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Ask HN: How do you stay motivated to work on side projects?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you stay motivated to work on side projects?

#121

Post by plinkplonk »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #106
plinkplonk wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I turned my side project into a unicorn job. It only took about 10 years of hard work...but I did it the hard way." Sounds fascinating. Could you give more details? What was your sideproject? What did you do to turn it into a unicorn job? Thanks in advance.

Yes, as user "scroy" points out I am talking about Voxel Quest. Bits and pieces of my story are scattered around, but here is the full thing (grab a pillow): In around 2000-2004, I was working several jobs while attending UCSB, as a gardener, a lab monitor, and a freelance web designer. I got by working the first couple years but the last year was hard and I was disqualified from engineering. I wanted to quit school…

wow what a great story. Thank You for sharing, and good luck!

Re: Ask HN: How do you stay motivated to work on side projects?

#122

Post by gavanwoolery »

plinkplonk wrote: post #121
gavanwoolery wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as user "scroy" points out I am talking about Voxel Quest. Bits and pieces of my story are scattered around, but here is the full thing (grab a pillow): In around 2000-2004, I was working several jobs while attending UCSB, as a gardener, a lab monitor, and a freelance web designer. I got by working the first couple years but the last year was hard and I was disqualified from engineering. I wanted to quit school…

wow what a great story. Thank You for sharing, and good luck!

thanks :)

Re: Ask HN: How do you stay motivated to work on side projects?

#123

Post by burntsushi »

Htsthbjig wrote: post #114

"How do you keep yourself pushing code when life gets busy or you just get bored?" I don't. When life gets busy with other I am busy and the other people are my priority. If you are with your family and you are not really there, you will feel guilty later on work and not be there either. Steve Pavlina explains it better than I do: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2014/12/130-days-off-per-ye... What Steve could do aft…

What do you think a side project is? I have tons of them, but none of them feel like work to me. I get great joy out of them whenever I work on them (which is quite a bit).

I suppose it's a bit of a catch-22. If side projects were like this for everyone, one wouldn't be asking how to motivate oneself.

Re: Ask HN: How do you stay motivated to work on side projects?

#127

Post by scroy »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #118
Htsthbjig wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backer here. First, your project is F%CH#NG amazing!. IMHO there are two reason you are not millionaire(yet): -You need an application or game for your engine so people can play with it. -You need to learn a little marketing. That is, you need to understand the needs of the people, so you can design around humans beings, not just around machines. Keep the great work.

Thank you :) (recognize the username) Both of these are things that I (massively) failed to address early on and am actually now striving towards. I'm actually pretty happy at this point. If my wage were raised just slightly, and the threat of running out of (non-investor) money was not looming, I would be 100 percent happy. Wouldn't take millions, but nonetheless its good to aim high. :) Currently working on putting…

The project is really impressive, you have some truly beautiful examples in the gallery. I see what you mean that user content creation doesn't seem easily accessible enough to hit Minecraft's level of self-marketing. But there is tremendous potential I think once you reach a more fleshed-out demo. Hope to see that soon.

Re: Ask HN: How do you stay motivated to work on side projects?

#128

Post by kevinold »

I'm currently reading "Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results" and have to say it's could work for me. I've battled with starting/stopping side projects. This book presents an interesting argument in that willpower and making "stupid simple" tasks that you do every day (his example is one pushup) is the key to building a habit since repetition is what is necessary to build a true habit.

http://www.amazon.com/Mini-Habits-Smaller-Bigger-Results-ebo...

Re: Ask HN: How do you stay motivated to work on side projects?

#129

Post by kelvin0 »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #106
plinkplonk wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I turned my side project into a unicorn job. It only took about 10 years of hard work...but I did it the hard way." Sounds fascinating. Could you give more details? What was your sideproject? What did you do to turn it into a unicorn job? Thanks in advance.

Yes, as user "scroy" points out I am talking about Voxel Quest. Bits and pieces of my story are scattered around, but here is the full thing (grab a pillow): In around 2000-2004, I was working several jobs while attending UCSB, as a gardener, a lab monitor, and a freelance web designer. I got by working the first couple years but the last year was hard and I was disqualified from engineering. I wanted to quit school…

Looks quite impressive, but I was wondering what language do you use to build your Voxel Engine? And the motivation for such a choice? Looking forward to your feedback.
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