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Sideprojects Motivations and Goals

Alexandru Bucur on August 04, 2019

Hi Everyone, This is more of an introspective blog post regarding side-projects and finding the motivation and time to do other 'work' outside of ...
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Emma Goto 🍙

For me the hardest part is getting into "the zone" when you only have a short amount of time each day to work on your side project. And if I do get into the zone I inevitably stay up later than I would like because I just wanna keep coding!

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Alexandru Bucur

I think that's one of the compromises you need to make when you have limited amount of time. I could be 'zoning' until 2 AM but I am going to be a reck the next day.

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Victor Darkes

These are some solid tips for staying on the path. I too have someone passion projects that have gone idle. My biggest problem is there's always some other discipline or technology that gets my attention and I end up feeling it will be more applicable in my everyday work than some of the stuff I'm currently working on. But I've been pretty good about eventually coming back to my side projects when time permits.

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Alexandru Bucur

Yup, not chasing after the FOTM is difficult. I really have an itch to play with rust and NIM :)

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Desi

Deciding what an MVP is for me was crucial in finally deciding to pull the trigger on the first release of my new site. It's not perfect for sure but done is better than perfect, and publishing anything at all was a big motivator to continue working and improving!

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Alexandru Bucur

Yup, having something 'up' and 'working' helps a lot.

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Jens Genberg

Your point about using a technology you are comfortable with is a good one. I find that it's best to either explore a new technology or a new domain, but not both at the same time. For example, if you write .NET APIs at work, learning how to make an API in Elixir is reasonable. But if you've never programmed a game, trying to make in in Elixir as a first project is probably biting of too much. :)

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Alexandru Bucur

A very good point. However, if you want to branch out completely, eg: Learn Blender to do 3d models, it's still a good thing if that's your motivator and you feel burned out by coding.