[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How can I pick a side project and stick with...
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Ask HN: How can I pick a side project and stick with it?
I'm a web developer and DevOps engineer. I know a few languages and
frameworks very well, I can find my way around with a good deal of
other languages and frameworks, and I'd like to learn a lot more.
My problem is that I cannot seem to be able to pick a project (any
project) and stick with it long enough to do any meaningful
progress, let alone finishing it. It's been several years since
I've managed to work on a side project for more than two days
continually. I sit before the computer thinking: I know! I'll
write a roguelike in X! Five minutes later, I'm thinking: fuck
roguelikes! I'll write a graphical solitar card game with Y! Five
minutes later, I don't care for it anymore, and would rather write
an isomorphic strategy game in Z. The same thing happens with
tools I might need, applications I think about, experimental stuff,
etc. Has anyone else experienced this, and, more importantly,
found their way out? How?
Author : corecoder
Score : 556 points
Date : 2020-04-06 11:44 UTC (11 hours ago)
| LeoTinnitus wrote:
| I've found keeping a spreadsheet of a lot of tasks and how
| they're related helps. So say you have 3 projects, all with
| varying types of task. I would make the spreadsheet as follows:
|
| Due Date, Goal Date, Project (or class if student), Assignment,
| Status.
|
| Due date is definitively when I need to achieve it by (this can
| be artificial if you want). The goal date can change as my
| day/week gets hectic so I adjust according to the miscellaneous
| things that are impossible to account for. Project is like the
| Grouping of all tasks below it. Then the tasks are the
| incremental things that need to be done in order for the entire
| goal to come to fruition. Status tells me if it's completed,
| partly, or not.
|
| This has helped me because if I'm feeling very committal one day,
| I can just crush a lot of stuff out. Then I can go "Well looks
| like I have a week before I have to get that done" so then I can
| freely budget fun time. It keeps me on track and helps me with
| balancing pleasure and work.
|
| I've recently started tracking my hours too. It's weird but I
| think it helps with showing you how much you screw around when
| you work from home.
| wolco wrote:
| Find something you want to do personally and do it. If It will
| follow you around and demand you work on it when you should be
| doing something else you found it.
| pmontra wrote:
| Self social engineering: tell everybody about it so you're going
| to lose face if you drop it without a good reason. This doesn't
| mean you cannot drop a project every week or two, but you must
| accomplish at least something before doing it or discover it's a
| dead end. And if you succeed people will cheer you.
| tayistay wrote:
| Apparently that's exactly not what you should do:
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/200...
| _bohm wrote:
| Don't know about the psychology behind it but I'll add a data
| point in support of this.
|
| Whenever I do any kind of creative work (programming, music,
| etc.) I always stall out if I reveal what I'm doing to other
| people before it's in a near-completed state. Something about
| the knowledge that other people may be observing causes me to
| think about a project in terms of how it will be perceived by
| others as opposed to precisely what I want it to be. The sad
| thing is that usually probably no one is observing and I'm
| entirely psyching myself out, but this realization has
| definitely led me to be more disciplined about secrecy when
| working on anything.
| Peteris wrote:
| I had a similar problem until I knew I had to work on a start-up
| and pick a market to go help. It took me ~2 years to choose that
| market but I haven't looked back (crypto developer tools).
|
| Look back, not forward.
|
| Take all the things you have spent the past 5-10 years being
| interested about. For me, it was coding, programming languages,
| developer tools, design & minimalism, products, B2B, mathematics,
| economics, investing, productivity. Crypto dev tools is the
| intersection of those - a new field allowing me to keep doing the
| things I'm already provably interested in rather than making bets
| about the future.
| beetwenty wrote:
| I found my way out.
|
| The thing I had to do is to find some _themes_ that I am
| idealistic about and stick to those. The project is just a mode
| of exploring the theme, which means that each project and my
| skillset grows as needed to accommodate. The projects you are
| describing are completely non-thematic and are just bundles of
| features, so of course there 's no structure to them, no reason
| to keep going and seeing what's next. And you are probably not
| money-and-sales-motivated, which is the thing that drives a lot
| of obvious business ventures.
|
| The first step in finding the theme is in "knowing thyself", of
| course - strengths, weaknesses, inclinations. Write and rewrite
| the set of things about yourself that is maximally coherent and
| self-reinforcing. Then drive down that road as far as you can go:
| What types of projects does that support? Gradually you'll hit on
| a common theme, and then you can really start building.
|
| Another way to force this along is this art advice: "Draw the
| same thing every day." This is a rather crushing challenge to
| take on, for no matter the subject matter, you'll tire of it, but
| it quickly brings out your inclinations and therefore the themes
| you want to work with.
| madoublet wrote:
| Yes!!! My way out was to not focus on the product, but focus on
| my personal benefit. I asked myself "what do I want to learn?"
| not "what do I want to build?".
|
| Recently, I completed a Shopify plugin
| (https://apps.shopify.com/simple-pages). I wanted to learn more
| about the platform. I researched it a bit and found a problem
| that I thought I could solve. Each step along the way (setup,
| build, approval) was painful. But each time I focused on my
| personal benefit. For example, when the app got rejected a few
| times, I convinced myself that I was learning about what Shopify
| was looking for in plugin vendors. This kept me going until I saw
| it through to the end.
| everyone wrote:
| Theres a lot of things you may _want_ to do, like you abstractly
| think that would be good for you somehow, eg. learn the piano.
|
| But for a project that you can stick with through the horrible /
| boring bits, all the way to completion, pick something you are
| _compelled_ to do, something you just naturally do and enjoy.
|
| Eg. I make computer games, I think they are fairly pointless, but
| I can happily make games all day every day. Its the kind of thing
| I need to force myself to _stop_ doing and go take a break.
| larzang wrote:
| I find side projects useless. At work I solve real problems for
| real people, often big problems. Some toy project doesn't feel
| the least bit meaningful, and any idea I have for something that
| isn't just a toy is something 100 other people have had as well.
|
| So I help with their implementation instead. Instead of building
| useless tech demos or starting primitive games I'll never finish,
| I look up the projects I do actually find useful and see what
| they need help with.
| nurettin wrote:
| Eight years ago I was really bored at work (they just asked for
| a couple of SQL queries a day) so I made a poor man's automated
| trading system for government bonds. The basic idea was to camp
| for new bonds and look for new opportunities as soon as they
| presented themselves. I had also done some rudimentary
| backtesting to prove some simple strategies for buying and
| selling. I made no money off of this, it was just for fun.
| During development I learned how to acquire, store and process
| financial data in a live streaming way as well as how banks
| handle things, what the fees and taxes are, etc. Also helped me
| learn web automation, making and deploying my own services to
| my own servers, etc.
|
| A year ago I started working on hedge fund software and all
| this experience was a huge help. So if you are busy at work
| making tools, great. But the benefit of side project stuff is
| pretty situational.
| shostack wrote:
| Any chance you've written about this side project and the
| areas you learned about and how to figured those things out?
| nurettin wrote:
| This is probably the first and only time it was mentioned
| in public. I do have a private bitbucket graveyard where it
| resides. Oh and this was done when mongodb was still a
| thing, so I have some of that going in there for finding
| sparse stock correlation matrices. And ruby was everywhere
| at the time, so the bank interface was created in watir
| instead of puppeteer.
| aabbcc1241 wrote:
| Seems you're picking up project idea from your interest. Would it
| be better if you pick up a project because you deeply feel the
| pain how it is currently without your solution?
| Beefin wrote:
| Keep an idea log and assess it weekly. I have a trello Ideas
| board with the columns: - Concepts (stream of conciousness) -
| Promising (have given it some thought, and could be interesting)
| - Validated (have validated it in some way) - Building - Shut
| down
| [deleted]
| redwoolf wrote:
| Read Steven Pressfield's The War of Art.
| antirez wrote:
| Find a project that is useful to you.
| yoz-y wrote:
| I second this, I was project for a long time until I found out
| an app idea that was mainly driven by the fact that I really
| wanted it. Unfortunately this was quite a long process and now
| that it's done it's back to square one. Lots of ideas but no
| motivation to follow any through.
| pogorniy wrote:
| I have similar questions how people stick to projects and get
| them done. And how can I do the same. I have so many unfinished
| ideas, abandoned projects that I got tired of this. And after a
| year I have an answer with a prove.
|
| I've learned that I'm excited about idea of the project, but not
| routine which gets that idea done. Also I know that usually I'm
| excited about project for several days and then other ideas get
| in my head and I loose focus. Another known pitfall is urge to
| get too much functionality and then again focus is lost.
|
| So I decided to stick to the routine of one project regardless of
| circumstances. I defined wanted functionality. Intrinsically I
| agree that time spent on the project is not worse than
| alternatives.
|
| Also I tried to record videos (in russian) on how I approached
| the project. That helped a bit with external motivation as I
| promised people to deliver video on Saturday. Made quite a number
| (26) before abandoned this idea, as it wasn't popular, thus
| rewarding for me.
|
| Now in a year I call this experiment done
| https://github.com/podgorniy/media-manager. I'm happy with result
| and path I did to get there.
|
| We can discuss details more. My first unfinished project dates
| 2013. So I've being in this situation for quite a while.
| matt_the_bass wrote:
| How do you perform in your day job? Do you have the same
| indecision or are you productive? If your productive at work,
| then perhaps consider what you are looking to achieve in a side
| project.
|
| For me, my side projects are for fun and intellectual
| exploration. I've been making art-piece wordclocks as gifts and
| sell a few occasionally. This is totally orthogonal to my day
| job. The orthogonally is what I really crave. It gives my mind a
| nice refresh.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Most of the advice you're getting here is to monetize it, find
| what inspires, you, etc.
|
| While well intentioned, that advice has been incorrect for me at
| least. What has worked has been to work on small, fast side
| projects. If you can only work on a project for two days, then
| pick projects you can finish in two days. Cut scope aggressively.
|
| Frankly, my most successful projects are the ones that have been
| amonst the easiest.
| papaf wrote:
| As someone who has been failing on side projects for over 20
| years, I feel qualified to answer this question.
| - Have one private repository for random projects - Work in
| private repositories for random projects that progress.
| - Move to public repositories when the project gets
| somewhere.
|
| These tips above make failure cheap. Success is built on the many
| failures.
|
| I also have general tips on side projects that make them more fun
| and less like work: - Use a different editor/ide
| to $job. - Use a different programming language.
|
| I also have these general tips based on mistakes I made in the
| past: - Read other peoples solutions on github.
| Its inspiring. - If you get stuck take a break. Its not
| work and you can slack.
| edmundhuber wrote:
| Have you tried journaling? It lets you get ideas out (adding or
| remixing ideas from the previous days), without investing in
| getting a project up, writing code, etc. A lot of times, for me,
| I just want to explore an idea and I'm not actually interested in
| working through it. But if I spend enough days journaling an idea
| and I'm still interested in it, then I go for it.
|
| The other thing that's helped me is realizing that anything
| worthwhile is hard. If you want to stick with a project until
| it's done, you're going to get bored, you're going to run into
| roadblocks, and you want to cultivate a sense of "this is what I
| want to do, and that is just a temporary issue that I will work
| through".
|
| Last thing that's helped me is finding a support group. I use
| irc, specifically I hang out on irc.darwin.network (shameless
| plug, I kinda co-run it), there I can chat with people about what
| I'm working on, they can ask cool questions, etc, keeps the
| juices flowing and reminds me why a project is worth sticking to.
| Bekwnn wrote:
| Re your first paragraph: What's funny is that I get almost the
| same effect by avoiding writing ideas down. I find letting an
| idea sit and stew in my head to be a good vetting process.
|
| If I forget an idea, that's a feature of the system, not a bug.
| If an idea survives for a while and I find myself coming back
| to it often, then after a month of it being an idea I might act
| on it. At that point the idea is a lot less nebulous and I have
| a pretty clear idea of where to get started and an idea of
| where it's going to go in the future.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Part of why people can't stick to projects is because their way
| of self-motivating is too critical in nature and the emotional
| life rightfully pulls out of anything where the ratio of +/-
| reinforcement is skewed too much toward abuse and threat.
|
| Rather than turning to self-loathing and criticism you can
| interpret this resistance because you have not yet figured out
| how to encourage and motivate yourself.
|
| Find a way to get yourself to not feel under threat of failure
| and you'll blossom
| tayistay wrote:
| My software side projects became my career.
|
| I write down my various ideas. I then think about them
| occasionally for months or even years before committing to
| working, writing additional notes. This reduces the chance of
| abandoning an idea for something else after starting development.
|
| I tend to do multi-year projects, so I have to be careful how I
| spend my time.
| mschaef wrote:
| The first thing I'd suggest you do is understand why you want to
| do a side project at all. Unless you have a specific goal you
| want to achieve and you actually value that goal, you'll have a
| hard time convincing yourself to do the work you need to do to
| make it happen.
|
| You also shouldn't fool yourself about the amount of time and
| effort it takes to achieve anything real. Developers tend to
| underestimate the work involved in achieving a result. For
| commercial projects that sort of estimation problem turns into
| cost overruns and missed deadlines. For side projects (without
| formal schedules) it turns into demoralization when the result
| you want doesn't meet the timeline of your dreams. That solitaire
| game may seem like an easy thing to do, but for every complexity
| you see there's a dozen you don't, and you'll have do the work to
| solve them all to produce something of value. So make sure it's
| something you actually care about.
| edw519 wrote:
| 1. The WHAT should be something very important to someone else.
|
| 2. The HOW should be something very important to you.
|
| Many experts tell you that you should build something that you
| actually need yourself. That may be good advise for start-ups but
| not as good for side projects. Why? Because it's too damn easy to
| just give up as soon as you hit an obstacle (and you WILL hit
| obstacles).
|
| But when someone else is depending on your work (and becomes a
| trusted collaborator), they provide you with that extra UMMPH you
| will undoubtedly need when the going gets tough. It's a lot
| harder to bail out when someone is right next to you and
| depending on you.
|
| But by deciding on your own HOW you will build it, you maintain
| an outlet for your passion. Believe me, I know. For me the
| journey of building something is more fun than the anticlimactic
| using of the finished product.
|
| Works all the way around. Give it a try.
| RMPR wrote:
| I second this, for my current side project, I felt like giving
| up many times, but the thought that someone is depending on my
| work made me continue.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Find a single paying customer
| Cymen wrote:
| I need an end goal with actual people using what I'm making to be
| really motivated. And having achieved that on some open source
| projects (one in particular with tons of usage, now deprecated),
| I need some kind of personal increase in value to hold my
| interest. Maybe that will change once I'm financially independent
| but I think focusing on increasing value is a good thing and
| value can mean different things (doesn't always have to be money
| but often is -- there is some value from being one of the big
| contributors on an open source project but, having been there,
| the value is typically seems to be very low even if you have 1M+
| downloads).
|
| That said, deploy, maintenance and support can be a grind. I like
| the challenge but your experience may vary.
| probinso wrote:
| do it for someone not for yourself. you can reach out to domain
| experts over a non-technical topic you are interested in. offer
| them your time and a final project in exchange for their
| guidance.
|
| Be intentional about setting up meetings. don't let the
| relationship fall into the graduate student advisor communication
| patterns, treated like a professional relationship and ask them
| to the same.
| wschlender wrote:
| What happens when you play video games?
|
| For me video games are fun and easy to focus on day after day.
|
| I realized that this is because video games have done a very good
| job of defining a goal --> FTL (my current favorite) == get to
| the final sector and destroy the rebel flagship. The goal is
| clear and you 100% know when you're done.
|
| I've learned that I used to be really bad at defining goals. I'd
| say things like... 'I want to make an XYZ sort of thing'... but
| that's not a great goal. It's kinda vague... have you 'made' the
| thing when you put down 10 lines of code as a prototype? When
| will you be done?
|
| If the goal is unclear I feel --> 1. like I might be signing up
| for an everlasting slog 2. like I'm not really sure how to win
|
| So I find that I need 'delivery' goals --> 'my app is in the app
| store' or 'my article was published'. When you work for someone
| else this is the kind of goal they give (when will you ship XYZ)
| and you probably always make those.
|
| Hope this helps!
| ProZsolt wrote:
| This is exactly me.
|
| You not just need 'delivery' goals, but small goals as well,
| like missions in a game. Where you see you are progressing.
|
| Also in videogames you never hit a wall, you never have to
| fight a boss that impossible to beat at your level. Side
| projects are more like those pay to win games. Where the first
| part is easy, but after that, the progress can be slow. You
| have to get a big reward (for me it is usually scratching my
| own itch) to make the grinding part work.
| elviejo wrote:
| I have the same problem.. too many ideas to develop... Shiny new
| technologies to learn.
|
| What I've done is:
|
| 1. Just don't do programming side projects. Currently my side
| project is making a couple of bookshelves for my house (Google
| pipe furniture). They are easy to make, require very little
| tools, my wife loves them... And miss importantly I have
| something to show for my efforts. So basically get a hobby not
| related to programming, where you have to make things,
| preferentially in service of others.
|
| 2. My other side project is a small prototype to create a startup
| on that. We have been working on that for 6 months (the longest
| I've worked on anything) the key, for me, has been have a pair
| programmer. A junior dev that I can mentor, while we work. I even
| pay him. I advertised it like an internship. So I'm very
| committed to that project: pair programming for accountability.
| Mentoring for social connection. Paying for financial commitment.
| ronreiter wrote:
| Side projects should always be in a position where you want them
| to become your main project.
| anderspitman wrote:
| I struggled with this for years. Finally made it over the hump a
| couple years ago and started finishing things.
|
| The one key question for any side project I consider starting now
| is:
|
| "Will I use this myself?"
|
| Building something that makes your life easier is a huge
| motivator to get through the slog days. And if you're considering
| trying to sell it later it's nice know you have a market size of
| at least 1, which is more than many startups.
| agentultra wrote:
| I've been employing a tactic I've picked up from artists/authors:
| _don't talk about your project_.
|
| Talking about it tricks your brain into thinking you've done the
| work and you lose motivation.
|
| Sticking to a schedule can help as can ritualizing the process of
| working on your project: have a certain place you associate with
| the project or a particular genre of music that gets you excited
| (it's important to not listen to that genre/album while doing
| anything else). These tactics exploit the power of association in
| our brains to form habits.
| yboris wrote:
| I've come across this tactic, I think there may be some
| psychological studies backing up the suggestion.
|
| There is an opposite suggestion that may work too: telling
| others you're planning on _releasing_ an app at some date
| (setting a public deadline). This way you may feel pressure (to
| avoid the pain of 'losing face') to complete it on time.
|
| Note, do not talk about "I'm working on this thing" (see
| comment above why that may backfire), but instead talk about an
| explicit deadline you think you can hit.
|
| Needless to say, this is best when talking with people you
| expect to interact with in the future (so you feel responsible
| to finish), it may not help psychologically when talking to
| someone you'll never see.
| smilebot wrote:
| I read that in the section Commitment and Consistency of the
| book, Influence - https://sites.google.com/site/724ecialdiniw
| iki/home/commitme.... If you commit to something publicly to
| someone especially written, you are more likely to do it.
| ErikAugust wrote:
| Do you need to stick with it?
|
| Side projects are a good way to harness raw energy to learn a lot
| of things hands-on in a rapid amount of time. But it also might
| be a good thing to not continue to venture deeply down a path
| just because you have started something.
|
| I have multiple personal experiences where I have tried my best
| to develop my side project (or part-time business) into a full-
| time business - with less than stellar results. Yes, I have built
| a tool or service! Yes, it works and provides value! Yes, people
| will even pay for it! But can it pay all the bills? Is it worth
| the stress? Is it even the right tangent to be on, as a business?
|
| In addition you have financial costs and there's can be a massive
| opportunity cost (years of effort) to "sticking with it". Holding
| your cards when you naturally feel like folding may not be worth
| it either and it often takes years to find that out.
| eismcc wrote:
| A friend of mine once said about such issues, "you can do it all,
| just not all at once". Slow down, pick something and work on it.
| You can do the other thing later.
| optymizer wrote:
| The way I deal with this issue is by writing the idea down in as
| much detail as possible.
|
| I find that the process of writing gets the itch out of my brain
| and also forces me to go through a planning phase before I decide
| to commit my time to an implementation.
|
| For example, if I wanted to make a game I'd write down the main
| idea behind it, what game mechanics I would implement, how I
| would structure the progression through the game, how it relates
| to other games, any technical aspects that are relevant, I'd
| sketch out any visual details like a map, game ui, etc.
|
| I have a long list of semi-developed ideas I stored as notes in
| Google Keep that has accumulated over the years - business ideas,
| games, tools, etc. I have written prototypes for some, which was
| fun.
|
| I find that most ideas need to simmer for a while. I'll often go
| back to add more details to an idea, because I thought of
| something new. Those are usually my best ideas, but also the ones
| that require the most time.
| techbio wrote:
| One thing that seems useful to me, in addition to determining
| experimentally what I can actually accomplish on my own, is
| determining the common components, and knowing that the more time
| I put into the things that cross project boundaries, the more
| useful I will become for my employers/clients, and the more
| effective boilerplate I can DRY with. Future projects will more
| likely require the core infrastructure than any specific, final,
| perfect, finished UX I imagine ahead of beginning.
| kjgkjhfkjf wrote:
| Pick one of your unfinished projects, identify a way to make
| progress on it, and then make that progress. Repeat this process
| until all your projects are done.
| tverbeure wrote:
| Two things have helped me with that:
|
| * I started blogging about my projects. And I try to keep a pace
| of roughly 1 blog post every 2 months. * I have a mix of on-going
| long term and short term projects.
|
| (I've also submitted talk proposal for long term project for a
| conference even though I had barely started that project. It got
| accepted. The fear of a public failure was _very_ motivating! I
| don 't recommend it.)
|
| Forcing myself to write something every 2 months automatically
| results in the need to do some short term stuff as well. 2 months
| ago I made simple how-to video about how to solder with enamel
| magnet wire and all the tools in my home electronics lab.
|
| This weekend, I spend hours on disassembling, photographing, and
| measuring the signals in a smoke detector with an expired
| battery. (Writeup WIP.)
|
| These are all things that only take a day or two to complete.
|
| Meanwhile, I have a project ongoing to convert an FPGA-based thin
| client into a retrogaming machine. I work on it on and off.
| Sometimes it's idle for months, and then I pick it up again for a
| few days. I don't know if I'll ever complete this project, but
| it's all hobby stuff anyway, so there's no pressure.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I think it would really help me to have a partner in any project
| I do. Someone to hold me accountable and to be excited about
| breakthroughs.
|
| It's just so hard for me to motivate myself. I used to think this
| was a failing of self discipline. But working with people makes
| things fun.
