Why do we fail to make progress on Side Projects? How can we fix that?

5 min readMay 6, 2020

The Saga

When I had an idea, I often get excited and start talking about it with my colleagues and/or friends and/or family.

The next time they ask me about the idea, I use to tell them that “I was researching and planning”, or “..am going to work on this week” etc.,

As time goes by, I noticed I never started anything, and am repeating the same answer.

Why is that? Why is it so hard to carry out the idea we have?

Side projects can take up a tremendous amount of time.
Assuming you’ll just somehow find the time is wishful thinking.
You need to be proactive and set aside time beforehand to continue making progress.
When your schedule gets busy, it’s all too easy to let your side project suffer first — or abandon it completely.
So before you dive in, ask yourself how much time you can realistically set aside for a new project.
Your side project should be a light and enjoyable commitment
Once you have decided how much time you want to spend on it per week, Fix a routine.
A disciplined routine can make it hard for us to ignore the side project.
Get to know what is that time of the week that is least prone to distractions. Say Monday morning. Or Friday post-lunch.
Block it off on your schedule, and hold that time sacred.
Remember, the key is to Not prioritize what’s on your schedule; schedule your priorities.

Talk about your side project with anyone who will listen.
Side projects are generally more fun when they’re shared with others.
So, check with your peers or friends or get a mentor for helping you. Find a partner.
Share your frustrations and celebrations with them. Partners can learn from your mistakes, or connect with your project, and con-contribute too.
It’s a WIN-WIN for everyone!

The more you care about the project, the more perfect you want it to be.
The more perfect you want it to be, you will wait for that uninterrupted hours/days to work on it.
Perfection can easily become your enemy.
Give up thinking about the perfect solution
Ship the dirtiest solution you can ever think of.

Doing great things is great.
But when you realize the project would require a lot of effort and time, you tend to drain ourselves mentally dealing with the vastness of the scope.
Think MVP: What is the smallest useful thing that I can deliver? Only think about that.
Scale it down is the key
Once you deliver your MVP, then maybe a good time to think about all the great features you wanted to see in your project.

Planning is great. But things are more volatile than you imagine. And Side projects are the ones that first get affected.
Read through stories of two individuals who planned their Personal side project:
Story #1: Mr.Foo says to himself, “Ok, let me try this project”. Foo ends up not starting at all or giving up mid-way.
Story #2: Mr.Bar says to himself, “Ok, let me do this project”.
* But wait, ‘Do this Project’ means
** Project means Collection of Features.
*** Feature means delivering a collection of code pieces to do in Frontend, Backend
**** Code piece can be, delivering a collection of classes in Backend or components in Frontend
***** A Class in Backend means, delivering a bunch of methods each doing some specific thing
****** Can I deliver one method today?
If you look at this, the last line is seemingly the most doable thing for Mr.Bar when he has 30 minutes.
Once he starts writing that method, then he may as well think, “Well, that only took me a few minutes, might as well do another one”
Even if Mr.Bar doesn’t finish the entire feature, he still made progress that day.
And Progress is motivation.

A goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or don’t sometime in the future.
A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases our odds of happiness in the long run.
So if you do something every day, it’s a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal.
You need to set ourselves a System to Contribute one hour every day, or 4 hours every week.
Remember “…building side projects is more of a mentality and lifestyle than anything else…”

No never. A personal side project will never be a waste.
You learn something new every time you work on it. At the least, you learn about yourself.
Here is something you can do: Every time you work on a side project, take 2 mins to jot down what did you learn from that day’s work
When you ever feel it was wasted time, read up all the 2-minute notes
You will realize how much you have learned from working on the side project.

When working on a side project, you are often learning to use something new and challenging ourselves.
It really is the best way to learn, but what happens when you get stuck.
When you really can’t figure out how to do something? You may get frustrated.
Adopt techniques like
* (Best) Choose a new item to work on from the list
* Take a break and fire back on the problem
* Seek the help of our mentor or colleague or manager
* If none of that works, find a dirty hack for that and park solving it in the right manner for a later time.
The key is to keep moving.
Don’t stress ourselves over obstacles too much
Don’t let the obstacles discourage you.

Halfway through our project, you might start to lose steam and may not have the same motivation.
Maybe because of other responsibilities or there’s a part of the project you don’t really like but have to do.
Talking to peers or mentors for motivation will always help.
Whatever the block might be for you to finish, talking it out with somebody will help move things along.
Whenever you think, “Should I do my side project or rather spend this allotted time for that work that my PM is waiting for?”, Just pick the side-project.
That time was a time, our cautious self has dedicated to the side project. Our schedule had room to deliver that work the PM is waiting for.
You need to be ruthlessly strict about our commitment to side-project.