Ask HN: How do you keep marching?

If a hobby project feels like “marching” then you’ll inevitably burn out.

Break it down into shorter milestones. Get some small achievements, then take a break and do something else for a while. Don’t let it become a burden.

Also, you need to be willing to quit if it no longer makes sense to continue. If you were doing a project for fun and it stopped being fun, it isn’t serving it’s purpose any more. Abandoning it could be the right choice if you get to this point.

Huge hobby projects are notorious for sucking the life out of the hobbyist. It usually starts with a strong emotional connection in the form of conviction, vision, and probably way too much patience with oneself.

Then the patience goes, the vision needs adjustment, and finally the conviction is in doubt...

So good job hanging in there.

Here are things that help me:

- I encourage myself to b*tch about it, especially if I am passionate about it. Never did this before but it's just a fun alternative to being too serious...and still being annoyed. And if you have even the tiniest amount of bad == good reverse psychology, this will be giving yourself energy by definition. "I hate this piece of sh*t hobby! God what a waste of--" (suki no uchi dazo)

- I use micro-passions instead of micro-visions. I put it aside until the next wave comes. If I'm afraid the next wave won't come, I rank the micro-passions. Like break it down to 5-10 components (at least) that you like, and then rank them by how much you like doing them. (Not how much you like completing them) From there it becomes a question of surfing the waves as they come.

- Human psychology is really, really primitive in terms of its use of interest-symbols as pointers to deeper insights, so you can sometimes take advantage of it. Study what the specific hobby-topic says about your life, and what it's suggesting. This can help you be less serious about a hobby, even if you're still interested in it (== better able to commit steady, patient interest to it over time). IOW you might realize "I'm building and painting model cars because my mind is hitting me with a clue-bat, suggesting I can maybe design an enjoyable life where I'm in control of the wheel and actively going somewhere" is a surprisingly a) good fit to one's subjective reality sometimes and b) disturbingly funny insight into where you're at. You can start with a dream dictionary since those are really just symbol dictionaries.

- Document your progress, this is huge. If you lose clarity on your next step (of say, 2-5 minutes length) it's easy to get derailed. If you lose track of your personal method because you never documented it, ditto. Nobody wants to re-figure-out that stuff. I make sure there's a how-to component and a logging component as well.

One other big one:

- Keep a list of your interests. What happens is, you'll discover that you're always in the mood for _something_ so if you like lots of things, you'll effectively never be able to lose touch with your passions. And this feels damn good. "Ah damn, my hobby nuclear reactor isn't feeling interesting today, good thing I have been needing to put in some time on my donut-critic hobby!"

Hang in there, and may your visions come true in ways that force a good cackle.

I have a similar situation with my hobby project, I have calculated that all my wants needs ~1000hours, and only 15% is finished. Of course I have a work and sometimes I get ill, thanks god I have no money issues because I have bought everything I need beforehand. I think the best way is to stop silly activities like gaming and use all possible time for achieving my dream. For example if I have only 1 hour today than I take the hardest tasks and if I have a whole day then I try not to get exhausted early. Also important notice is to prefer doing the project at mornings because it is the only way to make something time-demanding. What about vision, I have some clear and precise goals with a deadline for one parts of project and more relaxed view about other parts. I know that when deadline arrives I need to lower my requirements about anything not done, that's why I start from the most important sub-goals. But also I have some other hobbies with a completely different approach because I do not want to lower my wants about kind of responsible peace of work. But without deadlines it is doing too slow for being finished anywhere soon. I do not know how my experience can help you but I wish you a great luck.

Getting started is probably the most difficult part. Once you get a bit of momentum, turning your hobby into a habit makes it "automatic" to progress further, and achieve your goals.

I break down the project to its minimum shippable product (since I build web apps, that's relatively doable). Having ridiculously fast CI/CD helps a lot here.

Once the first cut is released, I tend to iterate on it in two hour bursts (since that's all I have before work starts).

I wrote about applying this to build a SaaS, been running it for over a year and a half now: https://onlineornot.com/building-saas-in-one-week-how-built-...

Imagine if you could break that huge project into subprojects. Perhaps consider options that may not require sequential development. Contemplate a wilderness hike over a March. What vista is beyond the next curve?