|
| Look at the show "the office". They thought of the most boring,
| unfulfilling type of work but it actually looks fun to work
| there. It's all about the people.
| brudgers wrote:
| What projects are you working on?
| klodolph wrote:
| Hard deadlines. 48 hour game jams are great. Take Friday off from
| work, make a game on the weekend. If you miss the deadline on
| Sunday, you _failed the game jam._
|
| For me there is usually a point about 24 hours in where it seems
| like a hopeless amount of work, that I'll never finish. However,
| I push through, and keep working, ruthlessly prioritize, cut
| every feature I don't absolutely need, and finish making the
| game.
|
| The game itself is not a side project that I stuck with, but the
| experience helps. Having the experience of "pushing through" and
| finishing a project with a specific goal is the real takeaway.
| Next time I'm stuck on a personal project, I can remember pushing
| through the game jam project and getting it done.
|
| And finally... I only finish something like 5% of my projects,
| maybe. Don't try to finish a project just because you started it.
| linuxlizard wrote:
| I have the same issue. I try to remember a quote, origin I can't
| remember, "If we want to do anything, we must not try to do
| everything."
|
| If you're interested, want to help me work on my web project? :-)
| I'm not a front end web dev and am having a slow go at it.
| Whazzzup wrote:
| For me the best way is to remember that the time will pass and is
| passing anyways. Might as well have just done literally anything
| related to the project rather than not.
| arkanciscan wrote:
| It me
| shireboy wrote:
| Yes I have this problem. No I haven't found a fix. One thing I do
| is keep a trello board of "product ideas". I have a couple
| hundred. I review them and move the ones I feel are best by
| various criteria (ease to build, value to others, income
| potential, etc) to the top of a "I Keep Coming Back to These"
| list. I only allow myself 5 on this list.
|
| Really, I should just allow myself 1, and focus on that. I'm just
| so bogged down with day job and family life, I haven't done it.
| Some days I console myself that I'm doing the right thing keeping
| a steady well-paying day job and providing for the fam. Other
| days, I'm ready to toss it all and do my own thing. What I hope
| will happen is a small break in day job where I can fit in and
| focus on side gig.
| brudgers wrote:
| When you're imagining a rogue-like use a piece of paper and some
| fat markers and make some of its artwork. That's where it starts.
| Not with downloading a graphics library. Not with configuring
| Travis-CI. Not with >git init. Those are pretend work. They are
| non-progress. They are not creative work. They are not hard. The
| hard thing is doing something poorly. The hard thing is barely
| making progress. The hard thing is opening yourself up to someone
| saying "that's inefficient." That someone is usually you. Good
| luck.
| nerder92 wrote:
| Do It with a friend which is equally curious an committed as you
| are.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Learn a musical instrument. Guitar, Piano or Piano Accordion. You
| won't be able to do that last one if your currently in a
| relationship. YMMV. Once you start, you'll really suck at it for
| a very long time but it's fun and it's a relaxing way to build a
| skill that is calming and quarantine friendly.
|
| Programmers program, writers write, doctors doctor? No doctors
| work hard most of the week and a bit of the weekends but they do
| that so they can have other stuff.
|
| My job is Software and IT. It's less about code and more about
| clear rational decision making. Not thinking about it all the
| time makes it easier to think about it when it's time to do that
| work.
| westonplatter0 wrote:
| What were you intensely curious about at 12 years old? Do that.
| spodek wrote:
| You describe focusing on the solution. The inspiration to make
| your solution generally feels great, but doesn't endure. On the
| contrary, you'll get caught up in more and more solutions because
| you're mostly satisfying fleeting whims.
|
| Focusing on the problem and the people who feel it will generally
| engage and inspire you longer. When you ask someone about what's
| missing in their lives or specifically what emotions they feel in
| the area you want to work in, they tell you, you offer possible
| solutions, and they say "when will you finish it, I want to buy
| it?", that inspiration lasts a long time.
|
| Whom do you want to make your project for? What emotions do they
| feel that you want to address? Are they bored, frustrated,
| confused, misunderstood, lonely, etc? Each emotion is different
| and will lead to different solutions. Ask them so you hear in
| their words what they want. Ask them to clarify.
|
| The inspiration to help others is deeper and creates meaning and
| purpose beyond just "I'm going to do something cool everyone will
| love."
|
| I cover how to make this happen in my book, _Initiative_
| http://joshuaspodek.com/initiative based on project-based
| learning entrepreneurship courses I taught at NYU. If anyone is
| interested in doing the exercises after reading the reviews and
| watching the videos but cost is a problem, email me and we'll
| work something out. I suggest the book because of the results
| people get from doing the exercises.
| al_ wrote:
| Whatever brings some joy, it's the signal.
| elorant wrote:
| For me the best way to stay focused on any given project is to
| find clients for it. Even if it's just a handful. If you know
| that there are people out there willing to pay for it, even if
| it's ramen money, you have all the motivation you will ever need.
| aww_dang wrote:
| I've finished projects and earned continual revenue from them. If
| it isn't compelling, then perhaps it is best to just let it go.
|
| If you already feel proficient with your tools, you can't justify
| your projects to learn these same tools.
|
| You are not the problem here. The problem is your ideas are not
| compelling enough for you. Think of something which will compel
| you to finish. Break the project down into manageable stages and
| execute. Don't make excuses for yourself. If you want it, you
| will get it. Otherwise, what are we talking about?
| lamename wrote:
| This is common for most people, at least in the beginning. This
| is the nature of creative projects because it's just always going
| to be easier to think of an idea than execute it.
|
| 1) you have to recognize that the dopamine rush of new ideas will
| not carry you through the project to completion in the same way
| it drove you to start. Inspiration is useful, but it's fleeting
| or at best inconsistent. The sooner you stop relying on
| inspiration to last, the sooner you'll learn to find other ways
| of motivating yourself. That being said, it's useful for
| inspiration to fade. This can help you decide the difference
| between a project that's really useful or was just an idea you
| had that is not necessarily worth your time.
|
| It also depends on how you work. Some people prefer long bouts of
| work and long breaks, others prefer a little bit each day. It
| doesnt matter which or both you try, just keep moving forward.
|
| 2) Nearly everyone who creates things has way more ideas or
| unfinished projects or projects that didnt work out than
| completed projects.
|
| 3) finished projects rarely end up the way you expected and
| wanted in the beginning. The sooner you accept this the sooner
| you can be flexible throughout the process to bring what's
| feasible to completion, rather than an idea that hit many snags
|
| 4) related to #3 is learn to recognize asymptotic progress. In
| other words, many projects are never "finished". You'll always
| have more to add, and that's ok. You can keep adding, but dont
| let that hinder taking a break or showing version 1 to the world.
| Recognizing "good enough" is important
| LeonB wrote:
| Have you considered the possibility that you may have ADHD-
| inattentive-type?
|
| There are online tests based on DSM criteria that can show you if
| it's worth looking deeper into, such as this one:
|
| https://psychcentral.com/quizzes/adhd-quiz/
| corecoder wrote:
| I do score quite high (total 44, inattentive scale 19,
| hyperactivity/impulsivity scale 25), yet I'm not convinced: at
| work I almost always manage to get things done well and in
| time, and I'm generally considered accomplished by my peers and
| managers, though maybe strange and over the top.
| LeonB wrote:
| Yeh. That's a significant finding. Honestly.
|
| People with ADHD can most definitely be productive and
| generally considered accomplished. They just tend to have put
| a lot of effort in, their whole lives, in order to get there,
| and may have developed a lot of cool techniques to get there.
| Treatment itself is about improving these techniques (and
| finding helpful medications, the two parts work together.)
| corecoder wrote:
| Thank you very much.
|
| I'm quite scared of medications, tbh, but I'd very much
| like to explore improving techniques.
| LeonB wrote:
| The stimulant caffeine is a popular alternative (provided
| you're not overly sensitive to it [it can cause heart
| palpitations and anxiety], and don't take it too late in
| the day) -- lots of people use it to self-medicate ;)
| corecoder wrote:
| Yes, I used to go really heavy on it. Had to quit it
| almost entirely, for both heart palpitations and anxiety.
| LeonB wrote:
| Not to harp on about medications, but there are "non-
| stimulant" medications used to successfully treat ADHD as
| well, such as Strattera.
|
| On the non-medicine side, techniques like bullet
| journaling are useful, also having "accountability
| partners" -- friends or groups you report in with each
| week to check on each other's progress; things like that.
| webmobdev wrote:
| ADHD seems to be a popular diagnosis in the west (mainly US).
|
| But it can just as well be that you have depression and anxiety
| disorders or anxiety based personality disorders. (E.g.:
| Obsessive Compulsive Personality disorder which includes
| dysfunctional traits like perfectionism that can interfere with
| your ability to complete projects).
|
| What I am trying to say is that if you feel that psychological
| counseling can help you figure out why you are stuck in life or
| some other thing in life in particular, please do not try to
| diagnose yourself. Go to a good hospital that specialises in
| mental health and get a proper diagnoses by a qualified
| psychiatrist.
|
| It is very easy to go the wrong track and come to the wrong
| conclusion while self-diagnosing yourself as many symptoms
| overlap with many related mental ailments.
| daotoad wrote:
| Adderall
| chucksmash wrote:
| You can improve matters by a) scoping projects less ambitiously
| and b) enforcing a novelty budget on yourself.
|
| A very ambitious project which you will never finish might
| actually be three small projects which you will finish and
| seventeen small follow-up projects you'll decide to never take
| on. Better to get the three under your belt than try to sprint in
| 20 directions at once and bail with nothing to show for it.
|
| Say that you decide "I'm going to write a personal ontology
| engine flexible enough to store everything I know, with a snazzy,
| super intuitive frontend written in <new-to-me framework X>, a
| plug-in system for easily creating visualizations for specific
| types of data (oh, like, what if my personal knowledge DB could
| take FEN+PGN and let me replay and annotate interesting chess
| games in-line, that'd be so sweet!), a bespoke query language,
| the whole thing will be backed by <new-to-me storage backend Y>
| and, hell, I've been meaning to start containerizing apps at
| work, I wonder if I should be using docker-compose as I do this
| or maybe like kubectl, ...also I need to dive into the literature
| around building ontologies, knowledge graphs, etc. Also, it
| should probably have emacs keybindings. Probably also support for
| rebinding keys and defining macros too. Also, it should have a
| pluggable module interface for scraping semi-structured data
| sources containing things I don't actually know right now but
| which I would like to learn at some point. Maybe I can use the
| hyperlink structure of Wikipedia documents as a scaffold to get
| the thing started. Oh geez, this is really going to need to
| support multimedia as well, not just text. Really, this kind of
| thing would be very valuable in many different contexts. It'd be
| great if it could be used to automatically generate questions
| about a topic. I could integrate a spaced repetition algorithm
| with the question generating bit and then I'd have an amazing
| study tool. Hmmm, I'd better keep the whole thing as flexible as
| possible so maybe at some point down the road I can productize
| it! Sure it's a long shot, but it'd be revolutionary if I could
| pull it off. I'll start tonight!
|
| To steal from Alan Perlis, "When someone says 'I want to build a
| personal knowledge DB as a side project and I want it to have
| perfect ergonomics, top grade discoverability, unlimited
| extensibility, and unparalleled ease of use,' give him a
| lollipop."
|
| Even if you don't get stuck in feature daydreams or analysis
| paralysis and manage to start the thing, your "gee it'd be swell
| if" side project has a five or ten plus year "labor of love" todo
| list attached to it. The mismatch will sink you unless against
| all odds this actually is your labor of love.
|
| As a personal example of the scoping into smaller projects which
| were standalone (though not a good example of enforcing a novelty
| budget) I wanted to make a personal activity tracker in 2018 or
| so. Initial conception was the all-singing, all-dancing, kitchen
| sink Swiss Army knife of personal data tracking and
| visualization, implemented in all the technologies I'd been
| meaning to try out. The backend would be a gleaming beacon of
| modern infrastructure with everything containerized from the
| outset, code written in Rust (in which I was a neophyte), phone
| app written in Kotlin (in which I'd only done the Koans, and with
| no other mobile dev background, but hey, "Anko" seems to be The
| Thing to use now, hmm)...
|
| Having been bitten by the bug you ask about in the past, I set
| that aside. Instead, I did a bunch of smaller projects with each
| on their own bringing a reasonable sense of completion:
|
| 1. Two Python scripts - one to configure desktop OS notifications
| to fire on a cron schedule ("Nag! Update your data for <x>") and
| one for CRUD operations on time series metadata and data points
| themselves. Just backed by local sqlite. Finished in <1 day. Hey
| look, MVP! Time to start tracking data!
|
| 2. Docker setup for building a Rust binary and then trimming away
| build tooling to get a deployable artifact. 1-2 days?
| Containerization itch: scratched. Could be a 101 level blog post.
|
| 3. PostgreSQL docker image with CREATE/DROP TABLE scripts. Half a
| day? I guess I learned about Docker data volumes. I can refer
| back to this Dockerfile in the future, which is like 9/10ths of
| how I make progress quickly on new projects.
|
| 4. docker-compose setup for a Hello World level Rust binary that
| reads a record from a postgres db running in a separate container
| and writes it to stdout. Half a day? Hooray, orchestration.
|
| 5. "Hello World"-as-a-Service web app that uses Rocket to send a
| Hello World application/text response. Not very long to finish.
| Novelty framework itch, scratched.
|
| 6. Learn about Diesel. Use Diesel to make a single SELECT
| COUNT(*) query against the DB. Send query result as
| application/text response on a dummy endpoint. Done. Could
| probably be broken off into a "Intro to X with Y and Z" type blog
| post.
|
| 7. Update SELECT-as-a-Service web app to make a meatier query and
| serialize response to JSON. Learn about Rocket request guards for
| managing DB connections. Another day or two? If step six wasn't
| enough for a 101 level blog post on the topic, seven definitely
| is.
|
| 8. Port the Python CRUD functionality to a Rust REST API atop
| Postgres. Deliverable: approximately all the backend we'll need.
|
| 9. Update the Python CLI to use the REST endpoints. Another day?
| Done.
|
| 10. Start doing Android Hello World apps. Using unfamiliar APIs
| in an unfamiliar dev environment in an unfamiliar (but nice!)
| language. Eww, this sucks. I'm not having fun any more. Maybe I
| should first learn vanilla Java Android app development, then
| Kotlin, then build on that basis with Anko, then...
|
| And then, at that point, I realized that aside from enjoying
| daydreaming about the idea of a personal activity tracker, I
| didn't actually give a crap about having an all-singing, all-
| dancing personal activity tracker. While I'd been happily
| chugging along building the thing, I didn't care enough about the
| underlying functionality to bother taking two minutes a day to,
| y'know, actually track the data when the MVP nag script ran on
| its cron. When I bailed though, instead of "ugh, another
| incomplete useless waste of time," I ended up with several
| completed small projects and more knowledge about what I actually
| wanted (to futz around building a personal activity tracker, not
| to have one).
| bambataa wrote:
| Make a list of things you want to do but don't start it. Remove
| them when you lose interest. If anything stays it might be a
| goer. You will never have time to do everything.
|
| Also, think about what you really want to achieve. When you think
| "I'll make a roguelike in X!" do you actually want to make
| something you or other people want to play? Or do you really want
| to just have a cursory understanding of how a roguelike works? Or
| to get a slight familiarity with language X? Do the initial
| research without committing too much to it and see if you
| maintain interest.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| Same here. I am in very similar spot like you, I start a new
| game/engine project every day and switch language every few days.
|
| The best tip I can give you is to participate in competitions.
| Like "make a game in 7 days". It gives you a set timeframe and
| forces you to push the product into a usable/presentable state.
| Better to have few working unfinished games than many unfinished
| projects that aren't even playable.
| 21stio wrote:
| Keep the scope small so you'll be done fast
|
| Become accountable, e.g. partner up with somebody else
| tomcam wrote:
| When that used to happen to me I realized the reason was that I
| thought maybe I was making the wrong choice, no matter how
| carefully I had thought it out. Later I would wish I had finished
| the project because I understood my life would have been better
| if I had.
|
| Eventually I learned to accept the possibility that my choice may
| be second best. It was an insidious form of perfectionism. It was
| better to finish a project that may not have been the "best"
| option than not to have done it at all.
| devgoth wrote:
| what has worked pretty nicely for me is working on something with
| someone. its nice to know you are working on something and are
| not alone. it also helps with accountability.
|
| i know not everyone will be able to work with someone but this is
| just from my experience.
| paulintrognon wrote:
| My way of overcomming this situation is to use the MVP process
| for my side projects: your side project needs to be as simple, as
| featureless as it possibly can, so it can be shipped to your
| friends quickly, before you get tired of it.
|
| It has worked really well for me: simple projects are more likely
| to be finished, and when you show them to other people, their
| feedback/enthousiasm fuel your energy to add more features and
| spend more time on the project.
| alexmuro wrote:
| The best thing that you can do to give a project legs is to get
| other people involved. Even if you don't have someone who can
| work on coding with you, just sharing it and enrolling other
| people in your vision for a project is the number one way to give
| you the motivation to continue working on it.
| RMPR wrote:
| This is true, the feeling that someone is depending on your
| work can give you the necessary boost to actually finish, or at
| least reach a polished enough version.
| formalsystem wrote:
| I think it's totally OK, normal and beneficial to want to
| experiment with different applications.
|
| The main issue is after a few years you may feel like you have
| nothing to show for it and the best solution to that feeling that
| I've found is to document what you've learnt in a blog post. Over
| time you'll end up with a large personal knowledge base on which
| you can draw on when you want to and actally can finish a complex
| project. You'll also attract the right kind of people that can
| help you by putting your thoughts down in writing.
|
| The idea is you want to slowly build yourself to be the kind of
| person that can finish a complex project in a weekend and the
| best way to do that is to constantly be in the high payoff space
| you get when you're learning something totally new.
| davidyu37 wrote:
| It's great to see so many people sharing the same challenge I
| have as well. As developers, we always want to build things.
| Things we find interesting. Maybe we "finish" some of them. Maybe
| we don't ever finish something because there's always
| improvements to be made.
|
| "Meaningful progress" also is hard to define. One day you feel
| it's "save humanity level" meaningful. The other day is just
| lines of codes that don't work.
|
| Some companies like JotForm evolved from a side project, but not
| all side project will become an actual business.
|
| I think the reason why we even call side project a side project
| is because we have options.
|
| It's ok to fail. It's okay to explore, experiment, and create. As
| long as it doesn't deeply offend your core values, side projects
| are supposed to be fun.
|
| If it blossom into something that you can't ignore, then you will
| come back to it no matter what.
|
| I wrote an article back in the days when I documented why I
| couldn't start a side project here: https://medium.com/swlh/this-
| is-why-you-will-never-start-tha...
| willart4food wrote:
| Check out the book "Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge
| from Small Discoveries"
|
| In a way it's the concept of MVP but really from the point of
| view of picking up projects.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I have the exactly same situation and I also made a half ass
| engine for a 2d rpg with a map editor.
|
| I don't know what's happening, but whenever I'm pushed to do
| something, either by my parents or my boss or anything urgent
| (say I have an interview in a week), I'm suoer focused and can
| get tremendous amount of work done in a short period of time.
|
| However, whenever I set up a target for myself, out of curiosity
| or interest, anything non urgent, I'll just do a half asd work
| for maybe a few weeks and then never get deeo enough to learn or
| show anything important.
|
| This really summaries my life since day 1. My dream is to have
| someone pointing a gun at head and say "learn this or die" and
| I'm sure I can finish it nicely and quickly. But in real life I
| don't have this kind of luxuries...
| orasis wrote:
| Which one potentially benefits others the most? That's the
| easiest one to stick with.
| he11ow wrote:
| I really like this question. If I'm honest, it rarely happens
| that I don't finish stuff. But this wasn't some magical switch
| that happened overnight. Rather, a bunch of stuff, so this
| question kind of gives me an opportunity to reflect on what led
| to meaningful change:
|
| 1. Action vs Motion. A lot of comments alluded to this here, and
| the best I've seen it articulated was in James Clear's book
| Atomic Habits. You have 'Motion' which is thinking, imagining,
| whiteboarding, planning, talking about...everything that goes
| _around_ the doing. And you have 'Action', which is actually
| doing. Motion is incredibly pleasant, but it's a trap. Action is
| never as much fun. Because soon enough you're going to get
| uncomfortable, stuck, frustrated. At the very least, recognize
| when you're in Motion and when you're in Action, so you're not
| trying to fool yourself. See also Shonda Rhimes' "A
| screenwriter's advice" [0].
|
| 2. The closer you get to finishing something, the greater the
| resistance is to finishing it. This was articulated in Steven
| Pressfield's "The War of Art". IT becomes a struggle, and it's
| not fun, and anyone who tells you otherwise is flat out lying.
| There is fatigue from the project, and there's also the fact that
| it's not quite what you had in your head when you dreamed about
| it. Because you couldn't dream the imperfections. This this is
| not a fault of implementation (any creator will fess up to
| feeling this way). So acknowledging all of these and fighting
| through it is a crucial skill for getting things done.
|
| 3. Without a Process, there's not going to be an outcome. I
| started as a developer, then switched to writer, and now I do
| both. It's the switching to becoming a writer that taught me how
| to get stuff done, because I honed the process. I knew what it
| would take to get a project from start to completion. Different
| projects take more or less time, but the stages are clear. When I
| tackle something now, be it in code or in writing, I set up a
| roadmap. One that I can say definitively for each step, when it's
| done, and what's next.
|
| 4. Domain: it really, REALLY, helps to build up domain expertise
| in something. The tech is the HOW, but the domain is the WHAT and
| the WHY. Without a good WHY, odds are the project is doomed. A
| domain is really about mining more interesting questions, and
| staying engaged with ideas. So that even when you hit into
| difficulties, the curiosity about the problem helps you push
| through. I'm kinda not surprised you'd give up quickly on
| building a solitaire with Y, cause who cares, right? And the
| answer is...you don't care. You don't really want a solitaire,
| because you know that problem's been solved to a good enough
| extent that it simply doesn't matter. It's hard doing things when
| you can get yourself to feel they matter. With a domain, this
| happens less.
|
| 5. So another thing writers say a lot is "Show, don't Tell". And
| at some point in my life I decided to take that mantra seriously.
| I felt I'm done with SAYING (on my CV and anywhere else) that I
| can do X, Y, Z. I was going to SHOW it. It just makes life
| simpler and easier when you can just shrug and say, "Yup, done
| that, here's the link." So the point here is that even if I'm
| doing something in order to learn, it HAS to have an outcome that
| can be offered to others. Whether they like it, or buy into it or
| whatever is a different question, interesting in its own right.
