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Discussion on: How do you stay motivated with your side projects?

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Ben Halpern

Before creating what became DEV and everything we're doing I made the promise to myself that I'd put in ten years on the project before calling it quits. That meant I could really take my time with it. I started with the Twitter account. It was a year and a half before making the website and years more building it out.

My goal was ten years before it had to show any progress at all. And I think that promise to myself really helped me stay calm and focused and think longterm.

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Jonathan Yeong

I love that you gave yourself breathing room. I definitely fall into the trap of trying to do too much in a short amount of time. Especially, when everyone around you is creating amazing things. Thank you for the advice!

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maxdevjs

@ben , could you describe the process of choosing the name (or, if you already did it, could you kindly point me out to the resource)?

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Ben Halpern

The name @thepracticaldev was sort of just the first thing that popped into my head because I wanted to do something. Then after a couple earlier iterations I settled on the logo with the uppercase DEV. I wanted something that would look good on a t-shirt and I liked the retro arcade kind of look. So the name of the site kind of came off of that.

Forem was more of a deep deliberate process with a lot of names written down and a lot of conversations with folks to brainstorm some of the ideas, before Forem eventually won out. Our mission statement had already been established as being to "Empower Community", so making our product "For Empowering Community" with the "For Em..." play on spelling really felt right.

Naming things is hard.