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Finishing a side project

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Re: Finishing a side project

#121

Post by zurfer »

jlengrand wrote: post #111

One thing I learnt in a thread on HN a long time ago and that I use a lot to just keep working on side projects : Make sure you stop half way through a sentence / line of code. Don't finish that article, or don't stop with code that compiles. The reason is stupid simple : It just removes all the blockers of starting working on the project again. It removes the initial step, which is usually the hardest. Come in, fini…

I am sure this advice worked for you, but I find it ironic that to "finish" a side project, you should not "finish" sub-tasks. However I completely agree that you should make it as easy as possible for you to get started and see some success.

For me that usually starts with a mockup and bit by bit the mockup becomes something more.

Re: Finishing a side project

#122

Post by tasuki »

wolco wrote: post #28
daenz wrote: post #4

>Unexpected life events. Like a world-changing pandemic and riots? I'll be honest, it is getting hard to focus on building my cute little software bullshit project when a voice in the back of my head is telling me to spend my time prepping for social collapse.

So much more is going on. Sand storms so large they are blocking the sun in the US. Radiation forest fires in Russia. Ufo's existance were confirmed by US navy. Stock market crash / rapid recovery What's next...

> Ufo's existance were confirmed by US navy.

UFO means Unidentified Flying Object. The word "unidentified" doesn't fit well with the word "confirmed".

US navy has seen flying objects which it has not identified. I would be more surprised if they could identify all the objects they have ever seen flying. I often have trouble identifying certain objects which aren't even flying!

Re: Finishing a side project

#123

Post by jyriand »

Do you use some kind of project management tools (kanban,todoist etc) for your side projects or maybe just some plain text todo files? I find that whenever I’m trying to start a new side project I’m spending disproportionately long time searching for perfect tools and often end up doing nothing and agonising over project management instead of working on actual tasks.

Re: Finishing a side project

#124

Post by CapsAdmin »

I love working on endless projects. Releasing something has never been high priority for me. If I get bored then so be it. As long as the journey is fun I'm good.

I love completing things, but I tend to see sub projects/tasks more fun to complete than the entire project.

People are different, but I can totally imagine I would be depressed if releasing something was my goal.

Composing music is similar to me. I've got around 1000 unreleased music ideas with varying degrees of complentess, but I've only released around 50. Interestingly though this viewpoint of not being able to release something was something I mostly saw with people starting out, and eventually it fades.

Re: Finishing a side project

#125

Post by DrBazza »

I quite like the idea of a 'context' file that lists what you were doing when you stopped.

I tend to check in code that's broken on purpose with a message: "BROKEN... " and then roughly where the project was.

Also, I tend to check in code with links in the comments to anything I was using so that I can find the links again.

Re: Finishing a side project

#126

Post by jlengrand »

zurfer wrote: post #121
jlengrand wrote: post #111

One thing I learnt in a thread on HN a long time ago and that I use a lot to just keep working on side projects : Make sure you stop half way through a sentence / line of code. Don't finish that article, or don't stop with code that compiles. The reason is stupid simple : It just removes all the blockers of starting working on the project again. It removes the initial step, which is usually the hardest. Come in, fini…

I am sure this advice worked for you, but I find it ironic that to "finish" a side project, you should not "finish" sub-tasks. However I completely agree that you should make it as easy as possible for you to get started and see some success. For me that usually starts with a mockup and bit by bit the mockup becomes something more.

Definitely. I didn't intend my comment to be taken as a 'one trick to rule them all and make sure you'll finish your side projects from now on' :).

It's simply a dirt simple trick that helped me a lot because it keeps a 'live thread' between the project and me. This feature I know I have to finish, the low friction to start, ...

It's not a silver bullet, and of course at some point you have to finish stuff up to complete your project. Starting small is definitely a good idea as well indeed.