| But my view on folders filled with half baked ideas is that it's
| not good at all. If you've read "The Goal" (if you haven't, I
| recommend it) - this is is inventory, and it's a liability, not
| an asset.
|
| 6. Saying No. This is REALLY HARD. There is more stuff you'll
| want to learn than time to learn it. There are more projects
| you'd like to get done than the time you're awarded in life. And
| there is genuine pain in declining to do something you really
| want to do, because you need to focus on something else. But the
| alternative to this pain is, ultimately, those folders filled
| with half-baked ideas. Though I am getting better at saying no, I
| have yet to get better at not feeling the pain.
|
| 7. Time management. Everyone has the same 24hrs in the day. The
| only question is, how much of this time gets wasted. A lot of
| people I respect don't spend time on social media. Author Michael
| Lewis has talked about how it drains creativity out of you in
| small bits, like air going out of tires. I wholly agree. [Right
| now, with the covid situation, deep work is super hard. People
| are just dealing with it however way they can.]
|
| [0] https://zenpencils.com/comic/161-shonda-rhimes-a-
| screenwrite...
| vinyll wrote:
| As many I experiment the same with __some __projects. Though I
| 've been working on a side project for 7 years now!
|
| The difference? It's purposeful to me and a long challenge for be
| and the foundation that needs it. Because people depend on the
| work I do, I must do it. Because these people can't do it, I must
| do it. Because the purpose they serve is something that means a
| lot to me too, I want to do it.
| danans wrote:
| Usually I start projects I want to start, but I tend to finish
| projects because I have to finish.
|
| The necessity/drive to finish can be internally or externally
| driven, but there's no mistaking it, so don't sweat what you
| don't finish. Take it as a signal that you've reached the limit
| of your interest in that pursuit.
|
| Of course, if the issue is something more fundamental (like
| ADHD), none of this likely applies, and seek help from a
| professional.
| winrid wrote:
| Right now financial independence motivates me. I just keep
| imagining how if I had N customers what I could do with my time
| other than work for someone else.
| swiley wrote:
| Maybe work on personal discipline, also I've noticed with myself
| that sometimes a lack of motivation can be confused with a lack
| of understanding. The more you practice your tools the longer
| you'll go before you get badly blocked and give up, eventually
| you'll have projects that you can hack on for years.
|
| Here's what worked for me:
|
| 1) pick a language (it doesn't matter, C, python, ocaml) and just
| start writing small things in it. Do this so much that your inner
| monologue starts speaking the language, that you have an
| uncontrollable urge to sit down on Saturday and barf our
| thousands of lines of bad code in it the way you might write a
| rambling post on tumblr.
|
| 2) understand problem decomposition: practice OOP for the broader
| application (you don't need an OO language just use it to break
| the problem down, write UML if it's your first couple times) and
| FP for smaller problems.
|
| 3) practice discipline. Clean your room, do your laundry, make
| your bed, wake up at the same time every morning, go for a walk
| every day, keep a house plant alive. It's almost unbelievable how
| much this discipline with small things can make you more focused
| and less compulsive.
| RMPR wrote:
| The point 3 really helped me to see some improvements. When I
| complete those little tasks in the morning, I get the necessary
| boost to get the next things done.
| karterk wrote:
| Since so many people are sharing their story, I will share mine.
| 5-6 years ago, I started working on Typesense
| (https://github.com/typesense/typesense), an open source, typo
| tolerant search engine designed for speed and developer
| productivity.
|
| In the past 5 years, my journey has brought me through my
| wedding, the birth of my first child, losing a loved family
| member, a job switch and so on. Nevertheless, it has been really
| great seeing the project gain traction and motivate me to keep
| working on it through the highs and lows. Everybody differs, but
| I think for me the following 2 things kept me going:
|
| a) Pick a project that you are sufficiently motived.
|
| b) Don't set deadlines but have a plan to work on the project
| everyday. One some days it will be hours, on other days it will
| be just thinking about a problem at the back of your mind for a
| few minutes, but the idea is to keeping at it.
|
| Now nearly 5 years later, I'm still not done yet but I'm amazed
| how much I've achieved by just showing up every single day.
| myhikesorg wrote:
| Find a problem you want to solve for yourself and then build a
| solution.
|
| I created https://myhikes.org as my side project in 2015 because
| I hated the existing public trail platforms at the time - a lot
| of things have changed since then, but so has my skill set, data
| set, the way I write, the way I think about features, the way I
| weigh pros/cons of features and time.
|
| Don't aim to solve the world's problems or make money with a side
| project, aim to make your own life easier or more enjoyable in
| some way. You never know what will come of it later if you
| continue using, building, and growing your idea.
| onion2k wrote:
| Focus on solving a problem. Find something you actually care
| about and _need_ to make instead of something that you think
| sounds cool or that you think might make money. Let those things
| happen organically. If you actually solve a problem people will
| tell you that it 's cool, and they might pay you for the
| solution.
| inigoesdr wrote:
| > Find something you actually care about and need to make This
| is my problem. It's hard to find something that I care about
| enough to spend time working on it. When I start on something
| that I do care about, I often find something that already
| exists that does what I wanted to make.
| jayavanth wrote:
| Do it anyway. Or think about how you can improve it. If it's
| open-source look at their code and collaborate with them.
| simonw wrote:
| Ship early, ship often. Ship a version you are embarrassed by and
| try and convince some people to use it.
|
| I've had far too many side projects which languished in the "it
| just needs one more feature..." zone. My productivity with side
| projects shot RIGHT up once I learned to avoid this.
|
| Remember: if you are disappointed that your project doesn't do
| something you had planned and you ship it anyway... no-one else
| will ever know!
|
| Perfect is the enemy of shipped.
| dznodes wrote:
| I have a side project for you. There is currently a very
| functional prototype and yet I need a technical co-founder to
| build beyond this proof of concept.
| ishjoh wrote:
| What works for me is a step I find most people like to skip and
| that's planning.
|
| As a number of other folks have said, if you have small things
| then you're more likely to get them done. Often though you'll
| need a bunch of these smaller things to make a product that
| someone might be worth paying for.
|
| So what I do is I plan the project out into modules or blocks of
| functions that take a few days at most. I know for myself I take
| great pleasure in crossing things off lists (this is literal, I
| write things down in a TODO and physically cross them out). To me
| it's satisfying to see the list get smaller.
|
| Seeing the list get smaller, and knowing there is an end, keeps
| me motivated. Now I still have moments where it can feel like a
| grind, the worst seems to be when something is just over half
| done. That's when it's the most important for me to tell myself,
| well I'll just work on this one thing and I grind through it.
| Then when I'm about 80% there, that's when a lot of motivation
| comes back to finish it.
|
| Hope this helps.
| victorMLL wrote:
| gvhgvb
| RocketSyntax wrote:
| Do something small - write an integration package that bridges 2
| tools you enjoy using.
| bartq wrote:
| Nothing wrong with your situation, you're just experimenting and
| learning. Keep doing what interests you most, you'll eventually
| settle on something for longer period of time.
| [deleted]
| themdonuts wrote:
| Get people using it. Period.
|
| Result: with every user interaction you will get a refreshment of
| motivation. I've done it for 5 years.
|
| Long version: I was all about starting projects and never
| finishing, until one day I actually put one online and started
| spreading the word through discussion boards.
|
| So step 1) Launch and spread the word. You get 1 thing out of
| this immediately: you WILL finish it to the bare minimum, because
| what if someone actually tries to use your product?
|
| You could argue: yeah, but when I give up on the project it's no
| where near ready to be launched. I would argue back that if you
| dropped it, it probably means you got something out of it - could
| someone also benefit from it? Maybe, at that moment switch your
| brain to: now let's launch this and spread the word.
|
| Step 2) Put metrics in it You want to see if there's people
| coming to your website. Crucial for step 3, read on.
|
| Step 3) You will see people coming to your website and
| interacting with your product. This is the best part, because it
| gives you such a kick of motivation that will make you want to
| continue working on it. It just keeps giving.
|
| I've started a project 5 years ago and I put it out there and
| forgot about it. 2 months after someone used it and I got my
| first reservation. That was such a source of motivation!! It's
| magical and it's a cycle. As I continue working on it as my side
| project and as I start losing interest, I get a new user which
| then sources me with more motivation to keep going. This cye
| repeats
|
| I've learned a lot in terms of business, technology stack and
| devops, but all this applied to the same project I started 5
| years ago.
| neonmate wrote:
| > Get people using it. Period.
|
| Or find people that code with you, like a hackathon.
|
| I recently wrote an application https://wintermute.app that
| tries to connect coders.
|
| @corecoder Maybe you can find a project you want to participate
| in? Or at least you find some first users / supporters for one
| of your ideas.
| stared wrote:
| I second that.
|
| To combine with "starting small" it can be a simple single-page
| app, or a blog post, or anything. At least for me, feedback is
| the fuel (even negative feedback >>> no feedback).
| RMPR wrote:
| > Get people using it. Period.
|
| This is a good TL;DR
| mihirchronicles wrote:
| I am also just like you!
|
| It is indeed irritating and confusing at times. I like to do many
| things and explore new ideas. Curiosity takes me in different
| direction. At times, I question my personality and character.
| Perhaps the feeling of "curiosity killed the cat" is applicable
| when we are feeling this way.
|
| But let's reframe this!
|
| What if we start to accept this trait, not as a flaw, but as a
| part of who we are? Once you come to the realization, you start
| holding yourself accountable.
|
| I have been working on a side project (www.wisecharlie.com) for
| almost 3 years and continue to do so for many years to come. To
| give you a background, I am a developer and I enjoy the creative
| side of code and design. So, it is natural for me to keep
| exploring new ideas, but I also know the importance of execution.
| Following are the ways I have held myself accountable to this
| particular project:
|
| 1. No expectations (goals) other than a form of exploration.
|
| I have a revenue generating product, but that does not mean, my
| goal is to sell the most I can, get as many people to come visit
| my project and get the most sign-ups. I care about the topic,
| constant work-in-progress and iterate over it periodically. The
| process itself brings me joy.
|
| 2. Sticking to one project at a time removes a cognitive load of
| finding new ideas.
|
| For some, creative block is a real thing. From the creative
| standpoint, I have built the website using plain JS/HTML/CSS,
| then built the blog using Gatsby. I wanted to learn about webflow
| so I re-built it during Christmas. I don't have to think about
| new ideas every time I want to learn something new.
|
| 3. Incremental steps as opposed to a giant leap.
|
| I assign myself one task at a time on a monthly basis. That is
| it. I don't set ambitious goals of 100k users or any of that.
| This has allowed me to work on this project for over 36 months
| without feeling burnt-out. It is a turtle race so take
| incremental steps and make frequent progress as opposed to a
| giant leap. If I complete my assigned tasks, I allow myself to
| jump on to other ideas. This allows me to stay accountable and
| execute consistently.
|
| 4. Pick a hobby that has nothing to do with side project.
|
| With lack of human interaction amid global stay-at-home orders, I
| find myself to be draining my productivity (rarely, but it does
| happen). To fix this, I picked up on sketching because I wanted
| to forget about everything that is happening around me. Sketching
| helped me with that because if I don't focus, my shapes don't
| follow the desired form. Here is the link to my sketch work
| https://twitter.com/mihirchronicles/status/12160752161594859....
|
| I am sharing these resources so I can share real cases from my
| own life and inspire you to take steps that may work for you.
| Good luck! It is okay to feel how you feel, but I would suggest
| you to make incremental steps, define your process and take a
| long-term view.
|
| The advice I share took many years of learning and doing.
| Curiosity brought the cat back and you can too! :)
|
| Cheers and stay safe!
| voidhorse wrote:
| I struggle with these tendencies too. For me, I think it usually
| stems from being interested in the _product_ not the _process_
| --that is, if I could snap my fingers and immediately produce
| what it is I was envisioning (even though that initial vision is
| usually fuzzy) I'd do it.
|
| I think people who can stick with things long-term enjoy the
| _process_ of what they 're doing at least on some level. What
| enables them to stick with something is not the goal post, but
| the _activity itself_. They 're motivated to spend x hours a day
| building a roguelike not only because they're driven by the
| vision of what they're going to produce, but because they
| genuinely have tons of fun and get tons of satisfaction from the
| _activity_ of writing a roguelike and solving the problems that
| arise in that domain.
|
| Personally, I've found that this love and enjoyment of process is
| usually an acquired thing. It's just like going to the gym. Once
| you make it a habit it becomes easier and easier and you become
| so dependent on the rhythm and little boosts you get from going
| to the gym that your dream body or whatever initially got you in
| there pretty much becomes irrelevant--it morphs into an activity
| that's fundamental to your way of life, you _need_ to do it, you
| become dependent on it.
|
| I've found that sticking to intellectual pursuits long-term is
| analogous to going to the gym. If you force yourself to be
| consistent and to show up every day and commit some time toward
| your project, you'll soon come to love the process and it'll be
| much easier to see it through to the end.
|
| It's incredibly hard but really important to resist the idea that
| you can bring your grand visions into fruition within a short
| span of time--it just doesn't happen, and it's these sorts of
| fantastic expectations that lead to eventual disinterest and burn
| out. If you're constantly chasing the finish line and fire up all
| cylinders to get there as fast as possible you'll never make it,
| but if you run for the joy of running and do so consistently
| you're guaranteed to get there eventually (the tortoise and the
| hare).
| zenhack wrote:
| I struggled with this for a long time, I think a lot of us do. I
| don't know how broadly applicable my story is, but: at a certain
| point I basically cracked and picked a project and said "I'm
| going to finish this if it kills me." It was one of the larger-
| ish projects that I'd made a bit of progress on and put aside.
| The project became an exercise in finishing things, which helped
| motivate me through the times when I wasn't really interested in
| the project itself.
|
| It took me longer than I care to think about to complete it. I
| think by the end I was pretty clear with myself that I wasn't
| really that interested in the project itself anymore; the point
| was to learn to finish something.
|
| The result is here:
|
| https://github.com/zenhack/haskell-capnp
|
| Somehow this actually worked, and I've found myself not having
| that much trouble sticking with projects when I decide I want to
| build something. Most of my 2019 hacking was on a new programming
| language, which is "close" to being ready to announce (the code
| is up there if you look for it, but I haven't been too loud about
| it since I don't know what I'd tell someone if they showed up and
| wanted to help), though Sandstorm got active again and that's
| diverted some of my time. ...and I've been hacking on Sandstorm
| pretty consistently since.
|
| Keeping myself organized and on track is still a struggle, but
| something shifted and sticking with something long term doesn't
| seem as hard.
| csallen wrote:
| Throw some extrinsic motivation into the mix. Intrinsic
| motivation is great of course, but it's fickle. Your internal
| emotional state changes like the wind depending on what's going
| on in your life, what time of day it is, your mood, and even what
| you've eaten.
|
| Extrinsic motivation is usually more fixed and reliable. It's
| what drives much of human productivity, and is responsible for
| the major miracle that is billions of people waking up and going
| to work every day to do things they may not even enjoy.
|
| Some common sources of extrinsic motivation include obligation to
| people (a boss, a partner, an audience, customers, users), social
| consequences (shame, embarrassment, letting others down), and
| monetary consequences (getting fired, losing a bet, etc.). On a
| more positive note, there's also encouragement from people,
| social rewards, and monetary rewards.
| vishnuvis wrote:
| I faced this. Start a website then lose it because I would be
| losing interest in few weeks.
|
| The thing which I followed is to fix my routine. Joined a Gym, it
| helped a lot on focusing on things & made me mentally strong.
|
| Take off time, started travelling & took a long break & then get
| back to work. A step closer to nature made me fresh & met people
| who are really working hard despite the lack of resources. This
| made me think about how am wasting my time, despite having all
| the resources.
|
| Sat one day & written everything on things I wanted to do. Made a
| weekly task, monthly, quarterly. Then started steps to accomplish
| it.
|
| At first it wasn't easy but slowly I made a habit & then finally
| get used to it.
|
| Just follow something for 21 days, it will be a habit.
|
| All you need is 21 days.
| [deleted]
| GhostVII wrote:
| I find it much easier if I pick projects that I actually could
| benefit from. For example I started working on a note taking app
| a little while ago, because I couldn't find one that I liked. I
| know I will probably not get a complete return on my time
| investment, but it keeps me motivated to finish since I know I
| can make it exactly how I want and end up with a product
| perfectly suited to me.
| nukst wrote:
| That sounds obvious but goes completely unnoticed, and it's
| very smart. A good part of what keeps me motivated to work on
| something is believing in the solution. This line gets a little
| blurry when it comes to games, but the only way for me to
| mitigate that is to make games I would play.
| akavel wrote:
| I like to think that my side projects are primarily _a hobby_ ,
| which I understand as an important venue for "venting off" after
| work. Notably, if they start to feel too much like work, they're
| no longer hobby projects, losing their super important (for me)
| psychological function! I mean, I still do feel guilt often, and
| am still on a lookout for some way(s) to cope with it... But
| interestingly, in my case, for one of the projects, my itch was
| so strong eventually, and I was so often annoyed I don't have
| this tool, that it kinda "forced" me to find the strength to push
| through to the completion, even when it was becoming a chore.
| Since then, I again abandon projects with guilt repeatedly ;) but
| again also have one among them, that I'm coming back to on and
| off, when I feel fancy, and trying to push forward. Again, I'm
| kinda repeatedly getting annoyed I don't have it for myself; when
| annoyance of not having it becomes bigger than my memories of
| annoyance developing it, I'm getting back to it again :)
| sometimes looking at it reminds me too much and is enough to
| scare me away again, but sometimes I'm just so angry I say to
| myself screw everything and sit and push through :) Still, also
| as others said, I look at the unfinished "hobby" ones also
| sometimes as some kind of research I wanted to do, thus honing my
| skills or just randomly "playing with my mental muscles" in
| various ways anyway - kinda as a kid plays in a sandbox however
| they want. They don't ask anyone for permission to drop the toy
| car and start digging a funny hole in the sand, just to fill it
| back with exactly the same sand moments later.
|
| _edit:_ One more thing from what others wrote that also kinda
| resonates with me, is that especially with the finished project,
| I kinda did repeatedly cut corners, and I mean _a lot_ , like
| freaking brutally, to get to the absolute minimum and absolute
| most brain-dead simplifications and quick hacks, kinda like
| taking the machete and just cutting my way through the jungle not
| looking behind, just to get to the PoC. I cut _worlds_ of ideas
| from it, leaving them as "TODOs", scribbling in a notebook, or
| just "manana-ing" with cruel premeditation, I still hear them
| howling at me with angry remorse. Uh, sorry folks! Some day,
| y'know, pinky promise, maybe!... I remember you, I really do
| (mostly...), but, y'know, kinda different toys now that I'm
| playing with, y'see... And suddenly, this PoC (wrapped in a
| pretty readme and asciinema gif, which were actually the most
| exhausting finish of the whole run... but I was so close, it was
| like no way, if I don't do this, nobody in the world will know
| how an awesome tool I made... but they _must know_... it will
| help them sooo much... I think... I mean, it helps _me_ so
| much... and let them just see the gif... gifs are pretty!!) kinda
| proved to be enough, both to me and to tons of other people I
| wanted to share with and thought may also like it, and closed my
| eyes and published, saying screw possible bad reactions or just
| crickets... sweet! :)
| totemandtoken wrote:
| Maybe try to stone soup yourself. Start a project where the bare
| bones can be done in a couple of days but the possible features
| to add are unlimited. For me, there's this implicit calculation
| of opportunity cost. Like, if I work on this, I can't work on all
| these other interesting things. But if you switch your mindset to
| "working on this will help me work on all these other things,"
| that opportunity cost disappears.
|
| For example, just the blockchain data structure (not a full
| cryptocurrency, just the data structure) is relatively small and
| doable. Maybe a tiny perceptron or autoencoder. But there's a lot
| of opportunity to make something with even such small toys.
|
| And don't be afraid of making something that isn't a "true" or
| "real" whatever. Yeah, it's not a "true" blockchain but it was
| toy to test your chops on.
|
| Also, whatever you do end up doing, regardless of whether you
| finish it or not, write about it. Just a paragraph or two of what
| you were trying to do, how far you got, what made you lose
| interest. Informally as possible.
| thibaultj wrote:
| I used to be like you.
|
| Back in my early career years, and even before when I was a
| student, I used to have a lot of cool side projects that would
| only interest me for so long. I would spend a few hours or days
| on them, and then throw them out or forget them.
|
| It was ok because I did not care about the project in itself. It
| was interesting to try new techs, or methods, or just spend some
| time doing something I loved.
|
| It stopped being ok when something shifted in my mind : I
| subconsciously decided that _I wanted to stick to a project_. But
| it was for the wrong reasons. I wanted to make money. I wanted to
| have a cool startup. I wanted to be able to stop working. Too
| much Hackernews hype. But since I did not really care about the
| project itself, I never managed to stick to it.
|
| After years of frustration, I quit wasting my time and took on
| some other non IT related hobbies.
|
| Two years ago, I picked a side project for the first time in
| years: it's a cool music theory related website.
|
| https://www.mamie-note.fr in case you're curious.
|
| I've managed to keep working on it (and being interested to do
| it) since then. It's the longest time I've ever spent on a single
| project.
|
| Here are the things that are different for me today:
| - I do care about the project in itself: it's the site I wish
| existed when I started learning music, and the site grows as I'm
| growing as a musician. - I really enjoy the daily process
| of working on it, I don't fantasize about how great the end
| result will be in a few years. - I don't care about the
| tech, I care about the topic. - I'm turning the site into a
| business, but making a living with it will be a cool side effect,
| not the main objective. - Since I do have a family now (and
| we are in lockdown), I have much less time to work on it. It's
| easier to stay motivated when you spend two or three ours on a
| project instead of 15 or 20. - Working on this project is a
| hobby, but it's not my only hobby, I take interest in other
| things, so when I'm bored and don't sweat it and take breaks for
| some days or weeks.
|
| My two cents.
| tunesmith wrote:
| For me I think I just learned to stop being hard on myself for
| not finishing. They're side projects, you don't owe anything to
| anyone. I've also found that as time has gone on, certain side
| projects have remained compelling to me even after getting burned
| out on them the first time. Some of them I've eventually gotten
| back to, gave up on again, and then gotten back to. Before long
| it becomes clear that it's not that I'm perpetually undisciplined
| and lack follow-through, it's more that I've made slow and steady
| progress on those projects over the years.
|
| Only other advice I can give is that when picking a side project,
| find something where the process is as enjoyable as the outcome.
