How to actually get your personal side projects done
The balance between secrecy and publicity
Key Takeaways:
• Many side projects never launch due to talking about them too early, getting verbal validation, and then losing interest.
• Follow this framework for how to talk about your projects in order to actually get a first version of them done:
Phase 1: Keep your project under wraps (avoiding fake validation) while building a lightweight version.
Phase 2: Share the simplest functional version of your project with a select few who will genuinely use it and provide actual validation.
Phase 3: After incorporating feedback and getting your project to a more usable and refined state, use your network to enhance your project.I have a ton of side projects, mostly because I love exploring new tech, cool designs, or fresh ideas – I’m quick to imagine an app, brand, or website and it’s fun to ideate on neat things to build. But the thing is, most of the projects I have worked on never really make it out into the world.
This cycle of getting excited, starting an idea, and then dropping it can be pretty frustrating and I'm not the only one dealing with this issue; I've seen many friends go through the same thing. They'll create brands, set up websites, record videos, put together bubble apps and more, but never really share their projects or get them past the idea and a half-finished mockup.
At the end of the day, don't we all want our projects to become something?
I wanted to figure out what was holding me back, so I talked to friends and thought deeply about my own experiences. It turns out that the consistent project killer I’ve found is talking about it with others too soon before it becomes anything. But there are advantages to talking about your project, so why does timing matter when it comes to talking about projects?
To better understand the balance between secrecy and publicity of side projects, I broke down the early life of a project into three main phases:
Choosing when to talk about a project during its early stages is super important. You might not think it matters much in the beginning, but I've learned that fighting the internal battle between ego, quality, and validation is key to making a project successful. Let’s explore each of these phases to see how we can get more of our personal projects done.
Phase 1: Building Your Project's Foundation in Stealth Mode
In Phase 1 of a project, it's crucial not to discuss it while it's being built, as prematurely sharing ideas can be a major project-killer. When an idea is in its infancy, you and your “ego-genius” for having been so brilliant for coming up with the idea naturally want to seek validation from others. However, this can stifle the project's growth and lead to a false sense of accomplishment without any actual progress.
It's essential to resist the urge to share too early, since the idea is already a distilled representation of your experiences and knowledge. A big part of the creative process is collecting information from the world and distilling it (as is a critical part of the design thinking process and what Rick Rubin discusses in his book) but you should remember that your idea is already inspired by the data you collected. Don't forget that you can continue to do more research online without discussing the project and polluting your first draft with false validation by chatting with others.
To effectively navigate the first phase, focus on creating a small but achievable version of the project before the excitement of talking about it with other people overtakes you.
By limiting yourself to a short timeline of building your first version, you can also make sure that it’s motivating to you. Knowing that you are enough of a motivator for a project without external validation is a good way to practice the feeling of doing something with your own determination. It’s helpful to face this early in the life of the project because you’ll likely hit some rough-patches in the future and being able to self-motivate will get you past those roadblocks. This also helps you concentrate on building the project without being sidetracked by trying to get validation from others.
The objective is to complete the project, and discussing it too early only creates a false sense of accomplishment. During this phase, two goals should be prioritized:
Rapidly creating the project using your existing knowledge – so you don’t waste time on learning new tools
Limiting the scope to make it ready for valuable feedback – so you can share it with the right people early.
At this stage, you can develop the project "kernel," which is a concise and functional representation of your idea that others can understand and use.
Phase 1 is about independently building your project without sharing it or seeking external validation. This approach helps you find out if the project is motivating and if you have the momentum to finish a first draft. By focusing on these goals and avoiding distractions, you're more likely to produce a successful outcome that is ready for meaningful feedback.
Phase 2: Achieving the Bare Minimum Quality
After completing your project kernel, you're ready to take the next step and share it with a select group of people but only people who understand the problem and can use your solution.
Engaging with people who can truly appreciate your project is key to getting useful feedback and elevating it to meet the quality standards of your users. Successfully completing the kernel demonstrates that you have the motivation and excitement to see the project through, and getting it in front of people is the best way to refine it after it has become useful.
In this phase, project philosophies may differ. While some may follow a Minimum Viable Product strategy, where they release a basic, functional version of their project (kind of like what I am proposing here but to a smaller audience), others may emphasize craftsmanship and intuitively understanding their users' needs from a critical design eye, like Apple. ReForge's philosophy (and a great read on their opposition to MVP’s: Challenges With The Lean Startup Methodology) involves identifying and addressing potential project failures before pursuing it – Although this may be too complex for simpler projects, it can still be helpful to consider, but I’ve found that it hurts the passion component of any momentum you may have when you overthink it.
To sum up, in Phase 2, present your project to a small group of people who are likely to enjoy it. This phase may take longer than Phase 1, depending on how often your project is used and the number of small issues that need to be resolved like bugs. This stage is all about refining and improving your project to ensure that it meets the expectations of your target users while further confirming you’re excited to work on the project.
Phase 3: Sharing Your Project to Your Network.
Upon reaching Phase 3, your project should be stable, with most bugs resolved and a functional tool that people can use regularly. This stage is where you get the benefits of telling more people about your project.
When you share your idea with others you now have something concrete to show them. Your network will always be excited to help you, so tapping into your it is like earning a new channel for anything related to your project to be filtered back to you. Your friends will tell you about cool tools to help, they’ll introduce you to people who are working on similar projects, and you’ll start to be known as the “ABC project” person.
However, it's important to wait until this phase to advertise your project. Prematurely sharing it can lead to distracting feedback and potentially overwhelm your initial vision. If your friends start throwing ideas and connections to you too early it will put you into a never-ending divergent discovery phase that prevents you from converging and actually building something. I’ve made the mistake of diverging too much because everything starts to look exciting and relevant to a project, and it starts to blow into an impossible scope to getting anything done.
What about “Building in Public”?
Recently, there has been a trend of "building in public," where creators openly share their projects throughout the entire development process. Some creators will set up live streams of their computer and camera so that anyone can drop in and watch how they work. This method can increase accountability and productivity due to social pressure, but is really intimidating.
I wouldn’t encourage the building in public method because it puts a lot of pressure on your ego to not deviate from your idea even if the initial idea ends up being wrong. Building in public puts more mental baggage on how you deliver the solution rather than building the project, so it’s smarter to focus on getting the project done for yourself than to openly advertise it to a vast audience.
The Next Time Your Start a Side Project
To maximize your chances of success, consider striking a balance between building and advertising your project, keeping these three phases in mind.
Successfully completing and promoting side projects involves carefully timing when and how you reveal them to others. By determining the right project size, creating a feedback-ready version, and promoting it to your friends when the time is right, you can harness the power of your network while still maintaining control over your project. More importantly, you may actually get your project done or lose motivation and discover that it was fun to ideate on, but not actually what you would have enjoyed working on – a perfectly fine outcome.
When you're eager to share your latest side project, remember these three phases and find the perfect balance between secrecy and publicity so that you can hopefully get your idea out of your head and into the real world.
Good advice!