Mar 06, 2026
Over the years I've built up a quite large directory of side-projects. Most of them, you guessed - aren't published anywhere. What's up with that? Do you remember that once you believed half of these projects were supposed to be this next big thing?
I often think about the large number of ideas I have during the day. Coming up with an idea was never a problem for me. Don't think about it too much, just overlooking my day, everyday life, what I am reading online, etc., and idea would pop into my head. For the bunch of them I believed they are THE app. If I could just build this little thing, this X prototype that solves that Y problem I am going to succeed!
The questinable premise
Turns out that premise was wrong(ish). The problem was that target of success was wrongfuly set. Success wasn't supposed to measured by "if I a manage to build this prototype". This meant that I was getting my satisfaction from managing to solve some hard or interesting engineer task vs when I actually ship my software. So, from the very beginning my app/idea was set to fail. It was set to fail because the goal of what I considered to be success was measuered by my capability to solve certain challenge; so I ended up enjoying the process of creating and got all of my dopamine.
So... After some time when I manage to solve this difficult engineering task I would get a dopamine surge from that feeling of satisfaction. It felt like I succeded. Everything was building up to this moment. Tasks were planned for this moment. Time was planned in order to achieve this. That combined - there just wasn't any fuel left in the tank to proceed with what was actually important - putting it out there.
Ask yourself now - why did you start this side-project? Ok, some dev tasks are just fun to experiment with, but that aside there was always a bigger plan beneath it, wasn't it? The plan to quit that boring 9-5, be independent, or just create a side income.
Personal experience (one of)
When I had an idea for taggerapp.io, an app that lets real estate agencies build their own interactive representations of buildings they are selling just by drawing rectangles over the images. I was facinated by the engenering execution of it. Playing with shapes and canvas. It was intruging to me to think if I could create something like this. So, I started creating and building. When I built it I felt instant satisfaction. I was happy with it. I could put away the keyboard and that was it. But what do I have from it? I wasn't supposed to be spending my time on it just so I can prove myself I can do it. In reality I know I can execute what I put my mind to. Most of us engineers do. But, I was "high" on prototype, on idea of proving myself I could execute what I considered the interesting enginering task, so I was ready to give up there.
Maintaining the motivation (the end goal)
It is important to always remember why you started the project in the first place.
Remind yourself of it. Focus on small goals as waypoints, you can still set engineering
tasks; just look at them from the different angle.
Consider
them as arrows you have collect along the way in order to have enough when you reach the final
boss, so you can shoot at him. Your end goal should be taking down the final boss.
Don't overengineer, build POCs and MVPs and focus on putting them out there. Focus on reaching
your customers and have them try out the product. Trust me, you will get a way more dopamine
from a customer feedback then you got from solving that eng task - because this means someone
is interested in using what you built.
This require practice to get used to, like everything else, it's a skill. So start small. Find some old side-project of yours, blow the dust of them and practice by sharing it. It doesn't have to be full-blown product hunt campaign. Try open sourcing it. Writing about it on hacker news, showing it to the fellow devs. At the very end it is better for it to collect dust as an open source repo than a private one, this way it might even help someone. This is exactly what I started doing more and more lately. I open source two of my projects and posted about them on LinkedIn, Reddit and HN. (Here's one of them: Cold0)
Practice sharing what you're building. Not because it is always going to be the next big
thing. Practice sharing for the sole purpose of sharing. You'll be surprised how much
you can learn from it. Join communities where people share stuff you are interested in.
Talk to them. Ask questions. Build a network. Blog. Newsletter. This will help you set
different goals for your next side-project. It will help you focus on what matters. It
will help you finish what you started and maybe even achieving your end goal.
Remember why you are building!