| JoelMcCracken wrote:
| I used to be in this position. Your question really resonates
| with me.
|
| I think I have broken the cycle, but it is hard to be sure of
| something like this of course. I have certainly been able to make
| more progress on projects than I have been able to in the past.
|
| I think this has helped me:
|
| - Make a Someday/Maybe list. Capture your ideas and put them on
| the list. This can just be a text file. Feel free to add
| implementation notes. Then, when you have time, you can come back
| and see if the idea still compels you. The examples you give, for
| example, sound like things I might have on my own "someday/maybe"
| list.
|
| - Evaluate your ideas/projects. Do they spark interests? What are
| the reasons why you desire to complete the project? Do you think
| that desire will carry you through to project completion?
|
| I'll give you some examples of myself:
|
| For a time, I was really unsure what I wanted to do after I
| became dissatisfied with Ruby. I wanted to keep exploring
| functional programming, especially pure functional programming. I
| also really wanted to work with the actor model, and at the time
| Rust 1.0 was just being released, so I started working on that at
| the same time.
|
| At the time I played around with a lot of things. But I ended up
| focusing on learning Haskell, and my goal was to completely work
| through this book https://haskellbook.com/. I was able to finish
| this after several "false starts" with Haskell over the years.
|
| Why did I keep working on this project, instead of any of the
| other myriad shiny things that pop up on HN? Well, a few reasons:
|
| - I really wanted to familiarize myself with pure FP. I had
| become dissatisfied with OO techniques, slowly thinking of them
| as an evolutionary "dead end", and wanted to explore something
| else. IMO, Haskell was the best way to explore this.
|
| - I also really wanted to be able to "read" Haskell. Generally
| speaking, Haskell has become a sort of "lingua franca" in the
| functional programming community. You often see snippets using
| its syntax and read concepts explained using its ideas. When I
| encounter terms like "typeclasses", I wanted to go from "eyes
| glossed over" to "comprehension".
|
| There are more reasons, but suffice it to say that I thought that
| given my long term goals, not knowing Haskell had become a
| stumbling block. So, I decided to change that, and working
| through the cited book has worked for me.
|
| I didn't _only_ work on this project. I did take a few breaks
| here and there as needs must, and interest naturally waxes and
| wanes, but the motivation held and the project is completed.
|
| Having completed it, I have a few new projects that also have
| compelling reasons for me to work on them. I have flip flopped
| between them at different times, but there have been good reasons
| for doing so, and the reasons have not been because I lost
| interest, but because of external factors.
|
| - Realize that you will still sometimes just desire to experiment
| with something for a little bit. That's OK. The other day I
| downloaded and messed with Electron. It was just something I
| wanted to try out and satisfy my own curiosity for something
| random. But you should think of this as being a time-boxed
| experiment, and not something that you are committing several
| years of your hacking life to. Unless, of course, it _is_ , but
| in that case, count the opportunity costs before mentally
| committing yourself.
|
| -----
|
| Edit:
|
| I forgot to include this link; I think it might help you too.
| http://blog.fogus.me/2015/11/04/the-100101-method-my-approac...
| It has been discussed on HN a few times.
| iKevinShah wrote:
| Definitely not an expert in this but I have found that the bigger
| the aim, greater the tendency to nope out of it (for me).
|
| So one way of going around this is keeping short, simple,
| achievable-today goals.
|
| Example Target: I need to develop a CMS.
|
| New target: Need to create that one method which will do X and
| return boolean value.
|
| Once that is done, on to next.
| vcool07 wrote:
| I read this somewhere that, instead of focusing on "what to do
| ?", shift your focus to "why do you need to do it ?". If you
| focus on the why and can convince yourself on the importance of
| it, maybe it would get done. On the other hand, if your "why" is
| shaky, then most probably somewhere in the back of your mind it's
| marked as "not important". It's like one of those things that you
| just want, but don't really "need", so no wonder you lose
| interest pretty soon.
| rjspotter wrote:
| I'd suggest you try spending a little more time up front defining
| the what and why of the project before you start. If you don't
| define what winning looks like ahead of time it's easy to quit 5
| minutes in when you're confronted with making tradeoffs but,
| don't have any context to under-pin those decisions.
|
| Additionally, don't start with big hairy audacious side-projects.
| If all you've ever gotten to with one project is two days. Define
| a project that will teach you something that you think you can
| finish in three days.
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| Be realistic with what "done" is when you start a project and
| force yourself to get to that point. It doesn't have to be
| published or making money or anything specific, but define what
| it is and do it.
|
| The more often you get to "done" the easier it is. The same goes
| for quitting though - every time you quit something it gets
| easier to excuse yourself the next time and so on.
|
| The last 5% of a project is always the hardest to slog through.
| Being able to finish things is a super important skill and
| something I'd say is worth cultivating.
| james_impliu wrote:
| Do it with someone else. You're then not just accountable to
| yourself.
| jackyinger wrote:
| You have to know what you want to make before you can make it.
| Embrace this challenge.
|
| Allow yourself to develop your ideas before attempting to code
| them up. Draw diagrams, take notes, think about how to implement
| the systems and subsystems. Do lots of research. Make prototypes
| to play with ideas.
|
| If you want to make anything that is not trivial you're going to
| have to spend a bunch of time on architecture and design before
| you get to execution. Try to see this as a gift rather than an
| impediment.
|
| Best luck!
| cityzen wrote:
| I am fortunate that I can think of ideas pretty quickly but I get
| overwhelmed with what tech to use. If you can just standardize on
| a platform you know, set your ego aside and use that. You can
| always iterate a working project but you can't do anything with
| unfinished work.
|
| If you want to learn new, shiny tech, do small proof of concept
| projects and consider if they bring any value to what you've
| already built with what you already know.
|
| Aside from that... you just have to do the work!
|
| A book I've really enjoyed for my motivation across not only work
| and side project but also life in general is The Obstacle is the
| Way by Ryan Holiday: https://www.amazon.com/Obstacle-Way-
| Timeless-Turning-Triumph...
| ollerac wrote:
| In my experience, switching from task to task and not being able
| to maintain focus is a minor form of burnout.
|
| It takes energy to stay focused for a long period of time.
|
| My advice: take a few months off. Let your mind wander. If you
| come up with an idea, let it go if you can. If you come across an
| idea you can't let go of, even after multiple days or weeks, then
| maybe you're ready to commit to it!
| OOPMan wrote:
| The only personal projects I've ever done that I stuck with were,
| unsurprisingly, the ones I dog-fooded.
|
| In other words, I worked on them and developed them to the point
| of usefulness because I actually needed to make use of them.
| [deleted]
| sodafountan wrote:
| I understand this isn't exactly what you're asking for as it
| seems like you burn out on the idea before you even get to the
| implementation but I've found that for coding projects, keeping
| my code clean really helps to motivate me to stick with the
| project.
|
| If I'm building something and the code gets messy I increasingly
| feel frustrated while working with it which turns me off from
| working on it - somewhat of a negative feedback loop, so when I
| start to feel like the code is a hassle to work with, I switch
| gears from writing features to refactoring the existing code-
| base.
|
| This gives me a nice change of pace, lets me think a little bit
| differently than simply "add features", and when the refactoring
| is done I have a much more thorough understanding of the code
| I've already written and what needs still needs to be done.
|
| It seems like a pretty simple and obvious suggestion but I can't
| tell you the number of times I've let a personal project become
| unmanageable just because I've wanted to keep adding features
| which at least for me leads to burnout.
| houssem_fat wrote:
| Having exactly the same issue here, i have been working on many
| software side projects since a while (for 7 years now) and never
| launched a successful product. For the most of ideas i built
| about 30/40 % of the platform (user management, profile,
| authentication, backend apis, emails, architecture, messaging
| systems, dockerization, other stuff, blogs ...). For me the real
| obstacles (and what make me give up) were how to put the key
| features that make my solution better than others. I feel
| motivated and very exicited for some time but then it collapsed
| because i need to digg more for the best solution. Examples:
| 1-how to add e2e video/messaging encryption to an appointment
| medical app. 2- how to use sms alternative solution to web/mobile
| apps for farmers who don't have internet connection without using
| other third parties. 3- build a learning platform for kids but
| figure out how to provide the cheapest computer solution
| (raspberry based maybe) because these kids cannot afford a
| computer. I learnt a lot from these projects both in technical
| and business aspects but i still feel the imposter syndrome every
| time i talk about my ideas or when i see another solution similar
| to my idea who works just fine. But i'm sure that hard things
| need more hard work. Thank you for this thread.
| abinaya_rl wrote:
| I would suggest to make something over the weekend and set a
| 7-day deadline and come up with the basic version of the idea.
| Charge the user a fee, it can be anything.. just put a paywall.
|
| - Release it on Product Hunt, corresponding Reddits, cold pitch
| people on Twitter
|
| - Get a few paying customers
|
| - Signup for IndieHackers and celebrate your small milestones.
|
| - Continue the above steps until you get 100 customers
|
| - Play with the different pricing plans
|
| - Explore how to get a word out of your product.
| zw123456 wrote:
| Why stick with it? My view is that the main purpose of side
| projects (for me anyhow) is to learn and improve my skills and to
| open up to new ways of approaching things. But even if your goal
| is to work it into a side business, I still would argue that
| sometimes sticking to the same side project too long can be a bad
| choice. I have a fried who worked on the same side project for 7
| years and I think it stifled his creativity because he was always
| focused on the same narrow set of problems associated with his
| project.
|
| I am simply suggesting it is possible to go too far in sticking
| to the same side project. For me I usually consider a side
| project has run it's course if I have learned as much as I needed
| to on it and then I try to move on to something completely
| different.
| gfxgirl wrote:
| I don't have advice but am looking for some along a similar vain.
| I've made lots of projects in the past but now not so much and my
| fiction is that I'm super jaded by which I mean since I have lots
| of experience I know all the things I want to do are relatively
| huge projects and it's unrealistic to even start and further even
| if I was to finish it's unlikely to be successful. Not that every
| project has to be successful but I can't see investing 1-3 years
| into it if I don't actually believe it it's likely to do well.
|
| For a small project 1 - 5 days I there's no issue. Though often
| when I'm finished I look back and think, "If I had spent that
| time working on something that had more of a future then I'd also
| have more of a future". Success buys freedom so when I don't
| pursue something with a future I have only myself to blame for
| having to go back and "work for the man".
|
| So, how do I get over that jadedness and as Shia Labeouf would
| say "Just Do It!"
| trwhite wrote:
| I recently read Angela Duckworth's "Grit" and from reading this,
| suspect you might derive some value from it.
| slothtrop wrote:
| What hits me is a sense of meaninglessness.
|
| I can be disciplined enough to stick with something as part of a
| lifestyle, or whatever I find consistently rewarding, e.g. an
| exercise regimen and cooking new things. When it comes to
| creative projects, I'll get to the point of having a rough
| outline but often just ditch the rest. Particularly with music
| more-so than writing, the pursuit feels pointless or unimportant,
| and I always got the sense that the special catalyst with music
| is people, feeding off the passion of other musicians. I tend now
| to skip the BS and just go straight to composition since that is
| the aspect of music that most interests me.
| bakhy wrote:
| I've had lots of ideas like that, things I'd like to do which I
| never get around to. The one I did go through with and still keep
| working on it on and off is the one that had a connection to my
| job.
|
| I worked on a very concurrent system and thought maybe STM would
| be a nice fit for it. I found the concept of STMs very
| interesting. And I noticed that, although there were many
| implementations for .NET, all were one-off projects, not
| maintained, and in my opinion not very nice to use. So I ended up
| writing one myself.
|
| I guess that sweet spot for me was having a problem that I dealt
| with on a daily basis, which gave me the drive and a clear
| picture of what I'm trying to achieve, and the fact that it was a
| fun challenge to implement and a learning experience related to a
| concept that intrigued me. The other ideas I had would mostly
| have just that second part - they're fun, challenging, but not
| really solving something I deal with too often.
|
| So, I don't have much experience, I don't have many side
| projects, but for what it's worth, my advice is to try to find
| something in your day-to-day which bugs you, and for which you
| have some interesting idea that you'd like to experiment with.
| jayfk wrote:
| I'm the opposite. I love to work on side projects, often getting
| carried away for several weeks/months until I finish them.
|
| Once they are "complete", I'm loosing interest and get carried
| away on other things, often times I don't even publish them
| anywhere.
|
| If someone wants to team up on this, let's chat.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| How do you approach planning the projects? Do you just sit and
| start coding? I can only guess what are the issues are with the
| information you provided, but I guess you discard your projects
| because you are not invested in them. People tend to stick to
| ideas they invested more time and effort.
|
| I think you would attach more value to a project if you plan it
| first.
|
| Use something to test your idea first. If by meaningful project
| you mean something that others can use and solve a real life
| problem, maybe take a look at The Startup Owner's Manual
| (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13557008-the-startup-
| own...).
|
| If your idea withstand the first tests and you want to commit to
| it, describe in general lines what is to be done, describe some
| general, doable deadlines, maybe use a Kanban board. You should
| have at least an idea of the scope of the project before you
| start. Do not think about a finished, polished product. Think
| about something functional, that is shippable. You can polish it
| later.
| vtail wrote:
| What works for me is enjoying the process, not the end result,
| and making small incremental progress. I started blogging
| recently - just little pieces of code or analysis here and there
| - and found that a sense of making progress strongly motivates me
| to tackle harder problems, while sharing my progress along the
| way.
| qaid wrote:
| I was in your situation a few years ago.
|
| I "found my way out" when I created a project that I really cared
| about. It scratched multiple itches and I was constantly finding
| new ways to improve the application. It got the the point where I
| had to create a backlog for improvements I wanted to see.
|
| My mind started to wander and I started thinking about my
| newfound organizational skills. I started the high-level design
| for a tool to organize my scatterbrain. Thankfully, I decided to
| just keep it in my backlog and continue on what I was working on.
|
| td;dr: 1. Add projects to backlog 2. Weigh benefits of each, rank
| them 3. Work on #1 project 4. (Optional) Set a deadline to re-
| evaluate priorities 5. When new ideas pop up, add to backlog.
| Fill in as much detail as possible. The goal is to do a braindump
| and get back to what you were previously working on.
| mbesto wrote:
| Solve a problem _YOU_ have.
| Glench wrote:
| Since I haven't seen this in the comments so far, I'll suggest
| that you begin to reflect on what's truly meaningful to you. It
| sounds like you're able to have a lot of ideas that aren't
| particularly meaningful, which are probably ideas you got from
| the values of your cultural environment. So try reflecting on the
| following prompts: what kinds of experiences do I want to help
| people have, that would be truly satisfying to see? What moves my
| heart and gives me energy to keep going?
|
| With deeper meaning and purpose it will be natural to want to
| stick with something.
|
| > Has anyone else experienced this, and, more importantly, found
| their way out?
|
| I wrote a little bit about that in these two articles:
|
| Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist:
| http://glench.com/WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist/
|
| Deep Listening at the Recurse Center:
| http://glench.com/DeepListeningAtTheRecurseCenter/
| nullspin wrote:
| I have been contemplating a similar change. The dynamic for me
| is interesting. When I go deep into tech studies or projects I
| eventually feel a what-is-the-point energy take over. When I go
| deep into exploring the mental/emotional/spiritual my
| engineering creator brain will eventually agitate.
|
| Figuring out how to express both has been a decades long
| puzzle. A puzzle which has not been very productive for my
| career. I have recently considered turning all tech into a
| hobby and getting a Masters in Social Work.
| rmac wrote:
| just read your "why I quit" blog. thanks for documenting your
| journey as it will help other travelers give themselves
| 'permission' to explore new paths.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yes, all the time, the time left for coding after work is very
| little, family and friends always take priority.
|
| Some of my hobby coding projects are more than 10 years old by
| now.
|
| The only ones I managed to stick all the way to the end were side
| projects that had a real customer at the end, so I had to
| actually deliver, or face the consequences of having someone
| really unhappy.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Make something you _need_ , so that you will actually use it
| yourself.
| coss wrote:
| My friend said if you are having a hard time finishing a book,
| it's probably not a book for you.
|
| Same thing applies. You gave up on these because its not right
| for you. Once you find someone worth spending your time on you'll
| stick with it. Keep looking.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I have experienced this my entire life.
|
| I'm interested in so many things that I cannot focus on one thing
| for too long or to completion. This really sucks when people ask
| what I do with my time because I have nothing fully realized yet
| I did spend the whole time tinkering in my own way.
|
| I overcome this a little with discipline. I just have discipline
| and a clear path/plan and go step by step through to completion.
|
| I'm probably going to pick up a book or two that is mentioned in
| this thread.
| yumaikas wrote:
| So, I'll take a different tack: Are you interested in finishing
| projects or are you interested in learning new things? Because
| those goals aren't exactly 100% aligned.
|
| It sounds like your motivation is more about learning new things.
| If that's the case, lots of small, half-baked projects can
| definitely be educational.
|
| You're also mentioning projects that take significant ramp-up
| time before they might start to get a life of their own.
|
| So, that being said, I have a couple of book recommendations:
|
| If what you want to do is learn software development in a growing
| way, I highly recommend Mastering Software Technique:
| https://software-technique.com/. It's all about using bursts of
| time to learn new things as fast as you can. For your situation,
| it sounds close to what you've been practicing, with just a tiny
| bit more process.
|
| If what you want to do is actually build something on the side
| for people other than yourself (which is _not_ a requirement for
| learning useful things), then I recommend
| https://jessicaabel.com/growing-gills/.
|
| For me, I've embraced the non-essential nature of my side
| projects. I've had quite a few over the years, some large, some
| small. Being able to put one on the back-burner and come back it
| later has been very handy. Most of my sideprojects these days are
| ones I can get to "done" in a day or two, and I have a couple
| longer-running ones that I pick at off and on. My motivation for
| a particular project varies, some are meant to scratch a _very_
| specific itch:
|
| - https://github.com/yumaikas/dirx was basically done in a late
| night and a morning - https://idea.junglecoder.com/view/idea/274
| I've done 3 times, first in bash, then in Go (in a rather late
| night, to scratch an itch), and then again in Nim (to learn Nim,
| and compare it against Go).
|
| Some projects I have are a lot longer running. Both PISC
| <https://pisc.junglecoder.com> (now on indefinite hiatus) and
| Tabula Scripta <https://github.com/yumaikas/tabulaScripta> have
| run a lot longer than my typical project. One quality of both is
| that they have work at quite a few different levels of detail. Am
| I tired of parsing work? I can work on prototyping a game in
| PISC. Do I want to make the performance dramatically better for
| my artificial Fibonacci benchmark? Great time to break out the Go
| profiler. Do I want to make it way easier to concatenate strings
| in a stack-based language? Maybe today I figure out how to write
| an evalbot. (These are _all_ things I did in PISC at different
| times).
|
| Tabula Scripta is still early days, I haven't had the time to use
| it for that sort of experimentation, but it will have a similarly
| broad set of applications and problems to solve.
|
| And, like other people have said, it definitely helps to do you
| side projects in a different IDE/Language than your work. And if
| learning is a big motivator, keeping your projects smaller, or
| making them the sort of things that's easier to break into
| smaller parts can be very helpful.
| bobblywobbles wrote:
| I think you need to ask yourself why you feel like you can't
| complete something. When I hear you say this yourself, I feel
| like you may struggle with too many good ideas or a lack of
| discipline to see them through.
|
| For me, my problem is I have too many ideas, and sometime the fun
| of a new idea outweighs finishing an existing idea. This is where
| I need to rely on my discipline to carry me through to
| completion.
|
| Most of my projects don't ever go past 2-3 months, but the one
| that is now, well it's requiring my discipline so that I can
| finish it. That isn't to say I just work on that, I have days I
| do other things to give me a break as well.
| _hardwaregeek wrote:
| Get the stupidest thing done and finished. I started my compiler
| with waay too much ambition. I planned out a Hindley Milner type
| system but with row polymorphism. I planned out the entire
| syntax, records and all. But I didn't actually have anything
| done. I spent so much time trying to think about how to implement
| x feature or y feature because I thought I should get it all done
| at once. It took me maybe a year to figure out that I should just
| get the stupidest thing working: arithmetic from parsing to code
| gen. I had resisted this because frankly there's a million
| tutorials online about making a calculator compiler. But who
| cares? It doesn't have to be original. It needs to be done.
|
| Also only learn one new thing at a time. Don't make a side
| project where you're learning to write a compiler in a language
| that's new to you. That's two new topics and therefore infinitely
| harder.
| alecbenzer wrote:
| My therapist recently told me that often it's working on
| something that sparks (or fuels) the passion for it, not the
| other way around.
|
| Sometimes you just need to decide to do something and make
| progress on it, not worrying about the fact that it's not what
| you're most interested in at this instant.
| sebringj wrote:
| The only reason I completed a side project was because I had
| people that I cared about that wanted my side project done to
| help them out. In other words, I had social motivation and
| collaboration. For me, going completely alone on something is
| much more difficult because its like the tree the forest making
| no sound (perception) if no one is there to hear it. It doesn't
| seem to have that connection or impact of meaning unless I have
| others that care that I have direct interaction with.
| zabil wrote:
| I can relate to this. Here's what's worked for me. Don't work on
| it alone. Get more eyes on it. See if other people find it
| useful. Get feedback. It's quite motivating to see your side
| project helping someone else. But it's also important to know
| when to stop.
| virtualritz wrote:
| A friend of mine said to do a successful software product you
| need three kinds of developers. Skip one and you will likely
| fail.
|
| 1. the kamikaze
|
| 2. the soldier
|
| 3. the sniper
|
| Kamikazes start the project. They have a broad vision of how the
| result will look (total victory, ofc) and they do not pay
| attention to the mountain at the horizon or the road missing a
| bridge over a canyon a few hundred clicks ahead. They just start
| running.
|
| Soldiers are those who march on day by day. Following in the
| kamikazes footsteps they do the grunt of the work. Much more
| thoroughly than a kamikaze ever could muster patience or care
| for.
|
| Snipers are needed when the army hits an obstacle. Like a booby
| trapped rock in the middle of the road. They will shoot the
| explosives from afar. They are highly specialized individuals who
| care much more for the problem they solve than what means to what
| end it presents.
|
| Most developers I know have a little bit of all these three types
| in them.
|
| I did understood long ago that I am mostly a kamikaze.
|
| Coming to terms with that when I do not finish yet another spare
| time project ... that's a lifelong goal to overcome.
|
| You are in good company. As others said: focus on the learning
| more than on the result. This is what makes coping with not
| finishing stuff much easier for me.