Downscale it. When I hit a point where I feel this is getting to much I radically downscale.

Just create a section in your to-do for future upgrades where you move huge topics until only your core idea is left again. In reality things may turn out different anyway, so find the MVP in your idea and bring it to market.

This is easier said than done, but reality is there is only so much one developer can do, and there is only so much motivation before you even bring it to market (feedback & cashflow help for motivation later)

Same as others said, i break it down into subprojects. Mine’s a game, and i realised that the trick is to make little reusable modules that will eventually integrate into the bigger project.

I might repeat what others said but since it's a "huge hobby project":

1) Break it into smaller chunks

2) Prioritize all those smaller chunks by impact, difficulty, and dependency

3) Break them again into smaller pieces based only on difficulty

4) Work based on priorities, get lower diff and high impact first

This way you will start to get a good feeling about your work/project.

Take breaks and make sure you don't burnout.

Good luck!

I tend to use the human potential framework. As a human being, I have a potential capacity to do sophisticated things or to merely operate at the level of an animal. Developing capabilities & skills is what differentiates me from an animal. This always fires me up.

Second thing that helps is, defining "huge" within the right context. Your project looks large from a self-centered point of view. Think about human flight - took 2000 years, multiple generations to figure out. Go into the history of various inventions, they all took lots and lots effort. Once this context is understood, you'll find that whatever you're doing is not necessarily such a "huge" task. Such perspective helps too.

Third, the characteristic of good goals is this:

Good goal = Difficult + Specific

The whole point of good goal is it helps you extract more effort from yourself. In a way, you set goals so that you can do more. If your goal demands more of you, it means the goal is doing its magic! So why'd you become discouraged when a goal demands more of yourself? By stretching yourself, you'll become more capable.

Do what you want to do and when you no longer want to do it, stop.

It's a bit shallow, but money. I work on https://gifmemes.io and get motivated to continue working (on the mobile app, currently) everytime someone donates or buys the watermark removal.

The way to eat a whale is bite by bite.

Results come in their own right time. Software project: think of implemented functions (step by step); all-at-once results project (e.g. lightbulb): think of the "method" of Edison.

Quiet perseverance.

You shouldn't think of personal projects in terms of the end goal. You should instead think of what you learn by doing them. It's a cliché, but is not the destination that important but what you learn along the way. Try to plan out your project into packets of work that you can complete and get a dopamine fix from every couple of days.

Get encouragement, good people to cheer you on. Having people to help motivate you is so helpful. There are many people out there that need the same input. Regular meetings with like minded people will help.

My hobby projects that I work on are in the area I'm hugely interested in and more research / PoC oriented or they scratch my own itch, i.e. I'm solving problem I actually have.

Second part which motivates me is realising that huge part of my competences as software engineer came from hobby projects when you do all stages of product development by yourself.

Personally, I've found that things tend to take a lot longer than I expect.

There are a few tactics I use to help:

* Prepare myself mentally for the task and understand that the task is going to take as long as it's going to take. This means being more "result oriented" than adhering to a "time box" approach and giving myself permission to take a lot longer than I might have anticipated. It means I'm not looking at the clock and stressing myself out about how "unproductive" I'm being. Often I find things get done in a timely manner (even if it's not as fast as I'd like) when I can focus on the task rather than trying to optimize to meet some synthetic deadline.

* Split bigger tasks into smaller tasks and having a series of small "wins" instead of long stretches with no easily measurable or outward facing results. I'm fighting against my own psychology of getting burnt out or demotivated, so making sure there are small, measurable tasks that can be completed helps keep me on track towards making progress on larger issues.

* My apologies if it's too basic, but having a 'todo' list that I can easily see what I need to work on and crossing off the tasks as they're completed helps focus my attention and keep my motivation.

* Sometimes I organize tasks with a 'priority' and 'effort' qualifier. There are "easy" wins for a task is high priority and low effort. Medium to low priority tasks with low effort allow for "easy" wins to keep motivation. High priority, high effort tasks can be at least identified and maybe be broken up further. Low priority high effort tasks are something that can be punted to when I have free time or potentially ignored altogether.