Re: Finishing a side project

#127

Post by jlengrand »

OhRoG9th wrote: post #118
jlengrand wrote: post #111

One thing I learnt in a thread on HN a long time ago and that I use a lot to just keep working on side projects : Make sure you stop half way through a sentence / line of code. Don't finish that article, or don't stop with code that compiles. The reason is stupid simple : It just removes all the blockers of starting working on the project again. It removes the initial step, which is usually the hardest. Come in, fini…

I've been using most of my free time in the last decade to write side projects (for my own use, not published ones), and I strongly agree with the author that small steps are key. Although, reading your comment, I suspect that as often, generalizing this idea is probably an error, and I don't doubt what you describe works best for you and the people you mention from the HN thread (and thus, probably many others). For…

200% agree. People are different, what works for one might not work for others. It's just one trick out of many others.

You seem to be using side-projects as something with an end goal, which I admire :). Most of my projects are more 'let's try to use this new thing to...'. Interestingly, features have a very beneficial effect for me in the short term (few days / weeks) and a very adverse one in the long run. By building a 'feature list' when I start a side project it's almost like if I was removing half the fun and it start looking much like work again. So I try to not look ahead too much and enjoy the ride.

That's why I love doing side projects with other people as well when I can : you can feed off what excites others as well and combine different motivators :).

Re: Finishing a side project

#128

Post by rikroots »

bbx wrote: post #52

If you need to go to a café and create a new user for each new side project, you’re not gonna work a lot. I understand needing separate contexts for separate projects but this seems like overkill. The context is in your mind, not your environment. I have my share of past and ongoing side projects, including hobby websites [1], funny tutorials [2], an ebook [2], coding references [4] and a CSS framework [5]. Like the…

> you need to dedicate time to a project. I do this through predefined 2-hour slots each day or week where I have to work on a project.

I'm glad this system works for you; it wouldn't work for me - my professional coding life is regimentalised enough.

When I step away from "work-stuff" to spend some time with a project I want to work on, I can't approach it like a job; instead I need the work to be challenging and engaging and loosely structured. I'll have vague aims and hopes for the project but I'll also be hoping for unexpected turns. I give myself permission to get sidetracked, to let go of the project's purpose (for a while) so I can explore new thoughts and ideas along the way.

It's all very unprofessional, yes. It's also fun - which is the main reason for me tackling any side project.

And when it stops being fun? I stop working on the project: save it, put it somewhere safe, go entertain myself on a different project for a while. I can do this because I know the first project will still be there, waiting for me to become interested in it a few months (or years) later.

It helps that I keep my side-projects very open-ended - none of them will ever be "finished". Horses for courses, I suppose.

Re: Finishing a side project

#129

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

I take my side projects as seriously as if they were major releases.

One of the big reasons that I do them, is because they help me to develop the habit of ship.

Also, one of my side projects has actually become a worldwide standard, so I think that treating all of my projects as "ship" has turned out well.

I have a number of works in progress. Some, I will complete, some, I won't.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." -Attributed to some guy that wore a sheet.

Re: Finishing a side project

#130

Post by nchelluri »

ramraj07 wrote: post #104
raister wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting. I saw once Timothy Feriss interviewing Neil Gaiman, and it was about focus and whatnot, and Gaiman said: "whenever I'm blocked, I stop, and start doing nothing . I can't watch a movie, read a book, I do nothing. I have only two options: I work or I do nothing - I cannot do anything else. After a little while, things get really boring, and I think 'might as well go back to work' - and that works as…

I used to do that technique for studying for the GRE. And it worked like a charm for sure (aside: Barron's GRE word list had the word dly as meaning lazy in 2007 still. I was a kid in India but even to me it sounded wrong). Neil's full time work is to write. I'm sure this is what he does 9-5 or whenever he writes profesdionally. I doubt he just sits without doing nothing in the weekend when he could be playing with h…

A note on your aside: the word is niggardly, and root of the word is niggard, which according to this book I found via Wikipedia, is not related to the racist term: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IZRMl0NXHZ8C&pg=PA34&lpg...

> The term niggardly, arising in the Middle Ages, long predates the term , which arose in the 16th century.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_n...

I wonder if it should come into misuse just because of the confusion, though. Not sure.

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