When I'm moving around my laptop, and pop into the "projects" folder and see what a graveyard it has become. Dozens of half baked projects that seemed brilliant at the time, that I either lost interest in, decided the concept was too difficult, or (and this is the worst one) let my self doubt convince me that it would never work. The really sad part is, every now and then I'll go back in and check out these projects and a lot of the code and design is actually pretty good. I ask myself, "Why did I think this sucked again?"
The best analogy I can make to this scenario is the self doubt that cripples many writers setting out to finish a book, screenplay, or novel. It's almost as if you tell yourself that the script sucks, to give you a reason not to finish it and move on to something cooler next week. As a writer, what's the best way to overcome this? Just FINISH the god damned first draft. Roll up your sleeves, commit an hour (or two or three) every day to working on this project, and slog through it until you type "FADE OUT" (or "The End") or (if you're coding) make that glorious commit to polish off your project.
No matter how much the project, script or book sucks, there are few feelings of satisfaction that match that.
The thing that helps me work through this is to be very aggressive about a small list of features for "version 1". Focus on getting version 1 online and working, and put all your shiny ideas on the TODO list for version 2. Once version 1 is out the door, the momentum of people using it will carry you forward.
I've learned the hard way that for me, by far the biggest risk in a side project is me losing interest before I have something up and working. So now I just keep that in mind as I'm planning and pruning features for the initial version. The risk isn't "what if I don't have feature X and people get mad?", it's "what if this gets too complex and messy to implement and I get bored and quit before finishing?"
I find my side projects can be quite cyclical in nature. I'll have a better idea, or one that has more immediate unsolved problems, and maybe start thinking about that instead. But a week or two later, something will trigger the older idea back to the forefront of my memory, and I'll get excited about it again.
Nobody's forcing you to work on, or finish, a specific project. But if you are always starting new ones and never finishing anything, you have to identify why you don't care about something that seemed like a good idea when you first had it. Did you disprove some of the assumptions? Too lazy to knuckle down and code? Too scared of marketing it and putting your name to it? Not enough time? Prefer sketching wireframes? I've learnt a fair bit about myself from introspection here, especially when I consider the projects I do finish. Often, something I really want to just exist, right now, and without much of the baggage that's around the MVP-prove-iterate-market-blog-build cycle.
When I'm moving around my laptop, and pop into the "projects" folder and see what a graveyard it has become. Dozens of half baked projects that seemed brilliant at the time, that I either lost interest in, decided the concept was too difficult, or (and this is the worst one) let my self doubt convince me that it would never work. The really sad part is, every now and then I'll go back in and check out these projects and a lot of the code and design is actually pretty good. I ask myself, "Why did I think this sucked again?"
The best analogy I can make to this scenario is the self doubt that cripples many writers setting out to finish a book, screenplay, or novel. It's almost as if you tell yourself that the script sucks, to give you a reason not to finish it and move on to something cooler next week. As a writer, what's the best way to overcome this? Just FINISH the god damned first draft. Roll up your sleeves, commit an hour (or two or three) every day to working on this project, and slog through it until you type "FADE OUT" (or "The End") or (if you're coding) make that glorious commit to polish off your project.
No matter how much the project, script or book sucks, there are few feelings of satisfaction that match that.