|
| At the same time this change of perspective may just provide the
| inkling of additional motivation needed to actually do finish one
| or the other of those projects.
| fudged71 wrote:
| I had two cofounders, and this is possibly the best description
| of how we operated... each with a different timeline and focus.
| Although I can't say that it ended well between us
| [deleted]
| dutchblacksmith wrote:
| It's normal, just count the comments on this post. You have
| learned a lot on this "never finished" projects. Thats nice.
| Sometime along this road jou find the right project and make it
| work. Keep the projects (or parts of it) small, make a working
| mock-up fast and keep expanding it. I just finished a project I
| started 10 years ago and havent worked on it for several years.
| That feels really good.
| omarhaneef wrote:
| There is one very simple piece of advice that I have found helps
| me with this:
|
| finish.
|
| It doesn't matter how small the finish is, but whatever it is, at
| least get it to a point where you have something finished. If you
| are writing a book, and you want to switch, finish the outline.
| If you start a chapter, finish it. If you start an app, have at
| least a hello world page up.
|
| If you don't feel like working on it now, and a new idea pops up,
| feel free to start the new idea after you finish. Practice
| finishing just as much as you have practiced starting.
| somurzakov wrote:
| find a customer for your side project. even if it is one
| customer, even if she is a friend of yours.
|
| getting a feedback from your early customer will be more than
| enough to keep you motivated
| Glorbutron wrote:
| I do this, but I realized a while ago that most of the time, what
| I want to do is learn how to do things, and not actually do them.
| So that's all I try to do. Because after that, it's not fun
| anymore.
| ChipSkylark wrote:
| One more to the pile. My method:
|
| 1) Write down a clear S.M.A.R.T. goal or thing you want to do on
| a piece of paper (OKR style), a clear definition of why you are
| trying to do the thing, and when you should have it accomplished
| by.
|
| 2) On a separate piece of paper, define your expectations around
| how chasing that thing will feel and what you expect to happen
| when you accomplish it
|
| 3) Put the second piece of paper about expectations in a paper
| shredder - destroy it
|
| 4) Create a google doc (or whatever) with large bold letters at
| the top: My goal is to do X by Z because Y. Make accessing this
| doc as low friction as possible (a bookmark icon on home screen,
| a bookmark in browser, etc)
|
| 5) Create a consistent schedule (1 hour every other day?) and use
| the doc to track. Treat this as your personal standup doc: make
| entries on the disciplined timeline, and plot out next steps at
| the end of each entry. Review weekly (Sunday night?), take notes
| on your progress, etc.
|
| 6) Finally, at the target date, reflect on where you are, and
| celebrate anything and everything that happened as a result of
| your feeling inspired by an idea or goal and making tangible
| progress in your life because of it. It's beautiful.
|
| For the progress doc, viewing your progress makes it harder to
| give up on - think of it like "We've gone 100 days without a
| workplace accident" or "I haven't had a X in the last 50 days" -
| you build up momentum and commitment to seeing something through
| for the sake of not letting down the older version of yourself
| i.e. You make quitting an increasingly bigger deal.
|
| Regarding expectations - of course, I'm joking about steps 2 and
| 3. For me, living life chasing the vision for something gets in
| the way of actually getting after it, because by definition it's
| dreamy, and each step you take closer that doesn't resonate with
| the dream is another kick in the pants. Soon, you give up and
| move on because the dream (expectation) is significantly
| different from the actual experiences you have while taking steps
| towards it.
|
| For goal setting, I cannot stress the importance of setting
| S.M.A.R.T. goals and detaching from the dreamy stuff. If the
| vision is truly powerful and meaningful to you, it will be kept
| alive and supported by material success on the smaller milestones
| that you accomplish.
| andremendes wrote:
| You must pick something that is really meaningful for you in a
| way that will make you feel good seeing the progress of the
| project you are working on. What would a Roguelike have to be to
| take your full attention? How a strategy game you really love has
| to look like?
|
| What you like beyond games? If you like gardening, make a game
| about it. Are you a sports fan? Make a sport game. You get the
| idea.
|
| I'm saying this because it's working for me. Like you, I want to
| make games on my own. I am also into politics, so I chose a
| language and a framework[1] and started from the tutorial with
| the goal of making a politically-charged infinite-runner[2].
|
| After getting the basics I told my idea to a couple of friends
| that kindly drew sprites for me to use in the game. It's been a
| really cool experience. I'm doing it everyday and learning a lot
| in the way. I strongly believe that the subject choice for the
| project is what is getting me hooked to it.
|
| 1: https://haxe.org and https://haxeflixel.com/
|
| 2: https://github.com/fullynotanalien/bozorun (edit: formatting)
| beznet wrote:
| Came here to say this basically. If a project only has surface
| level interest, I'll never finish it. The only projects I've
| ever finished are ones that I found that would be legitimately
| useful for me or other people. It has to solve a problem that,
| like you said, is meaningful.
| ferzul wrote:
| yep. my solution uas simple. listen to my attention. if it's
| boring (at that instant), why stay? eventually i found and
| completed several projects, the need or interest driving me. and
| sometimes, i pick something up off the backburner and bring it
| closer to fruition.
| awake wrote:
| Instead of thinking I want to make this then immediately coding I
| would take a step back and write/design what you are about to
| make for a couple of sit down sessions. Writing and design work
| are much easier to throw away and start over with than code. When
| you do start to code try to write the bare minimum of code which
| lets you play with your tool. Keep a running list of ideas you
| have as you are making the project. These help keep the motor
| running when you want to stop later on. Also always keep a
| document tracking where you were when you put the project down.
| What problems were you fixing? What is up next? Even if you leave
| a project for a couple of months having a context building
| document, an inspiration list, and design documents should be
| enough to help you pick the project back up. Also if you never
| finish that's totally fine. It's a process.
| Insanity wrote:
| There's a benefit to finishing things, but there's also a benefit
| in quitting when you're bored.
|
| You don't need to finish a frontend for it if you get bored
| halfway through. Hell, you don't even need to finish the entire
| app if you think of something else to do with Haskell. You'll
| have learned something from the todo app even though you didn't
| finish. And pushing through might have just put you off of the
| entire thing.
|
| That being said, I do think there is value to actually finishing
| things. It will allow you to learn about the entire process.
|
| I'm developing a Godot game now. I'm done with the logic of the
| game, but I'm pushing through to publish it on an app store. Just
| to have gone through the entire cycle of 'polishing for an app
| store' even though the actual development was my main interest.
| mtrycz2 wrote:
| You sound like you like motivation.
|
| "Motivation" is the "why?" of what you're starting. If you start
| a project and exhaust the "why", it's ok to stop there.
|
| Is it curiosity? Is it want to learn something new? Is it want to
| check out a new technology? You could well answer these questions
| without actually finishing a project (it the final project itself
| wasn't the original "why").
|
| If you want some real life "why"s, you could check out one of the
| many Covid-19 project aggregators. Here is an aggregator of such
| aggregators: https://covid19projects.now.sh/
| billjings wrote:
| I've been in the same boat my whole life. But I'm currently
| working on a side project, and I've made substantial progress on
| it.
|
| It arose as a natural fruit of a daily writing practice I
| instituted. That writing practice itself came out of a couple of
| things:
|
| 1. I owned my desire to create something. Instead of guilt
| tripping myself for not writing, imposing the "If you only had
| your shit together like everyone else, you'd etc etc etc" line of
| thinking on my behavior, I honestly looked at myself and said,
| "You know, this bothers you not because you're a bad person who
| can't get anything done, but because you want to write. If you
| decided not to write anything, you would still be a perfectly
| fine person and you could live a happy life."
|
| 2. I let go of the creative process as a way of achieving
| outcomes I wanted, and embraced it as a way to happily spend my
| free time and make things that satisfied my own standards.
|
| A couple of months into my daily writing practice, it somehow
| mutated into a programming project. My programming still operates
| within the conceptual loop of my writing, but I suppose it could
| have turned into anything else.
|
| My advice would be to reflect on what you're doing moment to
| moment and build a narrative around it. Sometimes it can be
| invaluable to just write down what happened: "Well, I was working
| on this roguelike in Rust, but then I saw some blog posts about
| Common Lisp and decided I'd write a graphical solitaire game in
| CL." And from there you can understand _why_ it is you are doing
| what you are doing, which will probably be more effective than
| castigating yourself for doing what you 're doing.
| stared wrote:
| I have a similar thing - too easy to generate an idea, too hard
| to move them forward. Some die after opening a code editor, some
| half an hour later.
|
| First and foremost - if it is your style, try focusing on short
| projects - something that can be done in a few hours. But once
| you decide, make a rule that for 3 hours you stick for it.
|
| For anything longer that one day, I try to find collaborators
| (otherwise it is impossible). Importantly, they do not even need
| to touch the same parts of code - it is enough that I get some
| stimuli from time to time. Even for things that are day long, I
| try to move checkpoint-by-checkpoint, to have a sense of
| completion.
|
| ...
|
| In general, I really recommend diving in materials on ADHD,
| especially "Driven to Distraction" https://www.amazon.com/Driven-
| Distraction-Revised-Recognizin..., this attention-jumping may be
| a symptom of larger issues.
|
| Another thing that is worth nvestigating - WHY do you quit? Is it
| like that there are too many ideas? Or maybe being afraid of
| failure. (Vide perfectionism & procrastination.)
|
| On the other hand, I strongly object to some pieces of advice
| found in the thread, in the line of "if you cannot sustain
| attention, it means it is not worth it". Well, it might be true
| for the neurotypical population, but certainly isn't for AD(H)D
| folks.
| throwawaypa123 wrote:
| Find a problem to solve. Don't focus on tools.
|
| You want to do these side projects to show to yourself that YOU
| can do it. Focus on the problem not on the skill.
| zerr wrote:
| This is hard. Either your problem can already be solved with an
| existing tool or you are not interested in solving that problem
| (hence it is not that problem:)).
| sova wrote:
| This is a great question and one that often goes unnoticed: I
| observe my optimal work habits and patterns, instead of seeing
| them as a drawback, how to turn it advantageous?
|
| If your optimal flow is 2-3 days spurts on mini projects then
| think of a big project and break it down into these mini-
| projects. If you can build one power ranger, you can build the
| mega ranger, just thoughtfully break the tasks into pieces first.
|
| More importantly, you need a topic you are passionate about, and
| then you can use all your computer knowhow to make tools with
| that domain as a central focus or backbone. Again, you don't even
| have to stick with the same toolkit as long as you can break your
| work into meaningful mini projects.
|
| Celebrate and rejoice when you complete mini projects, and keep
| your eye on how satisfying it will be to make big projects come
| perfectly together. If it took many people many days to build the
| pyramids, it will probably take one person a while to build one.
| I don't think that's unreasonable, the key is staying motivated.
| Come to the desert and leave with a pyramid
| fimdomeio wrote:
| If it's a real project in my life and not something I'm just
| playing around with I force myself into a mindset where "It's
| only worth starting if I can get it out into the world". Start
| less projects, finish more projects. When I start switching
| things to do every five minutes, normally is because I'm tired,
| want to do things but don't have the energy. Then I try to just
| stop and rest, tomorrow's another day.
| Snoddas wrote:
| Find something that bothers you in your everyday life and make a
| MVP that solves that problem.
| henearkr wrote:
| Build something that you need (like, scratch an itch).
| Maverick073 wrote:
| This works for me:
|
| Let's say I have an idea and I spend a few hours researching
| about it and get very excited. I don't start working on it
| immediately. I sit on it for a few days and revisit the idea, say
| after a week. If I am still excited to work on it, I'll start
| working on the project, otherwise I drop it.
| ryeguy_24 wrote:
| I'm just like you.
|
| I stumbled upon a book called Refuse to Choose and it's about a
| personality type (that is definitely not ADHD) that happens to
| want to do a lot of things (sometimes in parallel or in
| sequence). It was very comforting to know others struggle with
| this and this book helps you to be ok with it. I wouldn't say it
| "cured" me but I think about it differently now and use it more
| to my advantage. Worth a read at a minimum.
|
| There was one very profound idea in this book that goes like
| this:
|
| "If you are no longer interested in a project you started, maybe
| you already got what you came for".
|
| In essence, maybe it's not the finishing of the project you came
| for but maybe the learning or understanding of how it could be
| done if it were to be done.
|
| This realization is interesting for someone who exhibits this
| behavior. When I was a kid, I loved to build legos but after
| following the instructions and building a kit, I wouldn't touch
| it again. As I think back now, it likely was because "I got what
| I came for" (the challenge of putting it together was more
| interesting to me than the end product).
| droobles wrote:
| This speaks to me on an almost spiritual level, I need to get
| this book!
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| This seems to be answering "how can I stick with a side
| project?" with "you don't need to." Maybe it's good advice, but
| OP specifically emphasized asking folks how to finish.
|
| > Has anyone else experienced this, and, _more importantly,
| found their way out? How?_
|
| [emphasis mine]
| arosier wrote:
| "maybe you already got what you came for."
|
| As someone who frequently starts projects and doesn't finish
| them, I've wondered if the part I enjoy about the project is
| the dreaming about what could be. That little rush you get when
| a new idea is upon you and it's all you can think about for x
| days. Doing the initial research and formulating a plan.
|
| This is a dopamine rush for me. The feeling of being laser
| focused for those few days is invigorating. The start of
| something new, the potential for life changing work.
|
| It usually stops there. Maybe that's what I came for.
| badloginagain wrote:
| FWIW I've found that there is a cross section between
| excitement of a new project and the momentum of that project.
|
| Most projects fizz out when the excitement wears off before
| the amount of work you've already done on it has enough
| momentum to push you to do one more task.
|
| When I push though that motivational hurdle, I find the
| amount of work already done incentives to continue on with
| it. The next task is obvious and relatively easy, because
| there is something to work with.
|
| Now, losing confidence that everything you've written is
| garbage and refactoring the same systems over and over again
| until you give up- that's the hurdle I choke on :D
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| > Now, losing confidence that everything you've written is
| garbage and refactoring the same systems over and over
| again until you give up- that's the hurdle I choke on :D
|
| My recommendation would be to pick a very small project and
| have specific goals for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Try
| to define a project you can complete in a week or two. Keep
| the list of specific features you want very short. Then,
| remember that the code doesn't have to be perfect, it only
| has to be good enough to implement those specific features
| you wanted. It doesn't have to handle epic amounts of
| traffic, etc. It's ok to cut some corners round as long as
| it does the job for what you're trying to achieve.
|
| Otherwise, just as a general mindset, I try to remind
| myself that a lot can be done incrementally. Sometimes it's
| important just to build a working version of your software
| so you can try it out and learn some lessons by playing
| with the working software. If you stop and refactor
| endlessly in an attempt to try to build the perfect system,
| you'll never get to the point where you're actually trying
| a working version of your program... Which is the point
| where you realize what's really important or not to achieve
| what you want.
| arosier wrote:
| Agreed, I have found that as well. I have tried to define
| how much momentum I need to stay engaged. For instance, I
| started a YouTube channel. The process of creating videos
| was a short enough feedback loop (a few days max to
| start/finish a video) that I was able to stay engaged for
| longer than normal. I fed off of each finished video as the
| momentum to keep working on the project of "growing an
| audience around a topic I was passionate about".
|
| I have also found that I am able to stay engaged in other
| applications where I have a shorter feedback loop, to
| maintain momentum.
| rchaud wrote:
| That's a great example. I experienced something similar
| with my side project, which was a music magazine app,
| similar in concept to the (failed) iPad interactive
| magazine projects that were all the rage back in 2012 or
| so.
|
| It was very challenging to build something that scaled to
| phones and tablets while having a magazine-type aesthetic
| (compartmentalized information on each discrete page).
|
| In the end, I abandoned it, and decided to create mini-
| zines and post them to Instagram as slideshows. Zero
| interactivity, but they're orders of magnitude faster to
| make, layout is constrained to IG's 1:1 aspect ratio and
| and I already have the artboards as I used Sketch to
| build my static mockups.
| tartoran wrote:
| I think you made a good saving of the initial investment
| and still managed to to publish your content which is
| mission accomplished. In fact you're likely to be
| consumed from IG.
|
| I also tend to go to the path of least resistance and do
| things in batches and the simplest way possible but
| concentrate on the most important aspect of it, the
| content. In the end this is the winner solution for me,
| if I were to take the long road I would most likely
| stumble upon details that are not important. If they are
| important there's a possibility to fix one aspect or
| another.
| rchaud wrote:
| True, I was stumbling on details constantly. Page load
| times, optimizing for screen sizes (this was a no-scroll,
| pure swipe-based mag), and it was very discouraging.
|
| And you're also right about IG, people actually saw it
| and it would come up if people searched the tags. As a
| passion project, that's 70% of what I wanted. That
| remaining 30% probably wouldn't have been worth the
| effort.
| jasonv wrote:
| I was reading a book called "You're Not Crazy - You're
| Codependent" (not relevant, except the source of what comes
| next in my comment) wherein the author made a distinction
| between "dreaming" and "fantasizing", the latter being
| destructive (in some cases) or unsatisfying.
|
| I feel the distinction is valuable for me, but I've also been
| helping my teenager work through his challenges wherein he
| hits the first speed bump and invariably gives up on
| something. Getting "through" the challenge has been a
| learning process for him.
|
| He realizes he doesn't want to kick things up over and over
| again, only to hit the first roadblock and then lose
| interest.
| arosier wrote:
| Interesting distinction between "dreaming" and
| "fantasizing". Does the author define the two as the same
| process with the only difference being the effect the
| action has on you (e.g. destructive/unsatisfying)?
| jasonv wrote:
| I don't have access to the text right now, but when you
| consider the literal definition of "fantasizing", it's
| pretty heavy: "to imagine things only possible in
| fantasy"
| spookybones wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing. The rush from the
| possibility versus the actuality applies to relationships
| as well.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I'd bet a few dollars that this is the most common answer. A
| little piece of anecdata, being stuck, jobless and
| confidentless due to too much of this dopamine rush theory, i
| did propose to write something for my 'boss', at a food
| store, a little single user vue app [0].
|
| a few conclusion :
|
| - i did actually deliver something functional (for a change)
|
| - i still had twenty thousand dreamy ideas (as noted in a
| lengthy TODO file)
|
| - doing something for someone else changes our your brain
| rolls. you dream less because you want to make them happy
|
| - it was painful at times, dealing with constraints
|
| - but solving these was a good feeling. a bit less exciting
| but longer lasting. a feeling of knowing more and deeper
| (much unlike dreamy brainstorming)
|
| - it makes you operate for true progress, you aim at surgical
| advances instead of abstract designs. that is a great thing.
| sobering
|
| my 2 cents
|
| [0] the theory behind it was that I'd do something simple,
| without pressure, that I may sell, or at least put on my
| resume (vuejs being trendy)..
| pharke wrote:
| As someone who tends to do the same, I don't think this is a
| good description of what is happening. The way I view it is
| that any project has the same progression of initial
| excitement, frenzied work and determination, discovery of the
| real scope, the descent into the Valley of Despair as you
| continue to wrestle with the problem and then the fork in the
| road where you either give up and abandon the work or you
| persevere through the Dark Forest of Unknowns where your
| progress is often measured in inches until you climb the Hill
| of Competency where you can again make meaningful gains and
| catch a second wind until you enter the Swamp of Drudgery
| where you again must slog your way through until you reach
| the base of Mount Perfection where you can finally ship it.
| StavrosK wrote:
| I frequently think about how lucky I am that my dopamine rush
| is linked to seeing projects finished. People ask me how I
| get so much done, but there really isn't much of an answer
| other than "I like doing them and I enjoy seeing them
| finished".
|
| Here's a beeping ball toy I made for my blind cat yesterday:
|
| https://www.instagram.com/p/B-ml-2KgjsW/
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I found having an ideas sheet is good for this. You can know
| the idea is recorded and that removes the desire to
| immediately work on it. And you can later logically choose
| the best thing to work on from the list
| itronitron wrote:
| Yeah, I recommend keeping a sketchbook/journal to write
| down and plan out the side-projects, then when you have
| more available time pick which one to start on given how
| feasible and interesting they are _now_. From my own
| experience I have found that if something still sounds
| interesting two months after writing it down then it 's
| something worth spending time on.
| corecoder wrote:
| I'll definitely get the book.
|
| > _"If you are no longer interested in a project you started,
| maybe you already got what you came for"._
|
| I don't know. It's one thing to leave a project unfinished, or
| to loose interest when it's time to fix the UI, but it's
| another thing to not be able to make progress at all.
| brlewis wrote:
| In my side projects I always keep todo.txt. There's a line
| for each thing I need to do, in order. Putting new things in
| that file and removing ones that get done becomes a kind of
| game. Try that on whichever idea you find yourself coming
| back to again and again.
| wastedhours wrote:
| > "If you are no longer interested in a project you started,
| maybe you already got what you came for"
|
| Very much this - I have very few finished side projects, but in
| hindsight I can track the course from even my first personal
| project in school to where I am today.
| Madmallard wrote:
| Yeah you're getting dopamine.
|
| Those that are more successful can get past that and make
| something more profound. There's a lot more than dopamine when
| you make something you can be truly proud of, that can
| potentially be a living for you as well.
| trevorrr wrote:
| I can recommend this book, too. Most helpful for me was the
| concept of the scanner personality.
|
| Sometimes it just seems as you are not finishing things, for
| me, it's more like I'm letting some things rest for quite a
| long time but pick them up again later. I'm just craving
| variety to get fresh input for all the other things and I see
| this as a skill. Today I am glad that I haven't unlearned to
| play around.
|
| It has its benefits, tons of it, I was only unhappy with it as
| long as I've let others stigmatize me as lazy or undisciplined
| for how I am.
| ddelt wrote:
| I'm also just like you. So much so that what you just described
| speaks volumes to me. I'm going to read the book you just
| recommended. Thank you!
| naasking wrote:
| > "If you are no longer interested in a project you started,
| maybe you already got what you came for".
|
| Agree, I've been through this myself plenty of times. I think
| there's a way to turn this into a tactic though: a completed
| project has loads of gaps and finishing touches that a learning
| prototype lacks, and it comes with it's own interesting
| challenges that are hard to predict.
|
| So if you're interested in learning what a finished product
| would entail, you can only achieve that understanding by
| finishing a product. I've found that there are some products
| where I'm interested in understanding all of the details, and
| some which I'm not, and that's sometimes helped filter which
| projects I should stick with.
|
| The worst outcome is when I have to shelve a project because
| the tooling just isn't mature or usable enough to make the
| project fun.
| globular-toast wrote:
| > "If you are no longer interested in a project you started,
| maybe you already got what you came for".
