Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm married with two kids. I did my personal project for two years while I was commuting on the train in the mornings. (too tired in the evenings generally).
you're not supposed to marry two kids.
Ask HN: How do you manage your personal projects?
21–30 of 30 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal projects?
#22I also add idea in a spread sheet, and then I rate them with the following criteria:
- Time needed
- Enjoyment
- Potential income
- Career impact
This makes it easy to see which one you are supposed to be working on. My current side project is the highest rated idea on the list.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal projects?
#23Help: I haven't had an idea for a project in a long time. It might be because of the shitty job I have but I really can't find one even to bear my daily work. Advice on how to get them back?
My example. I'm trying to save money and learn to cook, so I wanted a 3d plot of recipes on the axis of (Money/Calorie), (Time), and Rating. Then I could just look at a graph and know what to cook.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal projects?
#24For me, I chose to scratch my own itch. I work on a food side project called https://bestfoodnearme.com but my time is extremely limited to a few hours a week. I keep a sketch pad to write down my ideas for the site. If I have ideas related to other projects, I write them down in a more general pad apart from the sketchpad that is focused only on the food site.
I put constraints on which features and ideas I need to work on. If there is a bug in the basic functionality of a project, I tend to work on that first. For new features, I will only consider them if I get feedback from at least 3 different unrelated people that mention the same feature to me.
I always plan out the night before which tasks I will work on the next day. That way I can hit the ground running.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal projects?
#25I have a trello board with a card for each idea. I have 4 lists: - Braindump: New ideas go here as I think of them. - Graveyard: Archive of bad ideas. - Research: Potentially good ideas that need fleshing out. - Ready: Ideas where I've thought through and documented market fit, timeline, tech stack, marketing, or whatever the project needs. And crucially: first thing to do when I start the project, which makes it eas…
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal projects?
#26Just start one, then only work on one personal project at a time until it's done.
yes the above, and don't read HN too often on a day, you'll get more ideas again...
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal projects?
#27Sort your ideas based on the basis of most potential or most value. Pick the first. Stick with it for at least 3 months.
My personal project has been running for about 2.5 years now. Still nowhere near finished. :-)
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal projects?
#28Help: I haven't had an idea for a project in a long time. It might be because of the shitty job I have but I really can't find one even to bear my daily work. Advice on how to get them back?
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal projects?
#29I have a trello board with a card for each idea. I have 4 lists: - Braindump: New ideas go here as I think of them. - Graveyard: Archive of bad ideas. - Research: Potentially good ideas that need fleshing out. - Ready: Ideas where I've thought through and documented market fit, timeline, tech stack, marketing, or whatever the project needs. And crucially: first thing to do when I start the project, which makes it eas…
I find Trello extremely useful to organise my own projects. I have a board similar to the one you describe, cataloging my ideas and their various stages, and also a board per project that I start building, which is typically organised as a traditional left-to-right agile board.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your personal projects?
#30Get married, get kids. Have no time left. No projects, no cry.
It's only through management that I get anything done at all
I have an ideas folder, each idea gets a text file with a summary of the idea. I write it, I leave it for at least 2-3 weeks, often longer. If I still think its a goer after that, I flesh out out, spend time thinking about implementation
If an idea is to be explored, it gets a folder for prototypes, notes, resources etc.
There are people on here far more organised than me, and I plan to steal their methods.
Idea: An AI bot that sums up the main points from all of the answers on an "Ask HN" post