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

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

#51

Post by bobblywobbles »

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.

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

#52

Post by dgb23 »

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #34

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 r…

> “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.

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

#54

Post by ryeguy_24 »

dgb23 wrote: post #52
ryeguy_24 wrote: post #34

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 r…

> “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 circumstance…

This is exactly one of the tips the book provides. Good validation of the book I guess.

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

#55

Post by tablethnuser »

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.

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

#56

Post by ryeguy_24 »

relativeadv wrote: post #50
ryeguy_24 wrote: post #34

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 r…

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 ch…

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.

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

#57

Post by dinkleberg »

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #34

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 r…

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.

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

#60

Post by CodeGlitch »

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #34

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 r…

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 :)

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