Fool I am, I'm doing this on hard mode, by starting a year after our first child arrived.
It's hard work, and not earning me any money so far because I'm still working on the MVP, but I hope to get there sooner or later. Most of the work so far is the odd hour here and there in the evening, and a few hours a week during my commute.
I am however greatly reassured by a colleague who is doing the same thing with an iOS app which is bringing in a reasonable amount of money - he works on it during his lunch break most days.
That is very dangerous thing to do, using company time or equipment would entitle the company to between some and all of the revenue.
Whilst you can claim it's within your own lunch break, a lawyer might argue that it is hard to separate the time. Using the companies Internet access and hardware would certainly constitute using the companies resource.
Unless you have explicit written confirmation from your employer, DON'T do your own projects in their time or at their place of business.
It can be a dangerous thing to do, but the company are fully aware and fine with it happening - there are actually a few of us with side projects that we'll sometimes work on during lunch breaks.
> hard mode, by starting a year after our first child arrived
It isn't likely to get easier. I have kids aged 4 and 6 and I want to spend 100% of my time on four different things: spending time with my wife, spending time with my kids, my day job, and side/fun things.
The light at the end of the tunnel [0] is that I'm sure the kids are eventually going to have their own things they want to spend 100% of their time on (and while I hope I'm one of them, that still means I'll probably only get 25%), which will free up time for me to spend on the other things.
[0] very tongue-in-cheek, this phrase is implying that I'm in a dark period of my life or something, but I'm the happiest I've ever been right now with all these things pulling on me and my time.
I feel your pain - I'm constantly feeling guilty about neglecting one thing or another, but there are only so many hours in the day, and I'm slowly getting used to the fact that I just can't do everything.
It's hard work, and not earning me any money so far because I'm still working on the MVP, but I hope to get there sooner or later. Most of the work so far is the odd hour here and there in the evening, and a few hours a week during my commute.
I am however greatly reassured by a colleague who is doing the same thing with an iOS app which is bringing in a reasonable amount of money - he works on it during his lunch break most days.