Time-Boxing for Indie Makers: Shipping Features with 90/20 Blocks

As an indie maker, you're juggling development, design, marketing, customer support, and somehow trying to ship features. The 90/20 time-boxing technique is your secret weapon for making real progress without burning out. Ninety minutes of deep work followed by 20-minute breaks aligns with your body's natural ultradian rhythms and provides enough time to make meaningful progress on complex features. Most indie makers can fit 2-3 of these blocks into a day while handling other responsibilities. Here's a realistic schedule: Morning Block 1 (9:00-10:30): Hardest technical work—new features, complex refactoring, architectural decisions. Break (10:30-10:50): Walk, coffee, complete mental break. Morning Block 2 (10:50-12:20): Continued development, testing, integration work. Lunch (12:20-1:20): Real meal, no work discussions. Afternoon Block (1:20-2:50): UI polish, documentation, code cleanup. Break (2:50-3:10): Snack, stretch, brief walk. Admin Time (3:10-5:00): Customer support, email, social media, analytics, marketing. That's 4.5 hours of deep development plus 2 hours for business tasks—more productive than 8 hours of context-switching chaos. Break features into 90-minute chunks. Block 1: Planning and setup (review requirements, sketch approach, set up migrations, write failing tests). Block 2: Core implementation (build main functionality, make tests pass). Block 3: Polish and integration (improve UI, handle edge cases, integrate with existing features). Block 4: Deployment prep (documentation, changelog, announcement, deploy to staging). Most features fit this 4-block pattern (6 hours over 1-2 days). The 90/20 pattern prevents the indie maker trap: working 12-hour days that feel productive but lead to burnout and declining code quality. Three 90-minute blocks per day is sustainable long-term. More than that, and you're borrowing from tomorrow's energy. Use themed days to batch similar work: Monday for planning and architecture, Tuesday-Thursday for deep development, Friday for polish and shipping. This reduces context switching and helps you maintain momentum. Handle interruptions strategically. During a 90-minute block, only critical customer issues (revenue-impacting or security) warrant interruption. Everything else gets noted and handled during admin time. This protects your deep work while ensuring real emergencies get addressed. Track your blocks to improve estimation. After a month, you'll know that API endpoints take 2-3 blocks, UI features need 3-4 blocks, and bug fixes average 1-2 blocks. This data makes planning and shipping more predictable. The paradox of indie making: working less with proper structure often ships more features than grinding without breaks. A well-rested brain working 4.5 hours produces better code than an exhausted brain working 10 hours. Start with one 90-minute block tomorrow morning for your most important feature. Track what you accomplish. You'll be surprised how much progress you make in focused, uninterrupted time. That's not a hack—that's how shipping actually works.