product idea at one time. It's too much.
• Don't beat yourself up if real life gets in the way. It's healthy. Don't feel obliged to be always learning stuff in your free time (i hear a lot of guilt from you in this post). Try and coerce your job to let you do this instead.
• I cant emphasise enough if you have 30 minutes just commit to it by removing all distractions.

An additional aspect of Chris James' very good suggestion, is to also make sure that you only commit 30 minutes a day to do something. For me personally, I've noticed that it gets progressively harder to commit something daily, if you tend to commit hours and hours rather than just a little bit every day.

I appreciate this topic being addressed as this seems to be a topic faced by most developers at one point or another. Personally, I find that the amount of free-time I have seems to have a direct correlation with my level of productivity and the number of things I'd like to work on. So I have found that keeping a list or backlog of things I'd like to work on is helpful when I find myself with some spare time, as others have suggested.

Though, I still often find myself in a similar situation to what you're describing, so I'm interested to see what solution others have to offer.

The shortest answer: MOTIVATION.

The short answer: try to find motivation to do the things that you are not doing but wanna do.

The answer: take 5 minutes of your time, close your eyes, and imagine your life if you did one or more of the things you wanna do: what would change in your life? Would you improve it?
We never do anything if we don't see a reason to do them. Hence motivation is the sum of all reasons to WHY you should do something or not.

Feeling of unproductivness is often caused by feeling of overwhelming or mess in plans, desires and obligations. You can read David Allens "Getting Things Done".

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First of all, don't reduce sleep. After a while of less than 7.5-8 hrs a night, your brains gets old, literally. It works slower, it learns slower and has problems actually storing stuff. Newer research has also uncovered mild forms of brain damage when you are sleep deprived over time. One reason parents with small kids often tend to be a bit... off, myself included ;)

Second tip to get more time, skip TV, Netflix etc on the days you want to accomplish something. Even try to restrain yourself from social media and random surfing.

Third, make yourself publicly committed to a goal, 100daysofcode.com/ is one popular variant where you publicly announce on Twitter that you are starting, and then you do minimum 1 hrs of code per day, with daily updates on progress on Twitter. (As a side note, they also have similar projects for fitness, health etc., and regular exercise is proven to make you a more focused and productive knowledge worker)

Keep public/shared Trello boards of all your stuff to do. Share the dev stuff with your dev-friends, your non-dev stuff with your friends or family that are stakeholders in those activities. This also helps to grab yourself by the neck as you feel some pressure to make progress on stuff you've said you'll do.

That said, and with the exception on having time (kids remember?), I am struggling with similar issues myself. I have tons of motivation, but as I'm always tired, I have a hard time keeping focus.

Cheers!

1. About me:

   • Free time - none at the moment
   • I am currently overworking, 12-14 hours a day, with 6 days a week but its purposeful as I am trying to break into a new domain
   • Sleep is a weapon - try to get between 7/8 hours regularly and about 10 every 10 days (made the last one up - but essentially get enough rest)
   • Family obligations yes kids, but I have worked out an arrangement
   • Motivation with overload: see #3 below, however I do my best to remain communicative with all those who depend on me so that I can stretch the time, and I invest in building capacity of those around me to take on the load

2. The best side projects are:

   • Using technology that is similar to your day job (very little context switching) and pays off very well later by improving the performance at your day job
   • Solve a particular need or itch (focused scope)
   • Something you are interested in hence no need for motivation
   • Release fast release often and throw away anything that does not work

3. For focusing I use the 2 paradigms:

   • Eat the Frog (Brian Tracy) - do the most mundane and usually most impactful/important tasks first
   • The One Thing (Gary W. Keller, Jay Papasan) - the most important thing you must be doing now so helps prioritize

It is okay not to be as productive as you set high targets to be, but just start and move along slowly and u will get better

I recently wrote a post about this :)
dev.to/simoroshka/full-time-side-p...

• How many hours do you work a day?
  7-8, with no commute

• How many do you sleep?
  7-8, waking up without alarm

• Do you have other unavoidable obligations?
  Spending time with my partner, and soon we are going to get a dog! :)

• How much free time do you have, daily? (on average)
  What is considered free time? There are always chores, cooking, eating, etc. If we exclude this, maybe 5 hours. Of which I try to have, spread throughout the day, 2 hours of some sort of physical activity, like a walk at least.
  Then there are weekends and they vary, depending on the plans.

• How do you stay motivated when you have too little time and too much to do?
  I do something that motivates me. I do it every day for at least 30 minutes (usually more). I keep my todo lists super short and only filled with essential things. I allow myself to rest and have fun when I need it: read books, watch youtube, play games, meet with friends.

If you have things piling up, I'd suggest to go through your priorities and decide which things you absolutely must do, which things you want to do now, and which things would be nice to do but they can be done later. Get rid of the first ones as fast as you can, and then focus on the second. The third go to a backlog which you can review periodically.
Statistically, half of todo list items are never done. I argue that they are not done because they are not that important or desired. Therefore, they can be easily scratched. Dropping things from todo lists is one of my favourite things! :D

I think when you talk about dev/tech projects which are not in a freelancer way done( you don't do them for money), you don't have to be worried about there is to much to do. You set the targets, nobody else.

Currently I am trying to do something everyday, even if it is only reading new blog posts(lets put everything related to research/documentation/inspiration in this) and not really coding. Every time I try to do some coding, I split the task in so small chunks, so it can be done quite fast. I have a reminder set on every day at a specific hour in the evening, when I know I am home. If I miss a day, that's fine. Sometimes it might work if you are doing some projects with someone else. Maybe that person is so motivated that he/she can push you more to your limits.

I feel the same. Agree with some guys writing here their advice.

Just say...the best tool I use to plan daily is Trello. Insert columns - Backlogs, Priority, In Progress, Done. Something like that. It keeps me motivated. Good luck!