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Ask HN: How do you manage side projects?

16 points by juvoni ↗ HN
I'm trying to find the right balance between development efforts for work and my own personal side projects.I was also inspired by John Resig's blog about coding everyday. I feel if I had a more structured approach to going about side projects this would be easier to accomplish.

How do you go about planning and managing side projects and what tools do you use to maintain consistent development for side projects.

Any blogs or links to tools etc would be helpful.

3 comments

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rebelidealist
Block the days off to focus immersively. Which means the days you are working on a side project, try not to think about your main project unless there is an emergency. More importantly, the days you are working on your bread and butter main project, limit your urge to hack or get distracted by your side projects.

Going on a trip in a new place to really push and finish a project can be fun. Bands do that when they are finishing an albums. They go to a place where they won't be distracted by social pressures.

trcollinson
I am a consultant, and often have many projects or side projects going at all times, between client work, products I build and sell myself, and writing I do. I basically make private github repositories for myself. From there I make "issues" in github for the work I need to do. I ALWAYS make these tasks small. I have gotten to the point where I know about what I can get done in a half an hour chunk and I write these tasks as "issues" for myself whenever I get an idea. From there I simply "resolve the issue".

As a more concrete example. I have a repo for writing 2500-5000 word research articles. I will come up with a topic and break it down into sub topics and create github issues for each. Then I check in my writing to resolve the issue. In other words, I will write enough for the subtopic and check it in and make the issue complete. Same plan works for client code or personal products I code. It's easy, low overhead, and I always have things to do.

The only other thing I do is try to resolve as many issues as I can in a day. Sometimes personal projects take a back seat. But if you make your tasks about a half an hour each, you will find you get great momentum and you'll have time for each project you're working on.