Haven't had time to work on my game for a few weeks, came back to it today, and man, all I can say is, I've hit that point where I'm really starting to regret working on a project of this scope (for my relative abilities) only in the evenings, after work, kids, etc.
It's starting to congeal into a spaghetti nightmare of half-baked brain-fried decisions made when I'm too tired to even watch TV, much less try to design something that's clean and easy to continue adding features onto
Thinking maybe it's time to take a page out of the advice I've seen on here before and start waking up an hour or two before work to work on this when I'm wide awake instead of leaving it for the hour or two before I go to bed.
Does anyone else have any advice for other good passion project working practices for people who have jobs in a similar domain and find themselves feeling burnt out juggling the two at the same time?
For context, I work from home doing Support / IT stuff on a computer 90 degrees to my right. I'll easily spend 14+ hours a day in this office of mine, and I'm actually making remarkable progress on a game I intend to release on Steam.
You can wake up early to use your best hours on dev, but don't do this more than once or twice a week unless your normal sleep schedule allows. This will make the evening hours even less productive if you're not careful, which you should commit to your family.
The best thing you can do is do a sort-of "slow hype" throughout the work day where you think about the one or two smaller things you can knock out in an hour or so and make them seem achievable. Then, when you have a moment after work, knock 'em out and pat yourself on the back. This is good, consistent motivation with some bonus progress on the side.
Similarly, throughout the work week, you can also plan and hype up something more substantial for the weekend. Then, wake up early on the weekends when everybody else sleeps in and get a good four hours of uninterrupted dev done. That's 8 hours a weekend of pure progress if you go in with a goal. That's about 400 efficient hours a year on a project, which is plenty if you scope appropriately.
tl;dr daydream up a plan, then stick to it, then make sure to pat yourself on the back for good time management to stay motivated.