Why do most programmers' side projects die?

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We all have those side projects that end up in the grave half-built, the remains of unfinished dreams sitting in folders. Games, apps, data visualizations, whatever. Now those great ideas are relegated to lowly dust in the air.

It's a sad fact, because side projects are supposed to be legendary. At their best, they keep you up all night and day, with only one thing in mind. Only a very small number of people can keep going and become addicted to them. They make you feel alive, and they're better than sex.

But most side projects are not so lucky. They are abandoned and die quietly.

We say we don’t have time. Life is so busy and we always have to do something. And that may be true. But we can actually make time for the things we really want to do (like sex). So what is the reason?

We secretly worry that we can’t discipline ourselves. We’re too lazy to do these great things. That may be true. But making is a creative process, and there’s an inverse relationship between creativity and making. Making shouldn’t feel like going to the gym. It should feel like flowing through a work of art.

Often, we have a golden excuse that can cover up all the underlying reasons: it feels boring. Somewhere along the way, the initial excitement, all the motivation that supported you, has died.

You can almost feel the moment when everything falls away. Let's say you've spent hours racking your brain over a really stupid problem. You know it shouldn't be this hard, but you just can't put your finger on why. Maybe you're just not smart enough, you think to yourself. Maybe it's just not within your capabilities. You're tired, you're always alone, and you're ready to give up.

So side projects die. They die because they’re no longer interesting. They die because we’re alone.
They died because they were lonely.

When we’re alone, it’s easy to stop making real progress. We’ll optimize the subtle things we know how to do instead of working on the important things we don’t know. But when you’re presenting to others, you don’t just tweak the color once and pass it by. Even just one viewer can push us to make real progress that will benefit the project.

It's easy to feel stupid when we're alone. I mean stupid like spending 2 hours changing some configuration only to accidentally discover some permissions key that locks down a configuration file. When you're alone, these kinds of things can really knock your confidence. But when you have someone to laugh about it with, and someone to share their stupid mistakes with, it becomes much more bearable.

When we are alone, it is easy to get lost. No matter what project it is, we almost always need to grope. We don’t know what we don’t know, and sometimes we don’t even know what to do next. If someone can point out the path that those who are in charge are lost, it can help us avoid many detours and dead ends.

This doesn’t mean collaboration is the answer. Collaboration has its own problems. You have to deal with different commitment levels, and it even requires you to give up some creative control, which is hard. When it works, collaboration is more effective. But forced collaboration can be worse than doing things alone.
So, how can you make your side projects less lonely?

We can't be sure, but we have a hypothesis based on fond memories of participating in geeky science and math competitions as children. The fun part was that the other kids in the group were doing the same thing.

We wondered if we could recreate some of those magical friendly challenges to complete more side projects, like Science Olympiads, online hackathons, etc. where we challenge each other to build projects like making a board game.

We are not sure if this is the answer. However, we know that we have to keep going until we can come up with a way to make our side projects less lonely. Of course, if you have good suggestions and opinions, please leave a message and discuss together.