|
| That's definitely the case with many of my unfinished projects.
| My "operating system" is a good example. I have an OS written
| completely from scratch for RPi3 that can run concurrent
| processes (and pretty much nothing else). I started to look
| into using the MMU but quickly realised that it's very hard and
| I'm not really that interested in it right now. All I really
| wanted to know was how to write an operating system. Now I
| know, but I'll almost certainly never actually write a proper
| one.
| bmelton wrote:
| > If you are no longer interested in a project you started,
| maybe you already got what you came for
|
| This line alone got me to go buy the book.
|
| As someone who's constantly churning through ideas, and who
| _feels_ afflicted by ADHD just enough to worry about it but not
| quite enough to actually think I have it, I 've found myself
| abandoning a bunch of projects when at a 'mostly done' state.
| Generally, I tackle the interesting parts of a project, and
| once I've gotten the proof of concept working (whether it's a
| visual PoC or technical PoC) and the only parts left to do are
| the boring user registration / billing parts, that's when I
| lose interest.
|
| I've watched my prototypes languish, and over the years I've
| seen other people execute them after I have and go on to great
| success, and have decided to make peace with the knowledge that
| I'm probably not the guy that would have devised a strong
| marketing plan, beat doors down or cold-called for sales, etc.,
| but a part of me laments that I didn't bother finishing them at
| the time so as to at least act as social proof to point to and
| say "I did that first," even acknowledging the pointlessness of
| it.
|
| Thanks so much for the recommendation.
| andrecarini wrote:
| > I'm probably not the guy that would have devised a strong
| marketing plan, beat doors down or cold-called for sales
|
| Ever considered pairing up with someone from a nontechnical
| background?
| bmelton wrote:
| I've tried a variety of things. The first big step once I
| realized that I was sloughing off the boring bits was to
| try tackling the boring bits first. Start with a basic app
| that included user registration, an empty FAQ page, etc.,
| but that generally meant quitting the project earlier
| rather than later. Then I thought well, maybe I'll just
| build up a library of reusable components for that, but hey
| guess what? That stuff is _boring_
|
| So, that's the long way around, but yes, I have partnered
| up with people who might compliment my lacking skills, but
| it's tough finding people motivated enough that I feel like
| I'm letting them down if I don't keep up. I'm generally
| great at getting projects going through the hard bits, but
| in my experience, most other people fall off or lose
| interest in the project before it even gets to the point
| that I might.
|
| To date, the only thing that reliably ensures I'll complete
| a project is paying me to complete a project. Weirdly, if
| I'm getting paid for something, my mind doesn't suffer any
| of these ailments. I will still cherrypick the most
| interesting work to do, but if there are features with
| deadlines, so long as there's money in it, I have no
| problems getting myself back on track.
| agitator wrote:
| I'm exactly the same way 100%. I've gotten incredible
| things done at startups and companies, where my work
| alone was floating the companies, and the products I
| created became the main product of the companies.
|
| But every time I realize "Why am I handing someone else
| all this value", and venture out on my own, I can't seem
| to motivate myself in the same way. It blows my mind and
| I can't seem to figure it out.
|
| Maybe I need to invent an imaginary supervisor to report
| to at the end of the day.
| andrecarini wrote:
| > Maybe I need to invent an imaginary supervisor to
| report to at the end of the day.
|
| Heh, someone had that idea too and turned it into a
| startup: Boss as a Service
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18512197
| relativeadv wrote:
| Awesome thanks for the book recommendation, just picked it up.
|
| For me, this has been the defining struggle of my adult life.
| I've only just become truly aware of it though but when I think
| back to stuff like when I was a kid playing MMORPGs I would
| utterly struggle to make a character to level 10 before re-
| rolling for something more appealing.
|
| Now it is almost a pathological issue I have where I just can't
| seem to choose something that interests me because honestly,
| everything is just as equally interesting. Painting, guitar,
| cooking, lifting, game development, ios development, etc. Its
| like paralysis by analysis to the nth degree. It's easy to say
| "just try some things and stick with what you enjoy" but
| eventually the going gets (slightly) tough and i just wimp out
| and quit. Except for lifting...for whatever reason I've been
| obsessed with that for almost a decade now.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Similarly I've managed to stick with lifting, and cooking.
| The others aforementioned have faltered, but I am finding
| enjoyment in reading and research, and games. I think when
| I've reduced the pressure on myself to produce creatively at
| my leisure, so too has the stress. But I still do want to be
| creative.
| lososos wrote:
| >Except for lifting...for whatever reason I've been obsessed
| with that for almost a decade now.
|
| My hypothesis is that exercise, especially weight training,
| is one of the few activities where the growth curve is front-
| loaded with improvement. The phenomenon of "noob gains"
| provides positive feedback much quicker than other
| activities, and that feedback is much easier to get--just
| look at how much you lifted this week compared to two weeks
| ago, or how fast you ran that last mile.
|
| By the time your gains start to slow down--whether that's six
| months or a year from now--you've already developed a habit.
| sopooneo wrote:
| In my twenties, with no responsibilities and with some money,
| I thought to get a motorcycle and learn to ride it. I stopped
| when I looked at my room and saw the vast number of things I
| was already dabbling with and deep-diving. I knew that if I
| got a motorcycle it would consume my interest for something
| like five years as I had to understand how every single part
| worked down to the bolt.
|
| That could be a great thing. But for me, then, I didn't want
| to go into suspended animation for half a decade and wake up
| with deep motorcycle knowledge. So I completely dropped it.
| ryeguy_24 wrote:
| I totally have the same issue. Now that I know this pattern
| about myself, I pause before doing anything because I know
| that the n-th state is me stopping the project. But I'm
| learning to push through and just engage in projects, because
| the paralysis is way worse for me than the doing and
| stopping.
| dgb23 wrote:
| > "If you are no longer interested in a project you started,
| maybe you already got what you came for".
|
| I also realized this at some point but as a compromise I now
| take the time to write some text to document some conclusions.
|
| This helps with two things:
|
| It feels more finished, which is important for my mental
| hygiene.
|
| And when I do come back to something at a later point I can re-
| assess quickly what the circumstances and the value was, which
| can be very practical, especially if it was just some small
| exploratory thing.
| ryeguy_24 wrote:
| This is exactly one of the tips the book provides. Good
| validation of the book I guess.
| vladsanchez wrote:
| I always attributed this behavior to undiagnosed ADHD, but
| "Scanner" is a, unique but fitting, group I never heard of.
| Thanks for sharing!
|
| Zoom Party would be great! ;)
| LeonB wrote:
| ...unique, unresearched, vague, made up, not treatable unlike
| ADHD, but lacking in negative stigma because it's new and
| exciting and therefore even more likely to appeal to someone
| with untreated ADHD...
| slothtrop wrote:
| In Myers-Briggs they'd call that either the INTP or ENTP type.
|
| Similarly, I'm more interested in research, learning. I'm in
| the wrong profession.
| blueshirt wrote:
| And in Ayurveda it's called a Vata mind!
| abakker wrote:
| INTP here. Starting projects and having multiples at once
| sure seems comfortable, but, ADD does not. It is a measure of
| rigor that there are projects that get done. Now, there's
| something to be said for projects that were always "low
| priority" and are waiting for the right moment, but there are
| also ephemeral, same-day kind of projects that come from
| having the tools/resources available to you to scratch
| whatever itch you have.
|
| IMO, OP's problem isn't that he/she can't decide which side
| project to do, it's that they have already decided that the
| side project involves coding, and they're already a good
| coder. Doing your job as a side project seems...boring. Pick
| something you don't know how to do, but wish you did. Learn
| CAD, use a bandsaw, 3D print a D20, or just take your bike
| all the way apart. This idea that every software engineer
| needs to treat software as their hobby is frustrating to me.
| Bankers, lawyers, and doctors don't do that, why should
| software engineers?
| slothtrop wrote:
| I can agree that yet more coding as a hobby is the dullest
| thing imaginable, when it's your job. Honestly between
| reading/research, gaming, music and exercise/outings my
| leisure time fills up quickly enough. That being said I had
| long clung to the idea of having something to show, a
| creative effort. I've tried writing and that's been
| sputtering.
| LeonB wrote:
| I see a big disconnect between:
|
| " I know! I'll write a roguelike in X! Five minutes later, I'm
| thinking: fuck roguelikes! I'll write a graphical solitar card
| game with Y! Five minutes later, I don't care for it anymore,
| and would rather write an isomorphic strategy game in Z."
|
| And:
|
| "If you are no longer interested in a project you started,
| maybe you already got what you came for."
|
| There is no way that you got what you came for in those five
| minutes.
|
| There's several orders or magnitude that fit into this
| disconnect and it just says "ADHD-I" to me.
|
| ...and I feel my eyes roll back into my head when I read this:
|
| "...a personality type (that is definitely not ADHD)"
|
| ...because the invention of new personality types and the
| stigmatic treatment of ADHD is just... very shallow.
| imdsm wrote:
| > "If you are no longer interested in a project you started,
| maybe you already got what you came for."
|
| I found a method for this which works for me. I have a book
| labelled "Ideas & Inventions" and when I have an idea, I
| write down everything that suddenly hit me, and I keep
| writing until I feel I have exhausted the idea. If the idea
| then goes, I leave it in the book. If the idea remains, I
| write about it again, until, if it remains and I have to
| implement it, I do so.
|
| Sometimes it will be a game idea (I've spent time as a game
| dev, the last idea cost me a couple of years & my family
| before I realised it wasn't worth it), sometimes it's an
| invention (electronics, mechanical, or both), and sometimes
| it's just an idea in general.
|
| I find that the feeling that I have to make something is my
| way of preserving an idea, and to simply write down the idea
| often fulfils this need. And of the many ideas I write down,
| only the ones which really matter make it past the notebook
| phase.
|
| Hope this helps others out there, and if you do try this
| method and find it helps, please let me know!
| bugBunny wrote:
| Thanks for the tip, will probably try to rewrite the idea
| myself.
| GuiA wrote:
| If you weren't that serious about making a rogue-like in the
| first place and what you really wanted was the rush of
| starting a rogue like project, then sure you got what you
| came for.
|
| Much like a kid might say they want to be a footballer or
| musician - what they really want is the fame and recognition
| of being a footballer, not the 6 hours of intense training
| every day for years without any fame and glory. We see this
| much more in tech than we did 10 years ago, because now
| everyone wants to be a rockstar CEO hacker startup founder
| making a $1 billion exit at 19.
|
| And in fact in some cases you can suck it up, major in CS,
| get a prestigious tech job, and then after a few years burn
| out because you realize you never really liked CS/programming
| in the first place, you just liked the social stickers that
| were on it. I've seen it happen many times in my career.
| Often these people will pivot to being PMs or some "tech
| lite" function and be much happier for it.
|
| The fact that people suck at knowing what they really want
| doesn't make the observation any less valid.
|
| What that means is that you have to get really good at
| knowing what you actually like and enjoy - not what you enjoy
| on the surface of it not for its own sake, but for some
| values attached to it.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I can relate this to part of my experience picking up
| stuffs and putting down in a couple of weeks.
|
| Sometime I can feel that I'm in this or that because of
| some ego or future bragging and they dropped dead quickly.
|
| But then again this probably roots from my childhood as I
| tended to appease to my teacher or parents to do a lot of
| things I don't enjoy. So it's really difficult to tell
| nowadays if I really enjoy doing this or not.
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| If this is a pattern that persists throughout this
| individual's life, it's highly correlated with ADHD. We're
| talking about someone who literally changes their mind
| within about 5 to 10 minutes, multiple times a day. At
| least, that's what would happen to me pre-diagnosis.
| slothtrop wrote:
| You don't necessarily need ADHD for this to be a trait.
| Source: me. I don't change my mind every 5 minutes, I
| just lose interest in certain projects.
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| I'm a guy who got diagnosed with ADHD-PI when I was 28 and it
| instantly made so much of my life make sense. (I went from an
| unfulfilling career I hated to self-teaching CS and software
| dev & getting a job in the field within about three years.)
| And yes, I also got very strong ADHD vibes from this post.
| Having said that, I'm certainly not a doctor and there are a
| lot of things besides "can't stick with side projects" that
| go into a diagnosis.
|
| But if the OP (or others reading) also experiences issues
| with working memory, losing items like wallets or keys,
| following directions (not because you dislike them but
| because you just can't keep them straight), sleep issues
| (generally, staying up significantly later than average),
| physical restlessness such as restless legs, forgetting
| appointments, lots of emotional impulsivity via outbursts, a
| very strong pull towards stimulating things like reckless
| driving, dangerous levels of drinking or drug use, etc.,
| among others, they might benefit from discussing with a
| doctor.
| slothtrop wrote:
| I have zero issue with focus or any aforementioned issues
| (save occasional insomnia) but still identify with OP.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| I'm scared of how accurately your second paragraph
| describes me. Well, there are a few differences (I don't
| lose things, mainly). Thanks for the glimmer of hope.
| lyrr wrote:
| My god, literally everything in that second paragraph is
| what I do.
| freehunter wrote:
| Ignoring the fact that "five minutes" was probably just
| hyperbole, you can absolutely get what you came for in five
| minutes. Five minutes is long enough for me to validate an
| idea from "wouldn't it be cool to do X?" to "man I really
| don't want to do X". And I've just gotten what I came for,
| validating (or invalidating) an idea.
|
| Just because you _have_ an idea doesn't mean it's worth
| pursuing that idea, especially if it turns out you're not
| interested in that idea after all.
| Davertron wrote:
| I think this is a pretty important point. Often times I
| think I'm interested in doing something or I like the idea
| of it, but it doesn't take me very long to realize that I'm
| completely disinterested because of the actuality of the
| thing. I'm OK with that.
|
| I think the parent is probably trying to say that you
| definitely haven't done enough exploring on most subjects
| in a short time to find and glean all the interesting bits,
| and I agree with that as well. There are work projects that
| I would have abandoned long ago if they were personal
| projects that I have got A TON out of by sticking with them
| and working on them for years. But in those years there has
| been a lot of slog as well, and it's probably not the
| optimal way to mine all the knowledge nuggets...
| slothtrop wrote:
| I read "five minutes" as being hyperbolic, but it could
| simply be a rapid deflation of interest even without gaining
| new knowledge. I've read about creating a roguelike but
| didn't have the interest to really go forward with it.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I dare to suggest meditation. We all get X number of
| ideas/thoughts/images/etc flying through our brain every
| waking minute. To be able to focus and do "deep work" we need
| to either break through the noise/clutter on our minds, or
| meditate/use yoga to teach our mind to be "quieter". I
| managed that after "a while" with Iyengar yoga (I assume that
| most types of yoga will do) but I liked this one better for
| its discipline.
|
| For the question, another simple way is to dedicate "X amount
| of days". Increase the "5 minutes" to "5 days". 5 minutes can
| be misleading. 5 days is enough time to (for sure) know if
| you want to proceed or drop. You can try your period to be
| fewer or more (days), but definitely NOT a 5-minute-cycle.
| marianov wrote:
| My pshrink told me the same "maybe you just like to learn the
| new technique, not to finish". Like that I have welded a ton of
| steel into a carport, then left it unpainted. Given the fact
| that I always focus on the hard parts and the struggle to
| finishe the "details" and that throughout my career I've been
| inclined to do POCs, MVPs, and never finish things. That and
| the fact that every single day it takes me several times to
| cross the door because I forget the wallet, keys, phone, etc,
| make me wonder about ADHD Is there a "cure" for it or is it
| just a label to get and use as excuse?
|
| edit: I got bored of the pshrink after 5 sessions
| Kaze404 wrote:
| ADHD isn't an excuse, there is treatment.
| zenhack wrote:
| ADHD is absolutlely a real thing, it is treatable, and there
| is a large adult population that is undiagnosed. If you're
| struggling and you suspect it may be related to ADHD, you
| should look into getting tested.
|
| My girlfriend got her diagnosis just a couple years ago
| (she's 38 now). The impact Adderall has had on her
| organizational capacity is immense.
| mm89 wrote:
| Hmm I do have ADHD but your first statement "learn the
| technique, not to finish" definitely could apply to me both
| in technical (software engineering and coding) areas of my
| life as well as artistic (music, recording, mixing, etc.).
| dinkleberg wrote:
| That struggle is real. I've got a ridiculous amount of half-
| finished MVPs that I simply got bored of. It often makes me
| feel like an absolute failure, especially when I've told others
| about something I'm working on. When they ask "Hey, how is that
| project X you were working on 3 months ago going?" I'll have to
| think about it because it was probably 3 projects ago.
|
| But I think you're spot on. From each of these projects I've
| gained something, and once I've hit that point the drive has
| gone away.
|
| While I often feel like a failure with all of my "failed
| projects", in my day job people are often blown away by how I
| seem to know a lot about everything. The truth is it's because
| I end up trying most things in some fashion with one of these
| many projects.
| JackFr wrote:
| I've been working on the same project for over 15 years. It's
| been written in C, C++, Python, Ruby, Java and Scala. It had
| an XWindows front end, Swing front end and now a simple web
| front end (but there is talk of moving to Vue or React.) It
| ran on the local machine, then shared web hosting, and now
| AWS. It's used flat files, SQL and Mongo for storage.
|
| Currently it's in the shop because I decided to rip
| everything into microservices and deploy it using Kubernetes.
|
| Along the way I learned 2 things. First, I like solving the
| same problem over and over again with different technology.
| You learn both the new technology and uncover aspects of your
| problem you hadn't seen before. Second, it's important to
| release. I've got a website with 75% of the links broken, and
| the only visitors are me and the googlebot, but it's
| released. There's an artifact I can show my wife or my
| brother without firing up an IDE. It makes a big difference
| with respect to a sense of accomplishment (despite the broken
| links.)
| dinkleberg wrote:
| That's awesome! Maintaining the same project over 15 years,
| having gone through many transformations, has got to be an
| incredibly valuable experience.
|
| I always try new problems with new technologies, but I can
| see the benefits of sticking to one problem over and over.
| transitivebs wrote:
| I feel your pain.
|
| If we can minimize the amount of time & effort it takes to go
| from idea to launchable MVP, then all of these side projects
| and future ones suddenly become significantly more viable.
|
| I wrote about this goal in-depth here:
| https://blog.saasify.sh/finding-your-passion-as-a-developer/
| partisan wrote:
| > in my day job people are often blown away by how I seem to
| know a lot about everything
|
| This has made my meandering journey worthwhile as well. I
| don't have many completed projects under my belt, but I have
| gathered quite a bit of design and coding techniques,
| different languages, technologies, etc.
|
| The one completed project (completed in a programming sense,
| but not a business sense), was one that was done just quick
| and dirty with no patterns, no architecting of any kind. I
| resolved to not learn anything in the process (besides
| understanding the dataset I was parsing for human
| consumption). In this way, I was able to actually "finish"
| something. That said, I did learn about deploying on digital
| ocean, about the importance of having a repeatable deployment
| process, etc, so it was actually a good learning experience
| in the end.
| have_faith wrote:
| > half-finished MVPs
|
| What I would give to have half finished MVP's! I have a long
| list of ideas that I can't decide which one is the most
| worthwhile to pursue, so none of them get started.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| at least you don't waste much time...
| lancesells wrote:
| I feel this comment. I always have multiple stacks of
| physical drawings and notes for different projects that I'm
| working on but don't always finish.
|
| However, the best thing about all of these unfinished
| projects is it gets easier and easier to learn different
| things. Even when my interests don't have overlap they seem
| to add value to each other.
| aryzach wrote:
| I used to be a lot like this too. Eventually I got tired of it
| because I felt like I never had anything to show (mostly show
| to myself and feel proud of).
|
| For hobbies/projects where the goal is just to unwind and enjoy
| myself, sure, I still do this. But that's often still not
| satisfying to me. I started making the intention to just
| complete the damn thing, even when it wasn't fun anymore.
| Motivation is hardly worth anything tbh. I used to only work
| with motivation, and while it felt good at the time, nothing
| ever got completed and I probably felt how you do a lot of the
| time.
|
| Second, learning is hard. If you think you're comfortable with
| a new language, framework, whatever.. but you lose steam when
| working on whatever your building with it, you might not know
| it as good as you think you do. It's a lot easier to keep steam
| when there aren't roadblocks, but when you continually come
| across roadblocks, it just doesn't feel like your moving
| towards your goal with much speed. But this is generally where
| the learning takes place.
|
| And I've also seen, finishing one project to completion makes
| it a lot easier to finish the next project to completion. It's
| a skill you have to learn (to do a personal project even when
| it's not fun, and there's nobody telling you you have to do it)
|
| tl;dr: for enjoyment and relaxation, don't finish projects if
| you don't want. For learning / creating, make it the goal to
| finish and know that it'll probably be not fun sometimes
| jvalencia wrote:
| I might also add that you may want to scope your projects
| small. If you try to boil the ocean, you'd never get done.
| ryeguy_24 wrote:
| Also, I'd love to share notes with you or others because I
| haven't met a ton of people that struggle with this. Zoom
| party?
