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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?

#231

Post by edmundhuber »

Have you tried journaling? It lets you get ideas out (adding or remixing ideas from the previous days), without investing in getting a project up, writing code, etc. A lot of times, for me, I just want to explore an idea and I'm not actually interested in working through it. But if I spend enough days journaling an idea and I'm still interested in it, then I go for it.

The other thing that's helped me is realizing that anything worthwhile is hard. If you want to stick with a project until it's done, you're going to get bored, you're going to run into roadblocks, and you want to cultivate a sense of "this is what I want to do, and that is just a temporary issue that I will work through".

Last thing that's helped me is finding a support group. I use irc, specifically I hang out on irc.darwin.network (shameless plug, I kinda co-run it), there I can chat with people about what I'm working on, they can ask cool questions, etc, keeps the juices flowing and reminds me why a project is worth sticking to.

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

#232

Post by tverbeure »

Two things have helped me with that:

* I started blogging about my projects. And I try to keep a pace of roughly 1 blog post every 2 months. * I have a mix of on-going long term and short term projects.

(I've also submitted talk proposal for long term project for a conference even though I had barely started that project. It got accepted. The fear of a public failure was very motivating! I don't recommend it.)

Forcing myself to write something every 2 months automatically results in the need to do some short term stuff as well. 2 months ago I made simple how-to video about how to solder with enamel magnet wire and all the tools in my home electronics lab.

This weekend, I spend hours on disassembling, photographing, and measuring the signals in a smoke detector with an expired battery. (Writeup WIP.)

These are all things that only take a day or two to complete.

Meanwhile, I have a project ongoing to convert an FPGA-based thin client into a retrogaming machine. I work on it on and off. Sometimes it's idle for months, and then I pick it up again for a few days. I don't know if I'll ever complete this project, but it's all hobby stuff anyway, so there's no pressure.

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

#233

Post by RMPR »

su8898 wrote: post #229

My problem is quite the opposite. I am able to finish a side project but I lack ideas.

I felt like this for a long time, then I started to open my eyes to all the problems around me. For example, I started github.com/rmpr/atbswp because I used something like that on Windows, and when I switched to Linux I missed it, on simple solution was to start working on something similar...

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

#234

Post by markus_zhang »

I have the exactly same situation and I also made a half ass engine for a 2d rpg with a map editor.

I don't know what's happening, but whenever I'm pushed to do something, either by my parents or my boss or anything urgent (say I have an interview in a week), I'm suoer focused and can get tremendous amount of work done in a short period of time.

However, whenever I set up a target for myself, out of curiosity or interest, anything non urgent, I'll just do a half asd work for maybe a few weeks and then never get deeo enough to learn or show anything important.

This really summaries my life since day 1. My dream is to have someone pointing a gun at head and say "learn this or die" and I'm sure I can finish it nicely and quickly. But in real life I don't have this kind of luxuries...

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

#236

Post by Bekwnn »

edmundhuber wrote: post #231

Have you tried journaling? It lets you get ideas out (adding or remixing ideas from the previous days), without investing in getting a project up, writing code, etc. A lot of times, for me, I just want to explore an idea and I'm not actually interested in working through it. But if I spend enough days journaling an idea and I'm still interested in it, then I go for it. The other thing that's helped me is realizing th…

Re your first paragraph: What's funny is that I get almost the same effect by avoiding writing ideas down. I find letting an idea sit and stew in my head to be a good vetting process.

If I forget an idea, that's a feature of the system, not a bug. If an idea survives for a while and I find myself coming back to it often, then after a month of it being an idea I might act on it. At that point the idea is a lot less nebulous and I have a pretty clear idea of where to get started and an idea of where it's going to go in the future.

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

#237

Post by naasking »

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”.

Agree, I've been through this myself plenty of times. I think there's a way to turn this into a tactic though: a completed project has loads of gaps and finishing touches that a learning prototype lacks, and it comes with it's own interesting challenges that are hard to predict.

So if you're interested in learning what a finished product would entail, you can only achieve that understanding by finishing a product. I've found that there are some products where I'm interested in understanding all of the details, and some which I'm not, and that's sometimes helped filter which projects I should stick with.

The worst outcome is when I have to shelve a project because the tooling just isn't mature or usable enough to make the project fun.

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

#238

Post by spookybones »

jasonv wrote: post #201
arosier wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"maybe you already got what you came for." As someone who frequently starts projects and doesn't finish them, I've wondered if the part I enjoy about the project is the dreaming about what could be. That little rush you get when a new idea is upon you and it's all you can think about for x days. Doing the initial research and formulating a plan. This is a dopamine rush for me. The feeling of being laser focused for t…

I was reading a book called "You're Not Crazy - You're Codependent" (not relevant, except the source of what comes next in my comment) wherein the author made a distinction between "dreaming" and "fantasizing", the latter being destructive (in some cases) or unsatisfying. I feel the distinction is valuable for me, but I've also been helping my teenager work through his challenges wherein he hits the first speed bump…

I was thinking the same thing. The rush from the possibility versus the actuality applies to relationships as well.

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

#239

Post by RMPR »

w0utert wrote: post #44
littlecosmic wrote: post #9

You’ve already done step one: realise the pattern. Step two is don’t do the new project. See it for what it is, not a great new idea, but another step down the road you’ve been walking down for years. Just because an idea pops into your brain, doesn’t mean you owe it anything. Something that may help is picking a smaller project, so small you could do it in a day or two. Build up some endurance over time. Good luck

It's funny because I did exactly that (sticking to one project instead of jumping from idea to idea) because I had the same problem as the OP, but these days I'm getting the feeling this is also counterproductive. I spent a lot of time on a single project, learned a lot of things along the way, but progress was very very slow mainly because it started to feel like 'work'. For me, these kinds of side-projects are all…

> I spent a lot of time on a single project, learned a lot of things along the way, but progress was very very slow mainly because it started to feel like 'work'.

Can relate, my personal solution was to talk about the project to people around me (often non-technical), some would be interested to try, and when I feel like giving up, they are the one reminding me they are looking forward to use it.

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

#240

Post by agumonkey »

arosier wrote: post #137
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…

"maybe you already got what you came for." As someone who frequently starts projects and doesn't finish them, I've wondered if the part I enjoy about the project is the dreaming about what could be. That little rush you get when a new idea is upon you and it's all you can think about for x days. Doing the initial research and formulating a plan. This is a dopamine rush for me. The feeling of being laser focused for t…

I'd bet a few dollars that this is the most common answer. A little piece of anecdata, being stuck, jobless and confidentless due to too much of this dopamine rush theory, i did propose to write something for my 'boss', at a food store, a little single user vue app [0].

a few conclusion :

- i did actually deliver something functional (for a change)

- i still had twenty thousand dreamy ideas (as noted in a lengthy TODO file)

- doing something for someone else changes our your brain rolls. you dream less because you want to make them happy

- it was painful at times, dealing with constraints

- but solving these was a good feeling. a bit less exciting but longer lasting. a feeling of knowing more and deeper (much unlike dreamy brainstorming)

- it makes you operate for true progress, you aim at surgical advances instead of abstract designs. that is a great thing. sobering

my 2 cents

[0] the theory behind it was that I'd do something simple, without pressure, that I may sell, or at least put on my resume (vuejs being trendy)..

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