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

What were you intensely curious about at 12 years old? Do that.

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/

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.

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).

Apparently that’s exactly not what you should do:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/200...