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| My "projects" folder on my PC is scattered with numerous
| projects that I've started and never finished. These range from
| games, tools and webpages - written in every language that I
| found an interest in.
|
| I think you're right in that it's the journey that matters to
| some, not the destination. As I've gotten older, I feel less
| pressured to finish these side-projects.
|
| When it comes to actual day-job work. The final 20% of a
| project is always the hardest for me. As I just want to move
| onto the next great thing. The last 20% is always the worst
| part for me (testing, bug fixing, documentation). It's what
| they pay me for though :)
| corecoder wrote:
| > The final 20% of a project is always the hardest for me.
|
| I'd be more than happy to get to the 80%. It seems like I
| used to be able to do that when I was younger. It could be
| that I aimed lower.
| akavel wrote:
| I like the saying I read/heard somewhere, that's I believe
| based on Pareto principle, saying more or less: _" After
| getting through 80% of a project, what's left to do, is just
| to complete the remaining final 80%"_ :)
| hentaiD00m wrote:
| I've got this problem except with learning / studying.
|
| I realized I am a lot into science and engineering late in
| life. Now I want to do all of the Khan Academy in Chemistry and
| Physics; learn nano-/bio-tech; learn cybersecurity... and
| probably should just stick to learning backend dev in order to
| get a job.
|
| People call this being a polymath, but I am seriously concerned
| for myself. The best I can do is take it one subject at a time.
|
| On the building side, I simply have no ideas I am interested
| going for.
| kbash9 wrote:
| Yes, but I think successful entrepreneurs know when to move on,
| when to pivot and when to stick with it and PERSIST. I have
| quote framed at my desk that goes something like this:
|
| "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent
| will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men[women]
| with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a
| proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated
| derelicts. Persistence and determination alone will bring
| success."
| kissgyorgy wrote:
| It helps a lot if you pick something you think is important, not
| just start working on some random ideas.
|
| Or maybe you can accept that you like jumping from project to
| project and that's okay too.
| _-___________-_ wrote:
| Instead of tools you _might_ need, applications you _think_
| about, and experiments, build something that you definitely want
| (or, even better, need). Find inefficiencies or deficiencies in
| your day-to-day that you can eliminate or ameliorate.
|
| Another way is to build something that someone you care about
| wants or needs. Pay attention to how people close to you
| (especially those that are not engineers themselves) use
| technology, and notice when there's an opportunity to make it
| easier/better for them. Many great projects were born this way.
| [deleted]
| melvinroest wrote:
| I can tell what I figured out about myself so far. Sorry for the
| long post, it's tough to write concise. It also doesn't help that
| I'm describing insights that took me 10 years to get sharp.
|
| I have thoughts and intentions.
|
| I have behaviours.
|
| It's always puzzling to me how bad I am at predicting my
| behaviour purely with my thoughts and intentions. I guess people
| who are addicted to something that want to quit can relate (my
| addiction: gaming/YouTube/HN -- I'll get back to this).
|
| Because of this weird mismatch I've said to myself: the
| predictive value of my thoughts and intentions is 0, it's
| actually negative even. So all I can do is observe myself
| behaviourally. Humans are quite bad at this, and research shows
| that friends help with this. People outside of you observe your
| behaviour better than you do. So either (1) get help from friends
| to do this or (2) observe your behaviour like a ninja. Luckily
| for me, I happen to be an introspective person by default, so I
| chose option 2 (you can also choose both at the same time).
|
| So do not trust your thoughts and intentions.
|
| So observe your own behaviours.
|
| After 10 years, I found out 2 fundamental motivational triggers.
| One I found out about recently, and I am still figuring out how
| to (ab)use it, and the other one has been (ab)used for years.
|
| 1. I work amazingly well under pressure and stress. This is
| especially the case when my schedule has no minute of spare time
| and has some vague accountability system.
|
| Example: I was incapable of studying one degree at university,
| but I was amazingly capable at studying 2 degrees, while working
| on the side, while having a social life and a girlfriend. I had
| too little time in my schedule, so I used 4 hour work week tricks
| to get it manageable.
|
| What I also did was define a priority list. A lot of priorities
| on the bottom of that list suffered an ill faith. But my most
| important priorities (and then some) succeeded.
|
| There is one downside with this. Yes, I was motivated. But I also
| was stressed the whole time, and while the stressed was
| manageable, I don't think it was a particularly fun time. It
| sometimes was, and sometimes wasn't, but the pressure felt
| painful. And while it worked for my motivation, it does do a lot
| of damage to me existentially.
|
| However, the good part: I do now have skills that I wished to
| have. And existentially that actually does really help.
|
| So motivation-wise: it works amazingly well. Regarding life
| decisions: mixed results.
|
| 2. Remember my addictions? I realised that I'm simply motivated
| by human contact. Not just any human contact, but I am not fully
| clear on the conditions yet. I know that I must like the person
| and feel a connection in some cases.
|
| A couple of cases where I've seen this:
|
| A. Making music with someone just watching me (I was super
| motivated). Making music alone the next day (I didn't do
| anything).
|
| B. Same story with playing Hack The Box. I hacked 16 hours per
| day for a month and my buddy was simply putting in a normal work
| week of it. He said: "you're so much more motivated than me." But
| I knew if he'd stop playing Hack The Box, then I'd stop playing
| eventually as well.
|
| C. I thought a lot of university courses were easy, but not easy
| enough to do nothing about it and pass a test. So I would go to
| the lectures and be bored out of my mind because psychology is an
| easy degree :D However, those lectures did actually motivate me
| to then engage with the course material after the lecture. And
| the thing is, I thought I would be capable of doing that on my
| own, but I never was. So I continued going to lectures and be
| bored, in order to be motivated later.
|
| I am still figuring out how to exploit this, because this
| motivational factor properly exploited is me winning at life. It
| has: connection, productivity and a sense of "we're in this
| together." I'm noticing I find it a bit hard to make friends. I
| can't just say: oh, I like topic x now and then befriend someone
| in that topic. If I could, I would be a lot more productive.
|
| (I'm now realising this should become a blog post, moving on :P )
|
| Writing all this gave me a new idea. I'm basically like a
| framework and I found 2 motivational 'hooks' into it. The thing
| is, I don't have a lot of control over these hooks, things can
| stress me out (which motivates me) or things can make me feel
| connected (which motivates me). If something hooks into my
| 'motivational code' and I don't want it to be there then I
| basically tend to say I'm addicted to: games, YouTube and HN (fun
| fact: I don't like playing games alone that friends did not
| introduce to me).
|
| This means my mind needs to figure out on how to exploit this,
| but also it begs the question: how does this work? I am pretty
| sure it's emotional and it's a need based thing (self-
| determination theory _definitely_ comes to mind here).
|
| My question to you is: what are your motivational hooks? How does
| the environment hook into your motivational code?
|
| BONUS FACTOR!!! (I'm not making fun of marketing people :P )
|
| 3. I made a side project for a month called doodledocs.com. It
| partially came out of motivation factor 2. I was interviewing for
| a company and they gave the most boring 2 day take home exercise
| that I saw (make tic tac toe). So I decided to make something
| awesome instead with their technology, and it took me a month.
| Just having someone judging my work and me being in the same room
| as that person helped quite a bit. However, another motivational
| factor was that _I am frustrated_! I am frustrated with how not
| far we are with having a pencil natively on the web. So I made
| this app.
|
| But frustration is definitely less of a factor than the other 2.
| Frustration on its own doesn't work, but it does reduce the
| amount of stress (factor 1) or connection needed (factor 2).
|
| So I guess you could say there are necessary motivational factors
| and sufficient motivational factors. A bit of stress or a bit of
| connection is necessary but doesn't make it sufficient. A lot of
| connection, for example, does make it sufficient. Also, for
| example, a bit of connection + a lot of frustration does make it
| sufficient.
|
| I hope my self analysis helped you a bit. And if you're curious
| about why I wrote this all out in the open and not on my laptop:
| I am motivated by people reading it and reacting to it. My sense
| of connection (motivation factor 2) is definitely at play here.
| shostack wrote:
| Definitely blog post worthy. Thanks for sharing.
|
| I've noticed similar triggers and hooks and such with myself as
| a fellow introspective individual.
|
| I suspect some of this is related to the dopamine hits that
| come from easy/early successes in things. It's why I've noticed
| when I get run down, the only games that really appeal to me
| are idle clickers because they are essentially just dopamine
| buttons with a front end.
|
| I think you're on the right track with first identifying these
| things and then figuring out how to harness them. In essence,
| you have to understand an API's inputs and outputs before you
| start calling it, and that's what you seem to be describing by
| thinking of yourself as a framework.
| melvinroest wrote:
| Yep, that is what I'm describing.
|
| One of the reasons it took me 10 years to be so opinionated
| about it is because I didn't want to believe this was the
| case. For a very long time I believed that if I thought I
| would want to do something, then I would go on and do it. But
| apparently that's not the case.
|
| But I did notice if I observe myself and hook into it, then
| achieving my goals works quite a bit better. It's not
| perfect, but good enough.
| gkilmain wrote:
| I've been working on a side project now for about 8 months. By
| far the longest for me. Whats worked this time is I don't work on
| it every day and sometimes I'll only write a few lines of code if
| only to keep the momentum going. I think anything you do for your
| side project is a positive step. Once you give up its done.
| jamil7 wrote:
| It's pretty normal. Figure out first what you want from each side
| project. If your goal is to learn or play around with new "X"
| then it's fine to half-ass it, build the fun parts and then never
| look at it again. If you want to try and build a business and
| make money on the side then this is usually the time to not try
| out new "X" and instead stick to boring tech you know well.
|
| Edit: for practical tips on keeping some momentum, just start
| with a tiny amount each day, like just 30-40 minutes after work
| or before. The next week you can add a little more ect.
| skinnyarms wrote:
| Maybe you need to examine what your true goal is. Why do you want
| a side project? Are you doing it because you feel like you are
| supposed to have side projects, or because you actually want to
| accomplish a goal? If it's the former, you could try to align the
| side project with another goal of yours - say learning some new
| language or framework.
|
| If you are just trying to build a portfolio you can come up with
| a (small) "SMART" goal, and commit to completing it. After you
| reach the milestone you can make a conscious decision whether to
| continue or not - but either way you have _something_ completed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria
| crispyambulance wrote:
| > Maybe you need to examine what your true goal is.
|
| I think that's absolutely the most important factor here.
| People don't finish things for a variety of reasons.
|
| Perfectionism is a big one. It's tied to a fear of failure that
| manifests as losing interest. If the root cause is
| perfectionist tendencies, one thing that can help is to
| collaborate with others. Just doing something for someone,
| helping them out in some way will often de-fang the
| perfectionism and self-criticism and drive you towards
| something tangible.
|
| It could also be boredom. If you're doing X at work day-after-
| day, maybe it's not a great idea to _also_ do X as a side-
| project?
|
| I personally am allergic to SMART criteria-- too much
| association with corporate performance evaluation fuckery, it
| kills motivation and creativity for lots of people.
| tablethnuser wrote:
| I keep a log for each project and write down the problem I'm
| trying to solve followed by the idea I think solves it. If I hit
| a roadblock, I write that down as the new problem. Now I have to
| solve that before I can pop the stack and get back to the
| original problem.
|
| On and on and on. I might be building a CI/CD pipeline for a
| simple web extension cuz I've realized that manual deploys of it
| are boring and it's keeping me from updating the project. Once
| that's done I return to the original problem and geez it's
| annoying to work in this vanilla js project structure. Let me
| just set up a transpiler and organize the project...
|
| I call it extreme yak shaving, cuz you do things you could never
| justify in a workplace, but it's my personal time and it's what
| works to keep me going on side projects.
|
| Better yet by forcing yourself to write down why you're blocked
| you can self reflect on trends. I learned that when the dev
| experience gets too rough on a project, I abandon it. So now I'm
| happy to pause project features to build out dev exp. Very
| different than how I behave at work, where I guess the paycheck
| motivates me thru the tough times.
| shostack wrote:
| Have you considered productizing some of these devops tools?
| brianjlogan wrote:
| No golden bullet for this problem I think but definitely one that
| is widely shared.
|
| - __Get rid of your smartphone __and go to a dumb flip phone
| (avoid distractions).
|
| - __Dump your ideas __into a system you can review later like
| [RoamResarch](https://roamresearch.com/),[Trello](trello.com), or
| a folder with Markdown Files Check out __GTD method __because
| these thoughts qualify as something you should dump in your sort
| bin /inbox bin to go through later. Other things like "I should
| check the mail", "I should build a fort" all count as distracting
| tasks to keep track of.
|
| - __Meditate __and learn to recognize transitive thoughts. I
| really recommend the [Calm App](https://www.calm.com/) although
| you really don't need to use an app I found it's [21 Days of Calm
| by Tamara Levitt] program helped get me started and gave me a
| handful of techniques to get into a zen state.
|
| - Use [The Pomodoro
| Technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) to
| focus on one task at a time and avoid over taxing your focus
| muscle.
|
| - __Build and Keep Track of your Habits __. Your habits are
| extremely important to do deep and meaningful long term work. You
| need to cultivate them. Check out [The Power of
| Habit](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0055PGUYU)
|
| - All industries that have REALLY important critical life saving
| tasks use checklists. [HBR: Using a checklist to prevent
| Failure](https://hbr.org/2010/01/using-checklists-to-prevent-
| fa.html). I use app.everyday.app to do a Daily Habit Checklist
| but I did this using a tiny Mole skin for a month and it worked
| great as well. Side note you made me dig into looking up this
| thing called [Seinfeld Chaining](https://lifehacker.com/jerry-
| seinfelds-productivity-secret-2...) and I found out [Seinfeld has
| nothing to do with it](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1uj
| vrg/jerry_seinfeld...)
|
| Personally all of the things I listed have some type of
| associated tool but all can be accomplished with a timer, pen,
| paper ,etc. Don't let yourself get caught up trying to find the
| "perfect" tool. Just start doing the things so you build the
| habits. They are far more important.
| smarri wrote:
| Another angle, maybe you have to churn through many (hundreds?)
| of ideas before you get to one you really want to see through.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| I have been buried in side projects my whole life and I started
| finishing more and more of them.
|
| 1. Don't force it. The good ones, you will have a hard time not
| working on
|
| 2. Take some pride in finishing things. It gives the extra push
| when 1 isn't enough
| samsquire wrote:
| I resigned myself to writing ideas and keeping side projects
| small but sharing my ideas anyway. Every thing is harder than it
| looks.
|
| https://github.com/samsquire/ideas2
|
| https://github.com/samsquire/ideas
|
| https://github.com/samsquire/ideas3
| johnstorey wrote:
| I have battled this since programming became my profession. Over
| years I was trained to create in ways that maximize income, and
| stop when there is no income link. Decades later, this made
| working for passion very difficult.
|
| Here are a few ideas that seem to consistently help me.
|
| * one, sheer willpower. It's a muscle that needs building, but
| keep going when you don't have any further interest for the sake
| of completing the task. Even when it feels like torture. It's
| about forcing yourself to the finish line. Often the interest
| comes back later.
|
| * Move the finish line closer. Formally write down what you want
| to develop with milestones, with a go/no go decision at each
| milestone. If you decide not to continue at a milestone, that was
| part of the plan, so you completed the project.
|
| * work on things that develop skills you expect to bring to the
| workplace and apply there. That's a pretty direct link to income.
|
| * work on things you want or to keep current with younger hires
| -- I'm learning gitops on k8s at home, and packaging charts to
| self-host some things I've wanted at home anyways. Even though I
| manage these days, it's important to understand how things work
| to a decent degree in order to have meaningful discussions with
| the broader team. I know managers who get by without that, but
| I'm not one of them.
|
| For what it's worth, continuing on because that's what you
| planned to do sometimes leads to a renewal of interest later in
| the project.
| james_s_tayler wrote:
| What if... Not finishing things was the norm?
|
| All of us in the same boat act as if there is something wrong
| with us such that we can't finish things.
|
| If you layed out every one of the data points on developers side
| projects, what would the aggregate say?
|
| Would it say that 80% finish their projects through to completion
| and there are this 20% who just can't ever seem to?
|
| Or, would it say the opposite? That people who actually have
| completed projects are somewhat rare?
|
| I'd be interested to see. My gut tells me finishing things isn't
| normal. The economics of it seem to be tilted in the favor of
| starting and strongly against finishing.
| raslah wrote:
| This was me big time. You sound like you have more experience
| than I did at the time, but what finally made it click for me was
| taking CS50 on EdX. Not that you should take it, but that it
| exposed what was holding me back. Any challenge I made for myself
| I would end up saying 'screw it' when it got challenging because
| internally I'd think that maybe my idea was messed up somehow.
| CS50, which I only made it thru 5 assignments, exposed me to
| having to stick thru a problem, possibly for days until I got it.
| I felt pressured to complete them because I saw that my
| classmates were completing them and that told me it was doable.
| After that, something in my head changed and for the first time I
| was able to complete my own projects and enjoy that feeling when
| you build something you came up with yourself. In other words try
| to get experience sticking thru challenges. Try leetcode or
| hackerrank, those sites have advanced problems that might crack
| that cieling for you if your problem is the same as mine was.
| Just my experience.
| redmattred wrote:
| A few techniques that have worked well for me:
|
| - Scope the project down to a size where you can achieve it
| within a week. Launch it and either let it take on a momentum of
| its own if others are interested in it (which will motivate you
| to do more work on it more). The initial version of your project
| could be as simple as a vision statement of what you want to
| achieve.
|
| - Have a personal backlog where you can put ideas for other
| projects you're interested in working on. Resist the temptation
| to just jump into your latest idea and instead write about it. If
| its a compelling idea you will return to it. If not let it be a
| passing idea.
|
| - Practice personal Kanban where you limit yourself to X number
| of concurrent projects. Wanting to work on a new project can be
| good motivation to finish your current one.
|
| - Team up a collaborator to help keep each engaged, interested,
| and accountable.
|
| - Find ways to create artificial deadlines for yourself. That
| could mean signing up to do a lighting talk at the next meetup,
| scheduling a meeting to get feedback with an end user or person
| advising you, etc.
|
| - Relax and enjoy tinkering for the sake of tinkering. Even if
| you don't complete a project you're still learning something from
| the experience along the way and sometimes what you learn is that
| you like the idea of a particular project more than the reality
| of what it means to work on it
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| You are looking at the situation from the wrong angle. Frameworks
| and languages are tools you use towards solving a problem. In the
| same way that mechanics don't spend their days wondering how they
| will use their wrench but rather what tools they need to fix an
| engine, you need to focus on a problem that needs fixing. Find a
| problem in some subjects you like and fix it.
|
| Also, make a plan so you see an end. Doing something without
| figuring out when you will quit is a sure way toward quitting
| before you get anything accomplished.
| toohotatopic wrote:
| Do you have the determination to read all those answers and
| identify the true ones? How do you know which ones are true?
| Finishing projects is the natural state of mind. The reason why
| you don't finish is the idea that is most repulsive to you, the
| idea that you try to avoid the strongest.
|
| On the other hand, a comment can also be repulsive because the
| idea is really bad. How do you know the difference?
|
| That said, my advice to you is: _pick a customer_. Why would
| _you_ write a graphical solitaire game but for the joy of
| programming. However, that joy doesn 't need a target, there is
| no need to finish.
|
| If you write something for somebody else, you are out of the loop
| of questioning what you like best. Then you are free to pursue
| that goal without being distracted by the whims of your desires.
|
| When you choose your customer and the project, maintain the
| basics, especially: pick an achievable goal.
| DrNuke wrote:
| Use your skills for something or someone fighting for a cause you
| care as a person? Inner motivation would come naturally, experts
| say.
| yizhang7210 wrote:
| 1. I personally find it easier to work on things I'm passionate
| about. So I think you need some kind of motivation to keep you
| going. It could be that you want to show it to your friends, or
| it could be you dream the possibility of turning it into a
| business.
|
| 2. You mentioned that you'd like to learn a lot more on languages
| and frameworks. Presumably you need to actually do something
| relatively substantial with the language/framework to learn it to
| a reasonable level? So for me personally some of my personal
| project I did were purely for learning. I think that's another
| motivation that can keep you going.
|
| 3. You talk about finishing project. I don't know if any project
| can be "finished". So I think it's okay to recognize that you
| want to leave a project in a particular state and move on and not
| feel too bad about it.
| alexashka wrote:
| This happens when you know little and yet you aren't aware of how
| little you know.
|
| As a kid I self-learned photoshop and always struggled with
| coming up with projects to do with my knowledge.
|
| Little did I know photoshop is a _tool_ , not an end.
|
| Web development is a _tool_. If all you know is how to hit with a
| hammer, it is pretty hard to make good use of it. You need to
| learn how to build a house, then your knowledge of a hammer will
| become a useful _tool_ for accomplishing a well defined task.
|
| Knowing how to build a house is much more difficult and isn't a
| 'side project' for most people. Hence the solution to your
| problem is realizing how little you know, how much it would
| actually take to create anything remotely useful, and moving on
| to learning something easier that'd have an actual impact in your
| daily life, such as exercise, a new hobby that'd foster new
| meaningful relationships, etc.
|
| One last thing - if your motivation for a side project is money,
| you're kidding yourself - just go enjoy your life :)
| gitgud wrote:
| There's a lot of advice saying "don't talk about your side
| project".
|
| I used to believe this whole-heartedly, but now I believe you
| should actually talk about the project somewhat.
|
| If you don't talk about your project to anyone, the project dies
| with you. If you talk about the progress you've made, you can get
| people excited and that excitement can motivate you and hold you
| accountable (as they'll remember what you've done so far).
|
| I guess the take away is to talk about side project progress, to
| build excitement and motivation. Don't talk to much about plans,
| as you are robbing your future self of gratification.
| mnault000 wrote:
| You know, I went through this a while ago. As a side idea, I
| always wanted 1) an online double-entry accounting system (so i
| could update my bookkeeping from anywhere in the world). And 2) I
| needed a self-hosted site where I could put anything from my
| kid's photos to my tax records.. ONE PLACE to look for anything.
| You can see my site here: http://parallax.dns-
| cloud.net/praetorian/
|
| My point is, go slowly. Just like a game you enjoy playing but
| get fed up after too long, put it aside; knowing you'll come back
| in a while with a renewed drive :) Cheers!
| littlecosmic wrote:
| You've already done step one: realise the pattern. Step two is
| don't do the new project. See it for what it is, not a great new
| idea, but another step down the road you've been walking down for
| years.
|
| Just because an idea pops into your brain, doesn't mean you owe
| it anything.
|
| Something that may help is picking a smaller project, so small
| you could do it in a day or two. Build up some endurance over
| time.
|
| Good luck
| bloopernova wrote:
| This is fantastic advice.
|
| Just because we could possibly code some amazing concept
| project, doesn't mean we'd enjoy it. Or that it wouldn't end up
| causing us huge amounts of stress.
|
| A lot of us are stuck at home, bouncing off the walls and
| feeling like we're not doing anything.
|
| THAT IS OK!
|
| We're in a world that is both scary and new, we don't know
| quite what is going on, _and we need time and effort to process
| that_. By "effort" I mean intellectual, spiritual, physical,
| and emotional. (If you're not religious, think of a workout in
| a gym: spiritual effort is stretching and flexibility, and
| emotional effort is strength/weights. Or perhaps that spiritual
| is subconscious and long-term, while emotional is conscious and
| shorter-term.)
|
| tl;dr - too much heavy shit happening, don't overburden your
| head.
| w0utert wrote:
| It's funny because I did exactly that (sticking to one project
| instead of jumping from idea to idea) because I had the same
| problem as the OP, but these days I'm getting the feeling this
| is also counterproductive. I spent a lot of time on a single
| project, learned a lot of things along the way, but progress
| was very very slow mainly because it started to feel like
| 'work'.
|
| For me, these kinds of side-projects are all about learning new
| stuff, and sometimes to scratch some really small personal
| itch. So what I try to do now is to find projects that can be
| used a platform for trying out new stuff. For example, I've
| been working on an iOS game since 2014, but by now actually
| finishing it so people can play it is completely secondary to
| the personal satisfaction of incrementally refactoring and
| repurposing parts of the engine, using techniques and
| technologies that interest me right now. Becase even that
| started to feel like work at some point, I decided to also
| start some other side-projects that go in completely different
| directions, so I can switch depending on my mood and make slow
| but steady progress in each of them. I try to also incorporate
| some technology/techniques that pop up around my daytime job
| but which I never have time to explore at the office, some of
| that stuff is super interesting but I cannot justify spending
| company time on it.
