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Ask HN: How do you stay motivated to complete your side projects?

by ldonley on 1/14/15, 7:01 PM with 7 comments

How do you all keep yourselves motivated to work on side projects despite long days at school or work? I am a full time student and working at an internship and am having trouble staying dedicated to these side projects that I want to work on. At the end of the day after finishing homework all I want to do is go to the gym and then go to bed. I would love to hear what you guys do to keep yourself motivated to work on your projects.

  • by lsiunsuex on 1/14/15, 7:17 PM

    Hate to say it; material goods or vacations.

    Money from the day job goes to paying the bills / mortgage / living expenses. Money from side work goes to toys be it a new laptop, phone, vacation, remodeling a room of the house, etc...

    I probably wouldn't freelance if I was content with what I have and soon, that freelance money will start to be saved for a down payment on a bigger house instead of going towards the latest iPhone.

    2ndary to this is the drive to keep abreast of new technologies. Sometimes, I can do freelance projects in a different language or framework - which makes me marketable for further side work. IE: I hated Wordpress - but then I started getting requests to do freelance work in Wordpress, so I learned it. Knowing Wordpress has scored me more work then when I ust' to write everything manually in PHP. (Not that Wordpress is new; but I wouldn't have learned it unless I was requested to write in it, for example)

  • by annythesillicat on 1/15/15, 7:32 AM

    might not answer your question but talking about motivation, this is pretty relevant to how I keep myself motivated. http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2015/01/how-to-be-motivated/

  • by MalcolmDiggs on 1/14/15, 11:01 PM

    Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with letting your side projects die or collect dust. It's perfectly natural to get partway through and then decide you just don't want to do it anymore.

    I've found that if I REALLY want to do something, I'll just find time to do it. Unfortunately I haven't found a way to fake that kind of motivation. It's kind of there or it's not.

    One technique I've used though, is to make my side-projects bite-sized (little tiny MVPs). That way, even if they only hold my attention for 72 hours, I'll still be able to finish them and put something up live. Later on, if I'm still interested in it, then I can iterate on it more.

  • by boca on 1/15/15, 6:34 PM

    A similar question was asked last month. Pretty good advice in that thread:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8800788