Side projects are like children
ryanwaggoner.com
Side projects are like children
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Side projects are like children
#2As someone who has had the same attitude in the past, working full-time on one thing at a time that eventually went nowhere, I'm beginning to think of side projects as insurance.
Perhaps it is more fruitful to think about how to work more efficiently in the present and track potentially good ideas for the future, than to keep throwing them away.
Re: Side projects are like children
#3If side projects are like kids then i'd be dragged away by social services by now for total neglect of my 30-40 kids.
Re: Side projects are like children
#4If side projects are like kids then i'd be dragged away by social services by now for total neglect of my 30-40 kids.
I feel like I did a bad job of explaining the core of my analogy, which is that creating a child or a side project is easy and fun, but they're potentially with you for a long time, and thus deserve careful thought before starting.
Re: Side projects are like children
#5I like the fish analogy better. Feed a little bit everyday. Don't be afraid to flush 'em and get new ones.
Re: Side projects are like children
#6I get the gist of the article and can appreciate the message. I fall victim to this spawning of many projects that I can't dedicate the right amount of time to and they get some traction, but never really see the light of day. I'm my own distraction at times; the latest idea takes away from the original one...rinse and repeat.
I've recently realized this about me and started down the track of trying just to focus on one or two projects and put the right resources behind them. This is a recent "a ha" moment, so, we'll see how it goes. Good article!
Re: Side projects are like children
#7I like the fish analogy better. Feed a little bit everyday. Don't be afraid to flush 'em and get new ones.
Does this come from something you read? I really like this analogy, though I still think focus is really important.
Re: Side projects are like children
#8If side projects are like kids then i'd be dragged away by social services by now for total neglect of my 30-40 kids.
I feel like I did a bad job of explaining the core of my analogy, which is that creating a child or a side project is easy and fun, but they're potentially with you for a long time, and thus deserve careful thought before starting.
Maybe use tattoos as an analogy instead.
Re: Side projects are like children
#9As someone who has had the same attitude in the past, working full-time on one thing at a time that eventually went nowhere, I'm beginning to think of side projects as insurance. Perhaps it is more fruitful to think about how to work more efficiently in the present and track potentially good ideas for the future, than to keep throwing them away.
This is how I previously thought, but I've since reconsidered. The reason is that you can't split your attention between multiple projects without a loss in overall efficiency. The amount of attention given to each of n projects isn't 1/n, but rather 1 / (n^x), where x is some measure of how bad you are at multitasking. For me, I think x is probably somewhere around 1.5, so if I have three projects, I end up giving each an average of 20% of my full attention. The remaining 40% is lost to the ether due to distraction, task-switching costs, and not having one project constantly be the main thing on my mind.
As a result, increasing diversification results in a lower overall expected value of your projects, because you're losing more and more of your productivity to efficiency losses.
Re: Side projects are like children
#10As someone who has had the same attitude in the past, working full-time on one thing at a time that eventually went nowhere, I'm beginning to think of side projects as insurance. Perhaps it is more fruitful to think about how to work more efficiently in the present and track potentially good ideas for the future, than to keep throwing them away.
This is how I previously thought, but I've since reconsidered. The reason is that you can't split your attention between multiple projects without a loss in overall efficiency. The amount of attention given to each of n projects isn't 1/n, but rather 1 / (n^x), where x is some measure of how bad you are at multitasking. For me, I think x is probably somewhere around 1.5, so if I have three projects, I end up giving e…
We might be thinking of different time-scales. I've probably never worked on more than one thing on any one day, but if I had to do the same thing every day for more than a month I'd be bored and dragging my feet eventually.