Ask HN: How can I pick a side project and stick with it?

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.

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).

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.

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.