|
| I think the main advice I have for the OP is to find one or two
| interesting projects that are diverse enough to be a platform
| for experimentation, instead of some very narrowly focussed
| problem that will inevitably start to become boring sooner or
| later. Unless you really want to create a product or something
| to show off with, the main purpose should be personal
| development/intellectual satisfaction, not reaching some
| predetermined goal.
| corecoder wrote:
| > find one or two interesting projects that are diverse
| enough to be a platform for experimentation
|
| This seems promising, thank you!
|
| Just a question: don't you risk to get stuck in a perpetual
| refactoring/rewrite cycle?
|
| [edit: fix formatting]
| w0utert wrote:
| >> _Just a question: don 't you risk to get stuck in a
| perpetual refactoring/rewrite cycle?_
|
| Yes, definitely, it's actually all I've been doing on one
| of these projects for the past two years. Guess I just like
| refactoring a lot it seems ;-)
|
| Joking aside, refactoring is a broad term. Most of the time
| spent 'refactoring' this project was to incorporate
| interesting new ideas, increasing the capabilities of the
| game engine etc. Not just the typical technical debt
| cleanup. But even some of that was actually very
| educational, for example I found out that the whole idea to
| use object-oriented programming techniques to model the
| game was a bad idea, and have slowly refactored the whole
| thing to a hybrid between OOP and an entity-component
| system. Just the act of incrementally applying such a
| fundamental paradigm shift while keeping the engine mostly
| working was quite an interesting challenge!
| RMPR wrote:
| > I spent a lot of time on a single project, learned a lot of
| things along the way, but progress was very very slow mainly
| because it started to feel like 'work'.
|
| Can relate, my personal solution was to talk about the
| project to people around me (often non-technical), some would
| be interested to try, and when I feel like giving up, they
| are the one reminding me they are looking forward to use it.
| blizkreeg wrote:
| Start meditating. It will help your restless mind.
| jmiskovic wrote:
| So many answers already. Here's my take. I have a decent sized
| graveyard of one-day projects, half dozen serious attempts and
| one published project with some 10k users. In line with some
| other suggestions in this thread, the published project scratches
| my own itch while scrapped ones were meant to be consumed by
| other people.
|
| If gamedev is your thing, try participating in a game jam or two.
| They are awesome way to use same limited attention span and
| actually finish something. If you see yourself spending too much
| time on graphics/sound, try some heavy constraints. For example,
| use just 3 colors for everything, or compose all graphics just
| from single shape.
|
| Introspection is good. Keep doing what you are doing, and keep
| learning from what worked better or worse for you.
|
| Treat your side project as small sandbox, a place to play. Don't
| put deadlines, don't worry about sunk cost, allow yourself to
| write bad code without much planning. You can incrementally get
| to point where you want it to be. Try to see at which point
| earliest you can wrap it up and publish as MVP.
|
| I noticed that it is very easy to start, and gets exponentially
| harder as you go on. When you set up the project, each
| development time slice doubles the result. First you have
| nothing, then it's "hello world". Then you put up some dynamic
| text. Then you hook up some crafty mechanism behind the text. It
| is exciting and motivating. But after a while the project slows
| down. It is because there are already some mechanics in there,
| and each new feature has to be aligned and connected with
| existing ones. The complexity grows and more and more time has to
| be invested in each new step. This is nature of software
| development. Polish also takes surprising amount of time. You
| have to be aware of it and plan your energy accordingly.
|
| All this accumulated complexity makes your mind crave a new
| project, a fresh canvas where everything is simple and new.
| Usually it will manifest in form of new idea that is so much
| better than the current project. What works for me is to take
| hour or two and take some notes and flesh out this new idea, and
| then archive it for time being.
|
| Some more advice I got from other people: A good place to stop
| the development session is when you are almost done with feature.
| This will motivate you to pick up the project next day, and
| you'll quickly get into mindset needed to start next feature.
|
| Don't share with others what you plan to do. There's a
| psychological effect where you get small amount of gratification
| by telling others about imagined finished project. You want to
| delay that gratification until you have something done because it
| will give you motivation needed to put in the hours. On the other
| hand, do share your progress on social networks. Getting feedback
| boosts motivation enormously.
| su8898 wrote:
| My problem is quite the opposite. I am able to finish a side
| project but I lack ideas.
| RMPR wrote:
| I felt like this for a long time, then I started to open my
| eyes to all the problems around me. For example, I started
| github.com/rmpr/atbswp because I used something like that on
| Windows, and when I switched to Linux I missed it, on simple
| solution was to start working on something similar...
| outworlder wrote:
| Please write down any ideas you may have, at any time. It's
| rare that an idea will come the moment you sit down with a
| blank screen staring at you.
|
| I've talking to emailing myself with a specific subject every
| time I have an idea. Doesn't matter how silly it is. I'll
| revisit them in a month and sift through. Some still remain
| silly, some will be upgraded given new knowledge.
| bbayer wrote:
| After several years of struggling with side projects I found one
| thing that motivates me: money. I don't even start a project if
| there is no possibility of some revenue. %99 of ideas got
| eliminated immediately. Every people have their own motivation
| though but having side income from a side project even you are
| sleeping is different thing. I have limited time for side
| projects. I always think I have one bullet so trying to use it
| wisely.
| sciencewolf wrote:
| This is certainly a useful lens through which to help you
| focus, but I've found that I'm now ONLY motivated to do things
| because of the possibility of financial upside. Have you
| encountered the same?
| bbayer wrote:
| Actually speaking yes. I spent a lot of time to think about
| it. Here is my little thought process to keep my motivation;
|
| Why am I working? Why am I spending my 1/3 of my time with my
| daily job. Is career real thing or other words is it really
| necessary to make money? Does it really matter to have high
| work satisfaction even though you earn little? I am working
| because of money. Money doesn't bring happiness but it brings
| freedom. At the end of the day what I need is freedom. It
| doesn't matter if I have shinny career if I can earn same
| money with something else. I have limited time and more money
| to become free. So I need to use my time wisely to get more
| money to become free eventually. It doesn't matter if I am
| using shiny programming language, technology or IDE. At the
| end of the day nobody will give a shit about what I am using.
| Quickest is the best because I have counted days in my life.
| I don't have time to learn new things every time I start a
| new projects. I already know everything I need to make money.
| Learning is not a goal but it is a reward when I become free.
| swanandkriyaban wrote:
| Have you tried B J Fogg's tiny habits? It works like a charm and
| I can see it can help in your situation. I was exactly like what
| you mentioned, had (still have?) shiny object syndrome but
| wouldn't stick with one topic for a stretch.
| aprinsen wrote:
| Hey OP, I have been exactly where you are, about three years ago,
| and now I have a backlog of completed side projects of varying
| size that I am very happy with.
|
| Here's some quick advice:
|
| * Start smaller. Your projects are probably too ambitious to
| start. Graphical games are actually quite complex. Start with
| small projects and work your way to larger ones. My first
| projects were chrome extensions and silly command line tools.
| They helped me build some resilience that I used later to
| complete more complex projects.
|
| * When you do tackle larger projects, do your best to see them as
| a series of smaller projects. Each project should deliver some
| value on its own. I recently built a web game about navigating a
| randomly generated maze and avoiding monsters. Here's how I broke
| it up: first I built a command line tool to generate mazes. Then
| I separated the core functionality into a library. Then I
| deployed an API wrapping that library. Then I built a simple UI
| that allowed a user to navigate that maze. Finally, I started
| adding enemies. Each enemy was its own project, each with more
| complex path finding than the last. At each step in this process,
| I had learned something new and had a deliverable to show for it.
|
| * Your question suggests that the problems you are trying to
| solve are not interesting enough. This belies a beginner mindset:
| that you have to be interested first, and then work happens off
| the fuel of your interest. The truth is that most interesting
| projects involve a lot of days where the creator feels
| disinterested, but shows up any way. The most important thing you
| can do for yourself is cultivate the resilience required to keep
| showing up, so you can reap the satisfaction of completing great
| work later.
| JohnL4 wrote:
| Yeah, this. I'll add:
|
| Keep a todo-list/journal sort of thing and document each work
| item as you complete it.
|
| I'm working on a stupid side project myself and every day I hit
| a new hurdle, something I don't know, so (almost) every day is
| a tiny victory over some immediate problem.
|
| Make a plan, sure, but break it down into tiny pieces, even if
| you have to keep lowering the bar.
| 21stio wrote:
| Keep the scope small so you'll be done fast
| shoo wrote:
| For me, the answer was to make software that I actually genuinely
| find useful.
|
| Once I got a rough prototype to the point where I was able to get
| value out of the software as a user, the project seemed to stick.
|
| I naturally return to use the software every few days or weeks or
| months (because it is useful), and when I do, sometimes I have
| ideas for improving the UI or what's going on under the hood. So
| sometimes I knuckle down and spend a day or two enhancing it.
| gavanwoolery wrote:
| I have a graveyard filled to the brim with side projects, and
| just ONE project that I keep coming back to (I have been working
| on it for 20 years). Its getting to the point where I do fewer
| side projects because I understand there is only one that is
| worth working on. In the past decade, I only had two smaller side
| projects.
|
| The secret for me is to work on the hardest, most interesting
| problems. This is not good business advice - mind that. But you
| are probably doing side projects to get away from the boredom of
| the thing that actually earns you money.
| rriepe wrote:
| It's an explore/exploit thing. You need rewards from both. Your
| job focuses too much on "exploit" so you end up seeking "explore"
| rewards from side projects.
|
| You explore an idea, but after you select it, you're staring down
| the barrel of a whole bunch of "exploit" work to do. You're
| already burnt out on this reward system from work-work, so it
| doesn't seem appealing to you. So you do more exploring instead.
|
| My advice is to instead do worldbuilding or some other creative
| hobby that has only the creative exploration side.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| I would say don't even worry about finishing. Document what
| you've got and move on. Eventually you might come back to it, or
| steal parts of it for something else.
| droobles wrote:
| I was torn between making a game, or making something to aid my
| musical endeavors.
|
| I liked the idea of making a game, but as an adult I don't get to
| play that much. When I do, I play older games that stoke my
| nostalgia (JRPGs).
|
| I play in an active punk band, and am a self admitted pedal
| addict.
|
| I decided to go with music, because that's what I spend most of
| my passion time doing. Currently working on a really cool music
| related side project and couldn't be happier.
|
| Also, I think scope has a big part to play. A video game is a
| huge endeavor that could take 5+ years developing solo, and most
| of my audio programming ideas might take 2+ weeks.
| rohansuri wrote:
| For me I can only keep up my interest in a side project if I know
| something like that doesn't exist. I've found reading new
| research papers and implementing them to be fulfilling.
| gurtgurt wrote:
| This is definitely a common issue everyone struggles with. I've
| noticed a lot of it stems from constantly changing my mind and
| self doubt during the dev process (like you mentioned, you start
| off building a roguelike, switch over to a solitar card game,
| switch over to a isomorphic strategy game).
|
| Something that helped me a lot is first spending more time than I
| think I need figuring out what I want to build on a very high and
| broad level, and not just diving into coding. Once I figure out
| what to build I need to have the discipline not to change what I
| have decided to build. Some implementation details might change
| or some game mechanics might be tweaked, but on a high level (am
| I building a roguelike or solitar type) can't be changed once I
| start.
| KentBeck wrote:
| Don't. Most side projects aren't worth investing heavily in, but
| you can't tell which is which without trying them. I had started
| hundreds of programs before Erich Gamma and I programmed
| together. If I had forced myself to "stick with" one of those
| early projects, we wouldn't have written JUnit.
| mysterydip wrote:
| If you were given one of the projects for your job, you'd
| complete it (and slog through the boring parts) because you
| wouldn't have a choice. Maybe a "project manager" (real person or
| virtual like a blog) to keep you accountable/on track would help.
| That won't stop the urges to chase "the next shiny", but will
| make resisting them a bit easier.
|
| (I say this as someone with a hundred project folders, so I
| should follow my own advice. I will say when given a deadline to
| produce something, I deliver, warts and all.)
| joeberon wrote:
| I have this and it's caused a great deal of stress in my personal
| life _and_ work life. Basically I get excited by the idea of a
| new thing or project, but within a week or less I am totally and
| completed bored by it. There are very few times I've managed to
| keep continuously working on the same thing for a long time
| TehShrike wrote:
| For me the solution was to remove motivation from the equation.
|
| I had to tell myself "this is your job now, you have a part-time
| job that starts after supper." And then show up for work every
| day (or every other day).
|
| As long as you keep showing up for work, the work eventually gets
| done.
|
| I started thinking this way in late 2013 and shipped the 1.0 of
| my first successful side project about 6 months later.
|
| People who don't ship will tell you that side projects shouldn't
| feel like work, but you can ignore them. Shipping feels
| fantastic.
| abnry wrote:
| Find a problem in your life you can improve/solve with software.
| Then work on that.
| zulban wrote:
| I've finished loads of hobby projects, despite full time jobs,
| and I've been told that I'm a bit of an expert on this. I see
| there's lots of comments already so I'll keep it short.
|
| 1) If you can't focus on a project longer than two days, then
| pick a project you can finish in three days. Honestly evaluate
| how big such a project can be. I also see this as students learn
| to code. They learn the basics then think they're going to dive
| into a 2000 hour project. Instead, you need to ask yourself
| "what's the biggest project of this type I've ever finished" then
| add 50% to that. Like an athlete, you need to build up the
| endurance for your self-motivation to survive longer and longer
| projects. The payoffs are bigger but your human brain needs to
| trust that a payoff exists based on past experience.
|
| 2) I prefer not to talk about my future dreams for a project.
| What happens is I get enjoyment out of talking about what I
| "will" do, but without actually doing it. Then if I ever finish
| the work, I get less enjoyment because I already talked about it.
| In this way I'd be stealing enjoyment from my future self! An
| exception is advice.
| pdr2020 wrote:
| Point 2 is such a golden piece of advice and so obvious in
| hindsight, yet this is the first time I've encountered it
| online.
|
| If you have any online written pieces or blogs, please share
| them.
| pmohun wrote:
| You might find this interesting:
| https://philmohun.substack.com/p/work-with-the-door-open
| tyrust wrote:
| >Peter Gollwitzer, Paschal Sheeran, Verena Michalski, and
| Andrea Siefert published an interesting paper on this topic
| in the May, 2009 issue of Psychological Science. They argued
| that important goals like pursuing a career path involve a
| commitment to an identity goal. ...
|
| >They suggest that when people announce an intention to
| commit to an identity goal in public, that announcement may
| actually backfire. Imagine, for example, that Mary wants to
| become a Psychologist. She tells Herb that she wants to
| pursue this career and that she is going to study hard in her
| classes. However, just by telling Herb her intention, she
| knows that Herb is already starting to think of her as a
| Psychologist. So, she has achieved part of her identity goal
| just by telling Herb about it. Oddly enough, that can
| actually decrease the likelihood that Mary will study hard.
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-
| motives/200...
| ucacian wrote:
| Not a written content, but Derek Sivers' TED talk
| https://youtu.be/NHopJHSlVo4
| gwgundersen wrote:
| This is good advice, and both parts rely on being aware of your
| own mind and even tricking it a bit. This reminded me of a
| Moxie story about nearly dying while sailing [1]:
|
| > Strangely, I could feel myself drawn towards the temptation
| of giving up, even though I knew failure meant certain death.
| In hindsight, I think it's because the act of giving up feels
| so similar to the sensation of success, at least in a
| superficially immediate way.
|
| Over the years, the mantra that "giving up feels like success"
| has really helped me not give up simply to access that feeling.
|
| [1] https://moxie.org/stories/brink-of-death/
| japhyr wrote:
| > I prefer not to talk about my future dreams for a project.
|
| I feel this way as well, but my reasoning is different. I do
| much better work when I feel like I don't have to do something,
| but I can choose to do something. I've almost always done more
| efficient work on my own side projects than on the things I've
| been assigned to do.
|
| When I talk about an idea that I haven't really built out yet,
| it creates a sense of obligation to do that work. That sense of
| obligation makes me not want to do the grunt work required to
| get the project done. I do better if that obligation is all
| internal. In that sense, writing in a journal about my ideas
| and vision is much more beneficial to me than talking with
| people about it.
|
| That said, I try to be careful about recognizing when I do need
| to talk with others. If I went too far in the internal
| approach, I'd end up doing years-long projects without ever
| validating that they're meaningful to other end users.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| With regards to point 2, I seem to remember reading once that
| if you allow yourself to think too much about success in the
| future, it steals away your motivation to complete the task in
| the present. It gives your brain that satisfaction without
| actually having succeeded at anything, and then you stop trying
| because you are no longer motivated.
| arkanciscan wrote:
| #2 so much! When I tell people my ideas I can feel the
| motivation dissolving. Trouble is, my ideas sometimes suck and
| I need another person to tell me they are good. But if that
| person doesn't get excited about the idea it takes the wind out
| of my sails. I think this speaks to why I became a developer in
| the first place; I want to solve people's problems. I want to
| be useful. If I tell someone my idea and they aren't interested
| I feel like everyone will feel the same so it must be a bad
| idea. But what if they are right. Do you ever finish a project
| only to find that nobody cares about it? Isn't that worse than
| not finishing?
| wcarss wrote:
| My answer takes from the Feynman approach to problem solving:
| have several projects laying around that you could easily pick
| back up to work on a little bit. The progress may not be
| constant, but it builds over time.
|
| This is a variation on the parent post's suggestion of picking
| a project you can finish in three days. I find that task can
| itself be hard, and is work that gets in the way of the fun
| work. In the past I've burnt out my excitement while trying to
| do it.
|
| So I have 5+ small games, a game engine, an interpreter and a
| compiler, a few short stories, some music projects, a personal
| website, some art projects, and several books to read, and most
| aren't done.
|
| When inspiration strikes, e.g. I'm feeling musical, I open up
| my music folder and click around a bit. Or if I feel like
| making a game, the first thing I do is go play one of my
| existing half-built games, and pop open the editor. It is
| helpful here to leave things in a working-ish state and keep
| ideas around in text files about what you could do next. Make
| picking the project back up easy for yourself.
|
| I do also start new things or decide not to come back to old
| ones, but I wound up here by realizing that my interests aren't
| actually infinite. There's only about a dozen distinct things I
| really want to do and periodically get excited about.
|
| For years I had been starting and then totally dropping
| projects, but I had "started making a game" a hundred times. My
| plan became to treat random projects like turning a ratchet,
| and I feel it's gone great from there.
| hentaiD00m wrote:
| I'm picking up this approach
| Oxin111 wrote:
| I need to say I have exactly like you. I was unable to finish
| anything though many years. Than 1,5 year ago finally everything
| changed. This is by small but significan tchange. I choose for
| myself subject that is big enough that a lot of experimentation
| can fall under it and specific enough that all experiments have
| common denominator. Single guiding idea. For me this was enabling
| my father to create application (emotional importance! we are all
| animals after all. btw. he didn't care. I cared.). Since then I'm
| experimenting with new stuff and doing the thing that interest me
| but this theme is always there.
|
| I'm doing tests of different stuff, writing prototypes, all good
| stuff. First there was more strategy and later there is more
| tactical planning and execution but I still more do what I feel I
| want to do right now than follow so roadmap or something. I sit
| down and think what I want to do right now and I write myself one
| post-it with tasks to do, stick it to laptop next to the touch
| pad. Than I do this fully or partially and than new post-it. I
| think that my mind is telling me the place of maximum development
| for my level of skills and I keep faith that this path will take
| me to some destination that is original.
|
| After 1,5 year and 3 throw away partially working prototypes I
| have something that is quite cool I have something like creator
| to generate application for production systems. I discovered my
| own cool frontend architecture. Thinking about everything from
| first principle and go to place of interest giving really cool
| results in retrospect.
|
| No I'm a bit forcing myself with last 2 post-its because I have
| company that want to use this system and I need to finish details
| that I didn't care about to do because I was going around it. But
| now when I see it almost finished and useful somehow it goes
| easier.
|
| Soul of the explorer is a great gift, no need to change it.
|
| Generally for me 30 yo it was mark of stopping being my own enemy
| and started things that I always wanted. To this time I was just
| doing this random stupid stuff and thought that it will all fall
| together. (Disclaimer: It did).
| ABraidotti wrote:
| Ha, okay, just for some light-hearted context: it took me several
| decades of trying so many projects to finally find one and stick
| with it: web development. Now I'm a gainfully employed web
| developer and DevOps engineer, and a great load has been lifted
| off me. I am 15 years behind some of my peers but I no longer
| stress about finding that one project I'm gonna stick with.
|
| So yeah, I've found my way out and here's my advice: it's a
| numbers game. Keep trying things. Even if you try to make a
| roguelike for 5 minutes and move on, that's a valuable lesson.
| Now try 100 more things and you might stick with 3 or 4.
| RabbitmqGuy wrote:
| I used to pick side projects based on all the things they say you
| should; does it have a large addressable market, does it solve
| customer pain points, are people willing to prepay before you
| start working on it etc. And I would get to a point where I would
| give up because the projects, chosen this way, were not fun
| anymore and I would stop working on them.
|
| So instead I now pick things that I find to be fun to me to work
| on. Instead of solving customer pain points, I try and solve a
| pain point that I have. I'm liking it thus far
| ssss11 wrote:
| Perhaps your passion is not the code, but setting up and
| maintaining it - DevOps
| gwbas1c wrote:
| (Apologies for being glib, and apologies for not being the exact
| answer to your question.)
|
| Don't date, don't marry, don't have kids.
|
| I approached my relationship, and later my family, with the same
| zeal that I approached side projects. As a result, I have very
| little time for side projects.
|
| What does make a successful side project for me, is approaching
| it with the goal of learning something new, not finishing it.
|
| Every other year or so I get really into something, but I've only
| finished one thing that had a very short-term result, It was a
| simple experiment where I wrote up results instead of trying to
| have a tool, framework, or product.
| cientifico wrote:
| After years of suffering the same problem, I found (so far) a
| solution that more or less works for me. Assigns days to
| projects. Max of 5 projects. The most important thing is: Don't
| work in the project unless it's the day. If there is a need, add
| it to the backlog of the project.
|
| My curve of interest gets reduce over a day. After one week of
| not working, it is restore.
|
| Curious if this works out to someone else.
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