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

I tweak my motivation setup, but for me, currently:

1) http://thinklegend.com/commit/ - I have "do 30 min X project per day", which isn't much but usually the hard part is starting. It's easy to kick out 30 minutes work, feel good and add a link to the chain.

2) Yesterday I itemised a bunch of push and pull factors about my current job and my side project. We regularly build amazing things for customers but forget to do what's important to us. We get caught up in "urgent" and forget about "important".

3) Startup podcasts. In the absence of a mastermind (Anyone else in Johannesburg?) they keep me in the mindset of building. They're like a small daily escape into a world of possibility. I listen while driving, so after the work-day drudgery I'm reminded of what I'm working towards.

I use Beeminder.com to stay motivated. They have githun integration, which helps.

This is good advice, and I agree!

Anything larger than a small project will need to be put aside for a while from time to time (for whatever reason), and I've found that making it easy to pick it up again is one of the most important things you can do.

My strategy for this (admittedly most suitable for software projects):

1) Write down your large, fantastic vision for the finished, complete project.

2) Write down the smallest possible feature that would bring you some utility. MVP, if you like.

3) Take this requirements and write an automated test at the highest level of abstraction possible. It should almost read like the MVP requirement you just formulated. That doesn't have to mean BDD, just something you can read easily.

4) Implement until the test passes.

5) Go to 2.

What I've found over the years is:

- Quickly reaching milestones of utility are key for keeping motivation while working. This is obvious, of course.

- The written down vision brings the motivation and big picture plan back when picking things up: Get your blood pumping again!

- The automated tests help keep implementation going when your drive falters. What should I do know? You should just make the test pass. Nothing harder than that. No need to think super hard. Just try to make it pass.

- The automated tests help you get hacking again without the immediate fear of breaking things: Get the ball rolling again, quickly and easily!

- The automated tests also serve as your requirement specification so far: You can easily see what already works.

Side projects are so important, and one should make it as easy as possible to sustain and restart them! Good luck!

Not just bug reports and feature requests. Compliments do a little wonder in fueling motivation, so the more things you give people to comment on, the greater the chances of hearing back will be.

Keep a public work log, publish your progress and encourage feedback. Not just commit history on GitHub, something a bit more humane and substantial. Something to look back and see how much you've accomplished so far.

I've come to strive for what I call the minimum overhead principle. If I have a project going on I make it as easy as possible to continue (editor open, pad and paper at hand etc) and try to do at least a few minutes per day. Sometimes it's only those few minutes and sometimes I can get a few hours in. And those add up.

For personal software projects I've discarded all engineering principles and do what I would call structured hacking. Everything is neat and tidy but only up to a point that it lets me progress swiftly.