How do you finish your side projects?

Usually during nights, weekends. Though it's hard to manage energy more than time. My side-projects always take longer to finish than I assume initially.

First side project I have ever finished I wrapped up last week (www.phototamer.app). I got through it by making it small enough that I could do it in a month. I think in the past my motivation has lasted about 3 weeks and then sputters out - if I could size projects to get to MVP in that time, then I could more of them out the door.

Do something you enjoy and make it part of your daily routine

If you're not willing to spend your evenings/weekends on the side project, then you're probably not passionate enough, and therefore it isn't worth it :)

An interesting challenge many relate to... a few questions for you: 1. Are you working on one side project at a time or multiple? 2. What's the end goal/aim of doing side projects? 3. Are you clear on what done looks like for your projects? Or is it a never ending developing loop?

I try to commit to 2 hours a weekend and 1 hour a weeknight. The weeknights I hit my goal are few and far between, but I usually hit the weekend goal, and I have seen the progress. The pandemic has taught me to go easier on myself and be realistic about my timelines. Start slow and tack on more time when you can. Every project is different, but so far, this has worked for me.

It takes a tremendous amount of time and dedication to finish a 'side' project. I try and break everything down into task using JURI or something like that. I determine the number of hours and then double them. If I want to make that kind of commitment to the project I proceed. I really think that 'side' projects need to be viewed just like any other sort of project. If you want to finish them you have to set aside the time... I took a bunch of personal time to finish mine. Good luck!

Never, but I should haha

Build it with someone, but have your own areas you work on. Otherwise, I find you either clash or get hung up on trivial details. And start with the most minimal of MVPs

I've had (or have...let's be honest) a bunch of side projects too, and the best thing I've found is to revisit the scope. Find the core – the smallest discrete thing(s) – and consider how to preserve them. That is 100% why I'm on here at the moment. I was feeling overwhelmed with the side projects I had, and just feeling stuck. So I actively attempted to shelve as many as possible. The ones that were still just ideas got gathered into notes and filed away, knowing that I could return to them if it made sense. But I effectively took them "off deck" so they wouldn't be lingering in my subconscious. One of them was in progress, though; far enough along that I'd built a lightweight site for it, grabbed a domain name and Twitter handle, and started looking around for collaborators. I lost steam on that one after getting generally positive feedback, but difficulty finding people to work with or existing efforts to plug into...so it sat for a bit. When I came back to it fresh, I realized I'd scoped it with a significant social & content component that was more about raising awareness of the issues motivating it...but that really wasn't the core of it. The core was just capturing best practices in a way that would enable other people to contribute too. So out went the domain name, standalone site, and Twitter handle...and in came a GitHub project with an easier-to-consume site to present the content. Wish me luck, I'm going to post it on Friday!