It's okay not to ship personal projects. No one's really holding you accountable for that. Look at it this way, unfinished personal projects still give you valu

It's okay not to ship personal projects. No one's really holding you accountable for that. Look at it this way, unfinished personal projects still give you value because you might still be using it in its incomplete state, and you learned something when making it. As you become a more experienced engineer, it's common to have more unfinished personal projects because you have difficulty approaching it with a hacker mindset where you throw all best practices out the window and get it working as quickly as possible. Accept it and try not to lose sleep over it. The problem is when this behaviour crosses over into your professional life, because you're not delivering value to your customers quickly enough and as a result you'll either get sacked or the company can go bust. Having someone else to keep you in line works great, it doesn't even need to be a Product Manager or Product Owner. And if you don't have someone else to keep you disciplined, then you better work hard on improving this area where you're lacking. Write down ideas on paper for example and ruthlessly prioritise and prune them every morning. Sayings like "work on what's highest priority", "do the least amount of effort that results in the greatest value", "keep it simple", "reduce scope", "you aren't gonna need it", "defer nice to haves", and so on are things we hear so often because it really is good advice that you should follow.