Most projects aren't going to draw the attention of most people, especially when it comes to finding other developers to work on your project, so one can expect to mostly go it alone. But, just because you're most likely the sole developer, doesn't mean you can't talk to people in your circle about some of the issues or challenges. Your friends are probably in a good position to be sounding boards, give advice, work through problems or even be "rubber duckies" in the worst case.

I don't, when I get tired, I stop. Weeks or months later, I decide to have another go, and often find that that problem I was stuck on is actually easily solvable, so I get another burst of motivation for a while.

I use emotion.

It beats every kind of "system" and "rational" framework.

Think of the people you love. Think of how your project will help them in some small way, even if that is just making you a happier, wealthier person who can give more to them.

Think of the people you dislike, whose values you detest, who will gain and triumph in some way by your failure.

Picture a fantasy vision of a better world, where your contribution, however small, brings value to many.

If none of that stirs anything in you, and gives you a burst of energy to redouble your efforts, then two unfortunate things may be the case:

You may be incapable of emotion. About 5% of us are, in which case ignore all of the above and find a system. Stop looking for ways to "motivate yourself" because "motive" is connected to "emotion" (same root).

What you're doing may not be at all worthwhile. That isn't a reason to give up. The road to a project that's genuinely fulfilling and is "emotionally self-powered" passes through many mediocre and failed "learning" projects along the way. Completing it many be all you need to do to move on.

If there’s no deadline there’s no problem I think to stop working on it for a while. Do you have any other projects or things to work on? Then work on those instead for a bit. Then return to your big project whenever you feel inspired to work on it again, I don’t think that’ll take long.

celebrate the small wins, talk about it, pop a bottle about it

I don't. I no longer have some grand vision because I no longer have faith in the future.

But I try to have fun while I'm still here. Not for profit, just for me.

Having worked on my side project https://ayahbyayah.com for the last 10 years, (10 year anniversary on the AppStore next month) my biggest take-aways are

1. Consistency instead of Intensity - steady progress in small chunks help instead of all-nighters which lead to burn out

2. Fall in love with the process - ignore the outcome and keep working on your steps instead, it stops the worry about what's going to happen in the future

3. Ship an initial version before talking about it - talking about a project before you've released something makes you think that you've already achieved it.

When the time span for results is long consistency is more important than intensity.

To keep myself going I don't push myself too hard. I manage my time and my productivity well. and I break down tasks into small little chunks and when I complete them I celebrate the win and take a break.

I gave myself occasional pep talks, and hype up my work to myself because it's enjoyable, and make extensive use of voice memos to talk about like where I'm up to in my project and sometimes to like reevaluate you know what's my original goal and what's my goal now. Basically I'll kind of keep a development log using voice memos and just like talk out my thoughts if I run into some issues or what I'm doing... I'm not going to be talking all the time but like I'll find it helpful as a way to sort of talk through some opportunity for improvement, some challenge.

But the most important thing I think is I always like build something I can use. like I'll try to build the simplest version, like the prototype --you could call it a minimum viable product, right?-- the thing that I want to build and I'll try to build that quickly so then I get like these big feedback loop where like I'm using the thing that I want to build but it's just a simple version of it.

So I try to get to the finished product--but not polished at all--as quickly as possible that's usually my first goal. Get to like some proof of concept prototype that I can actually use, that's the first goal in the project and then it's like a series of basically adding features and refining that so you go from like a coarse-grained lower resolution so to speak prototype to a finer grain higher resolution high Fidelity prototype of your original idea and at each stage you have something you can use that you can enjoy and then your enjoyment increases as you continue building stuff.

edit: Oh shit, I forgot, I also like to post my work, and partial work to Show HN, I find that can be rewarding for me as well. Even if no one looks at it, posting is sort of like another way to mark the moment, and the milestone, and to celebrate a win. One reason is because I'm saying, 'Here, I have something. It's kind of finished. Take a look at it. It's ready for that.' It's also a great, like um...it sort of focuses the thing's that need to get done, too.

Drop me a message. Email is in my profile. I’ll try to support you. And maybe you will support me since I am in similar situation.