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Discussion on: How do you plan a personal project?🧭

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Carles Mata

I think you shouldn't overplan like other people say in comments and spend more time actually doing than planning.

I normally start by writing my "future project" ideas in a note (I use G Keep, but any other is valid). Then when I want to start a new project, I pick the most suitable one (by priority, estimated time, how much I would enjoy doing it, ...) and write a basic plan. Just phase titles like "Think about features", "Design" and "Development". And only start thinking about tasks when I'm on that phase, not in the beginning. Finally, the project starts and I write in notes / project management app some initial tasks, and I add the rest as they come. If it's a development project, I usually use Gitlab to host my repository and to write down all the features / bugs. If it's more like a personal project, I usually use digital notes to keep it simple.

And by the way, I don't think you should schedule all the project because things happen, and you don't always have as much free time as you would like, and the deadlines are rarely accomplished. But I strongly recommend you to schedule some amounts of time per week to work on that project, like every Tuesday and Thursday from 8pm to 10pm.

Also, if it's a website, an app or something about software remember to have other people to test it so you can get other perspectives different than yours.