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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?

#81

Post by kchoi »

When I have a hard time getting myself to do anything, I try to think about why I should do something from different points of view at different levels.

What I mean by this is that you need to rationalize why doing something is important to you in terms of its meaningfulness and impactfulness.

For example, let's say I'm a web developer with zero knowledge of building a mobile app. And I want to build a mobile game in ios that doesn't exist in the world yet. When it comes to pushing myself to work on such an app, I remind myself that I want to become a programmer with versatile skill sets desired by many employers. That will be your high level goal.

However, this goal might be too general and isn't convincing enough for you to keep working on the project. So, let's make your goal more specific. So, in this case, it can be that you are super interested in learning about technical details behind implementing the game whether it is about designing the db relations, software architecture and etc. That will be your middle level goal.

Finally, if none of them made you want to work on the project, let's dig deeper and make a goal really personal to you. It can be something like you want to build it because you want to play this game but you cannot find anything like it from anywhere else. That will be your low level goal.

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

#82

Post by rachelandrew »

If you find that you lose motivation or get bored with a side project then I think you really need to ask yourself why you are doing it.

We find the time and energy for those things that we place importance on. If the project isn't important to you then maybe it is time to move on. If it is important and this is just a temporary state - perhaps due to hitting a difficult part or a bit you don't enjoy dealing with - you need a strategy.

Break it down into manageable chunks. Put a date on them. Make sure however that the dates are achievable, there is no better way to become demotivated than to constantly feel you are falling behind.

If your thing hasn't shipped yet, can you get it to a release version sooner? Can you cut stuff out? Getting your project in front of other people can be a real help.

Treat the project as a first class citizen alongside your other work. Meaning that even if you can only devote 4 hours a week to it, those 4 hours are scheduled and used. Don't push them out for other work. Plan what you will do in that time, ahead of time, so you don't start to procrastinate when you sit down.

We turned our side project into our main source of revenue, you can read some of that in the first chapter of the book I wrote based on that story here http://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2014/03/21/chapter-1-the-...

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

#83

Post by Osiris »

I get energized about my side project when I get suggestions, comments, or other feedback from users. I can go months without doing anything and then I'll get one person asking for a feature or change and I'll work for a few hours or days to get it done.

My advice is to make is easy for customers / users to give you feedback. Use a support ticket system and provide email links on your homepage.

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

#84

Post by jlarocco »

The first question you should ask is, if you can't keep motivated, why are you doing it?

For me, side projects are things I do because I'm interested in them and have free time to invest. If I don't, I don't work on the project, and it's no big deal. Yeah, sometimes I'd love to have more time, but oh well.

It'd be different if I made money off of them, but I don't. To me, that would make it a job, and not a side project.

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

#86

Post by balloob »

Work on something you like. Don't care about money or fame.

Use your side project as your playground to learn new things by doing mini projects within your side project:

- Want to learn about testing? Add test coverage. - Want to learn about webcomponents? Find a way to integrate it.

You don't have to finish all the mini projects. Dropping something is fine, you still have the experience and knowledge!

What really helped for me in keeping steam is publishing the source of my side projects on GitHub. The idea that someone else uses your code is very satisfying. Once some traction comes, the pull requests and issues start coming in and it gets even more fun.

And when you get bored? No problem, just switch to a different side project or think of a new mini project.

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

#87

Post by cgallello »

I just finished with a side project. I knew going in that I would lose motivation for reasons left and right, even though it's the right project for me to work on. In order to keep up my motivation, I started "Side Projects Dinner" - I would make dinner for my friends every other week, and they would give me feedback on my project. It worked great, and we've had quite a lot of fun. And of course, my friends are also getting feedback on their own projects and thinking of new project ideas. Highly recommended!

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

#88

Post by swayvil »

What keeps me going is the awareness that my project is worthwhile. It's got science fiction level worthwhileness. Ya, that sums up the motivation source right there.

I do it right. I take my time. Spend much time thinking about the next step. Draw and stuff. Spent like 12 years experimenting with different geometry games. Looking for the one that feels right.

I have this stack of project sketchbooks. Sometimes I look at the stack and think "I'm nuts".

The final climax seems close.

Sometimes I wish a bunch of enthusiastic highschool kids would take my project over, but not quite yet.

Also there's bucks in it. It's got material worth.

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