Solo Founder Time Management
Building 31 products alone
"How do you manage time when building 31 products?"
I get this every week. People expect some elaborate system. Color-coded calendars. Pomodoro variations. Time-blocking wizardry.
The truth is simpler and less sexy: I just do less stuff.
The math that makes it possible
31 products over 3 years = ~10 products per year = roughly one per month.
Sounds insane. But here's what people miss:
They share infrastructure. One database. One auth system. One deployment pipeline. Product #15 doesn't start from zero.
Most are smaller than they look. A focused tool that does one thing well. Not a platform. Not a suite.
Some will fail fast. I'll build something, realize it doesn't work, kill it. That's a week, not a year.
The real constraint isn't building. It's focus.
My actual schedule
I tried optimizing this for months. Here's what stuck:
Morning (7am - 12pm): Deep work
No meetings. No Slack. No email. Phone in another room.
This is when I ship features. Five hours of uninterrupted building. Everything else is protected from this.
Afternoon (12pm - 4pm): Communication
Answer GitHub issues. Respond to emails. Write content (like this). Community stuff.
The context-switching happens here, so it doesn't bleed into the morning.
Evening (4pm - 7pm): Planning
Review what shipped. Plan tomorrow. Read, research, think.
This is when I notice "wait, I've been solving the wrong problem" or "there's a better approach."
Night: Off
Seriously. Off.
I burned out in my last startup. It sucked. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Sleep matters. Relationships matter. The work will be there tomorrow.
The prioritization trick
Every morning, I ask one question:
"What's the ONE thing that moves the needle today?"
Not ten things. Not the backlog. One thing.
Usually it's:
1. Ship a feature someone actually asked for
2. Fix a bug that's blocking someone
3. Write something that brings new people in
Everything else waits.
The backlog is infinite. My time isn't. Prioritization is just accepting that most things won't get done.
What I deliberately don't do
Meetings. Almost zero. Everything that can be async, is async. If someone wants to "jump on a call," I ask them to write it down first. 90% of the time, writing it down solves it.
Perfection. Ship fast, iterate later. "Good enough now" beats "perfect eventually." I ship things I'm slightly embarrassed by. Then I fix them based on feedback.
Equal attention. Some products get love. Others get maintenance mode. The ones with traction get priority. The ones without get killed. That's not neglect—that's strategy.
Social media games. I post, but I don't optimize for engagement. No growth hacks. No engagement pods. Just real thoughts. It's slower, but it's sustainable.
The Claude factor
This is the real productivity unlock.
Before Claude:
Research a problem (1 hour) → Plan solution (30 min) → Implement (2 hours) → Debug (1 hour) = 4.5 hours
With Claude:
Describe the problem → Claude researches and proposes → Implement together → Debug together = 1.5 hours
3x faster on average. Sometimes 10x for problems where I would've gone down the wrong path.
31 products is only possible because of AI leverage. I'm not more productive than other developers. I just have a force multiplier.
The honest cost
I'm not going to pretend this is easy.
Social life: Limited. My close friends understand. We catch up less, but deeper.
Hobbies: On pause. I used to play guitar, go hiking. Now it's rare. Maybe after product-market fit.
Financial stability: No salary. Savings depleting. The stress is real. I wake up some nights thinking about runway.
I'm not glamorizing this. Solo founding is hard. The "time management system" is really just accepting tradeoffs.
Why it's worth it
When I ship a feature and someone says "this saved me hours"—that's worth the cost.
When the GitHub stars tick up—that's validation that matters.
When the architecture holds together and I think "I built this"—that's craft satisfaction.
It's not about the hours worked. It's about the impact per hour.
If you're considering this
Four things I'd want to know:
Have runway. 18 months minimum. Stress kills creativity. Financial pressure makes you compromise.
Have leverage. AI, automation, skills you've spent years building. Something that multiplies your output. Without leverage, you're just a freelancer who doesn't charge.
Have boundaries. Work is infinite. Time is not. Define "done" for each day. When you hit it, stop.
Have patience. Overnight success takes years. Most of this work is invisible. The compound interest comes later.
I'm two weeks in. Ask me again in a year.
— Andres