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Finishing a side project

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Re: Finishing a side project

#81

Post by jasonkester »

I find the most important thing is that you really want the thing you're building to exist. Everything else is secondary. If you want to use the thing, but can't because it's not there, you'll find time to work on it.

My most successful side project from last year is this climbing community that I built for my wife:

https://bettybeta.com/

We live in Fontainebleau, France and have arranged our life around the bouldering here, but she had always struggled to find good projects because the climbers who travel here tend to be mostly gym-strong men who power and lank their way through the problems here that suit that style. But there's a ton of other stuff that needs good technique and benefits from being able to bear down on small holds. Women are good at that sort of thing, but there was never a way to find information on those boulder problems.

It made a perfect "Side Project" because the core idea was buildable in a single day, leveraging the same framework I'd used for S3stat, Twiddla, Unwaffle, and the other "Real Business" projects I'd been doing. I was able to avoid silly Javascript build systems and other time-sink pitfalls that normally plague everybody's side projects (presumably because they seem fun and you're trying to learn stuff in addition to building something). The only real "reactive" stuff it needed was in a little "Project Finder" that lets you adjust sliders for grade, popularity, style, climber height, etc. and would benefit from having the list of climbs update in real time:

https://bettybeta.com/bouldering/projects

... and that was just a few hundred lines of vue.js, again minus any build system.

I still stick new stuff in regularly (like the "remoteness" filter so that you can find boulders deep in the woods where no plague-carrying-zombies will find you), but since it's built on a polished and time-tested architecture, I can get an awful lot done in a couple hours, so it's just a matter of disappearing off to the office on a rainy saturday morning, then coming back and announcing a few improvements.

Fun stuff.

Re: Finishing a side project

#82

Post by ZainRiz »

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…

Discipline doesn't work for everyone. I suspect most folks who are reading this article are doing so because they failed at self-discipline (like myself).

Instead, I suggest observing how long your motivation tends to last (~2 weeks for me). Then at the very start of the project ruthlessly cut down the scope to something you think you could actually get done in that time period.

This will probably require you to simplify some of the stuff you were planning to develop

Maybe you'll adopt just one new tool you need to ramp up on instead of five.

But by embracing the ticking motivation deadline you can modify the work you take on to something that you'll actually finish.

I wrote about this recently, and how I applied this technique to a project I was working on.

https://twitter.com/ZainRzv/status/1275276323120746498

Re: Finishing a side project

#83

Post by josefrichter »

ZainRiz wrote: post #78

He emphasizes waning motivation as one of they key factors, but there's a logical consequence of this which he didn't point out. Instead of trying to keep your motivation up, figure out how long your motivation tends to last for (mine is ~2 weeks). Then at the very start of the project ruthlessly cut down the scope to something you think you could actually get done in that time period. Perhaps this will require you t…

Mine is ~2 minutes. Now what?

Re: Finishing a side project

#84

Post by robmerki »

I'm glad this person has found something that works for them, but I think there is something far more simple yet harder to track down. None of these "brain hacks" are going to fix the underlying problem of long term motivation. Many have said it's a discipline issue. I disagree. I'm very undisciplined with my gym habit yet I still show up 5-6 times per week. I go very often, but because I want to, not because I'm "forcing myself".

I've been studying how this affects people with ADHD for my book. Everyone I've interviewed concludes in some way or another that there needs to be a far deeper, compelling reason to do something for them top do it long term.

Discipline is just a routine way you develop to execute something. Some people (usually not those with ADHD, I've found) are able to continue riding the wave of discipline until the project is complete, but they are doing so despite wanting to do other things. Is the conclusion that you have to suffer through some unhappiness while "forcing yourself" to complete projects?

Re: Finishing a side project

#85

Post by sk0g »

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.

The way it's written, it sounds like the US Navy confirmed the existence of aliens, but it was just unexplained phenomena, right?

Re: Finishing a side project

#86

Post by vbsteven »

I don't finish 95% of my side projects and that is OK. Most side projects start because I have some interesting problem in my head that I want to solve and then I start obsessively solving it for a few days until it is solved or...until the next problem comes along and I lose all interest in the first problem.

I read Refuse to Choose by Barabara Sher because someone recommended it here on HN and it showed me that I am a scanner always looking for new problems to solve and the act of working on an interesting problem is what makes me tick, not the finishing of an actual project or product.

Usually I learn a thing or 2 by starting and working on a side project that I can use in my day to day freelance work. And sometimes when the planets align the interesting problem I am obsessing over is that bug I need to solve for a client and the satisfaction is double. Working on an interesting problem and making the client happy.

Re: Finishing a side project

#87

Post by jasonkester »

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…

The "Separate User Account" idea sounds especially odd to me, since that seems like it could only ever slow you down.

The quickest way to build something is to have built it already. So let's say you're working on your new side project and you want to implement "Forgot Password" functionality. How do you do that? You open up your last project, copy it out, and plonk it down into the new one.

Now imagine you had to do that, but you had isolated yourself completely from the filesystem that held that old code (and all your other old projects, notes, etc. too). Do you have to switch accounts six times back and forth as you remember more bits of the old that you need to grab? Do you write a whole new system from scratch? Clone that whole other project from source control into this new users' filesystem? It seems like a lot of work that you've made yourself.

I agree. If you're doing that as a way to somehow hack your focus so you don't get distracted, you're already lost.

Re: Finishing a side project

#88

Post by StefanoC »

josefrichter wrote: post #83
ZainRiz wrote: post #78

He emphasizes waning motivation as one of they key factors, but there's a logical consequence of this which he didn't point out. Instead of trying to keep your motivation up, figure out how long your motivation tends to last for (mine is ~2 weeks). Then at the very start of the project ruthlessly cut down the scope to something you think you could actually get done in that time period. Perhaps this will require you t…

Mine is ~2 minutes. Now what?

Ruthlessly cut down the scope of the project to what you can achieve in 2 minutes

Re: Finishing a side project

#89

Post by RussianCow »

intrepidhero wrote: post #39
NOGDP wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this, for me, is that almost anything I want to do can either be accomplished with existing tools or is too complex for a doable side project.

I used to feel the same but in the last year I got sick of saying, "that sounds too big" and just started hacking. By focusing on small bits at a time I've been surprised at how far I've gotten. I'd encourage you reevaluate what's too complex. You might surprise yourself.

Funny, I usually go in the other direction. I'll find something to automate and I'll think, "That sounds buildable in a weekend," before realizing after the weekend that it would actually be a multi-week, sometimes multi-month effort.

Re: Finishing a side project

#90

Post by divbzero »

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…

> What you need is discipline.

Part of discipline is knowing which contexts work for you. For some this is mindset, while for others it’s a virtual or physical environment. To each his own.

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