Startup Intensity With 'life Responsibilities' (i Will Not Promote)

I would really value advice from founders who are building seriously while also carrying major life responsibilities.

I’m trying to understand whether my current constraints are normal or whether I’m approaching this the wrong way.

A bit of context: I only started seriously thinking about building a business about 6 months ago. Since then I’ve gone through a few scrapped ideas, several pivots, and I’ve now reached a point where I have a working beta while actively talking to users. There are encouraging signals but the product still needs to get much stronger before it creates meaningful value to be commercially viable.

My biggest bottleneck is time. Realistically, I have around 20 to 30 hours per week for the startup. Within that time, I’m trying to balance: * talking to users * building the product * learning how to actually run a startup

What I’m finding hard is that even when I work consistently, it still feels slow relative to how fast I want to iterate.

My broader situation is this: * I work full-time as a Senior Aerospace Engineer in a cognitively demanding role * Commute and gym takes another 10-15 hours * I’m married, and we have a baby on the way * Quitting my job is not an option right now as it pays bills and puts food on the table.

The reason I’m asking is that I have the opposite problem of no motivation. I tend to push hard in every area of life. Over the past year I’ve pushed hard in my day job with 2 promotions, my bodybuilding journey and my responsibilities at home. However, the startup is the one area where progress still 'feels slower' than I want.

I just turned 30 and I’m grateful for where I am now. I worked hard to get to a stable place financially and personally throughout 20s. I still have a strong drive to build something meaningful and I don’t want to drift into a comfortable life where I stop trying and later regret it. I want the fire inside me neither to extinguish nor to engulf me.

For founders who built under real constraints, I’d really appreciate your perspective on a few questions:

1. How did you manage startup progress while also working full-time and carrying family responsibilities?
2. How did you decide what to cut, postpone or simply stop caring about for a season?
3. Did you find that slower-but-consistent progress was enough or did there come a point where the only real answer was to free up more time?
4. How did you avoid burning yourself out while still keeping ambition alive?

I’m looking for honest operating advice from people who have actually been through this.