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I have also finished 6 side projects last year: 1) Moving the washing machine with all plumbing to the attic. 2) Getting the kids to school on time everyday. 3)

I have also finished 6 side projects last year: 1) Moving the washing machine with all plumbing to the attic. 2) Getting the kids to school on time everyday. 3) Having the kids eat at least 1 piece of fruit each day. 4) Redid my front garden to make it easier to park 3 bikes. 5) Made a bunk bed in my caravan for the two kids. 6) Played a bit with the Bittrex api and made a small overview website for myself. I'm feeling pretty good about those things (and actually I did even more, bathing my 1 y/o daughter every two days, also quite some work. I also helped in teaching my son to wipe his own butt and wash his hands without touching anything else on the way to the tap... I could go on...).

iovrthoughtthis 9y ago
You should, that stuff is awesome!!!
vog 9y ago
Impressive! How did you get all that done without any "public deadline" and "sharing your work" with the rest of the world? Also, I guess there was only few "supportive feedback for what you’re doing" (perhaps just from a single person, but how much does that count?), which makes this even more impressive.
Dude2019 9y ago
Some people prefer to maximize earnings and then outsource manual labour. Also processes are not projects. The website sounds cool though.
- teekert 9y ago
  I'm just adding it here because bathing your daughter every 2 days (and getting her to bed clean, well fed and happy) is a ton of work which you don't want to outsource and can not add to your CV or Github page. To be honest, even if you don't have kids and are just tired of work in the evenings, my advice would be: Don't let these over-energetic side project cannons get under your skin. Just making a living is something to be proud of as well. People who write such posts may be good side project creators, but they may suck at other things. Or maybe they don't, maybe they are better people in every respect. I choose not to care, or perhaps better: I choose to try consciously not to allow myself to feel bad about this. It's hard enough in this connected world to try and find out what you like, feeling down comparing yourself to super productive people will only do that: make you feel down. It's the worst feeling to have while you're trying to find out what makes your clock tick (inhibiting I would even say). Young people often don't know what makes them enthusiastic, nothing wrong with that, also nothing wrong if it is doing nothing, daydreaming instead of firing off side project after side project. It'll come... Or it won't. First mission: Accept yourself as you are.
  - bryanrasmussen 9y ago
    I'm thinking they're probably just more unmarried, more childless people in every respect.
    - jeffhuys 9y ago
      That's a pretty big assumption, probably not based on anything other than your gut feeling?
      - bryanrasmussen 9y ago
        Well thinking it is not based on research, otherwise I would say after researching the matter... so based on my gut feeling, I guess, maybe based on feelings on how many side projects I used to get done in a year versus how many I get done now. I don't know that I would call it an assumption, since an assumption I think of as something I will proceed from, as the basis of decisions and I'm not making any particular decisions based on what I think on this issue.
      - jimktrains2 9y ago
        Children consume a great deal of time and energy. Even after they're bathed and put to bed, cleaning and preparing for the next day eat into "adult" time in the night. Even splitting a perfect 50/50 with your partner (if you have one) doesn't leave much time for personal projects. Having a house also means spending time on its care. Not nearly as much as children, but it's a non negligible amount. Marriage can be less of a barrier to personal projects. Just depending your relationship and schedule.
      - milesvp 9y ago
        LOL! I'd say it's a fairly minor assumption to say he probably doesn't have small children. The sheer amount of time and effort that children can consume is mindblowing. A six month old gets bored in ways I didn't think possible for something with so little experience in the world. And god forbid you walk away to do some chore, the cry of abandonment makes it impossible to focus on anything else. And then you think, oh by 6 they should be able to help with things, but the mental effort to get any sort of chore out the child dwarfs the effort to do the chore yourself. And when all the children are finally asleep, that's when the PTSD shows itself. Will a child decide bedtime wasn't executed to their liking and come knocking on your door in 30 minutes? And when will the youngest cry for their first night time feeding? Can I start this activity that will likely take an hour? Do I dare stay up? or will tonight be a 4 cries in 4 hours kind of night?
- chrisper 9y ago
  Here is a side project for 2018 for you: Be nicer to other people.
throwaway2016a 9y ago
This year was the launch of Daughter 2.0 (years). I must say, this product is looking to be awesome. Although she sometimes intentionally doesn't follow the instructions I give her. Unlike Daughter 1.0 that simply didn't follow instructions because she wasn't programmed to do so yet. I must say, Daughter 0.1 was fun to conceive but the nine months leading up to launch were rough and the year after we first showed her to the public we had a lot of issues to work out. Me and my partner were up all night for a year working out bugs. I'm still working on launching my Basement Playroom side project. I have the walls framed out but finding an outsourcing firm for the wiring for a reasonable price has been tough. Finishing the Baby-proofing side project felt good though. I also have two software side projects. Both built on AWS Lambda... those have gotten nowhere due to my primary hustle.
- avip 9y ago
  That's still the fun part. Wait until your product starts getting traction and you need to build 24/7 customer support capabilities.
  - throwaway2016a 9y ago
    The real hard part is we don't have enough funding to recruit more staff and I don't think we'll have an exit until we hit version 18.0 and that won't be for 16 more years. And even then, I hear some projects get to version 24.0 before being able to be self sustaining.
    - phillc73 9y ago
      I've heard that you can allocate roughly 25% FTE by version 14.0. I'm only on v3.5 of the first product. Generally the AI is working well, deep learning is starting to show dividends in many areas. Last night the Self Tidying function actually worked for the first time, although some items were not necessarily stored at the correct allocation addresses. The main problems we're encountering now is AI self awareness and trying to force its own learning path, despite continual re-training on controlled datasets.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Serow225 9y ago
Congratulations! :)
tonyedgecombe 9y ago
It's nice when they can wipe their own butt, a milestone.
grok2 9y ago
Loved this -- you called these "side-projects", but in general, this is "life" :-)....you do a lot of incidental "stuff". Specially when you have kids.
tmaly 9y ago
Curious to know what your method was to teaching the butt wiping. I need to teach my kid this.

iovrthoughtthis 9y ago

You should, that stuff is awesome!!!

vog 9y ago

Impressive! How did you get all that done without any "public deadline" and "sharing your work" with the rest of the world? Also, I guess there was only few "supportive feedback for what you’re doing" (perhaps just from a single person, but how much does that count?), which makes this even more impressive.

Dude2019 9y ago

Some people prefer to maximize earnings and then outsource manual labour. Also processes are not projects. The website sounds cool though.

teekert 9y ago
I'm just adding it here because bathing your daughter every 2 days (and getting her to bed clean, well fed and happy) is a ton of work which you don't want to outsource and can not add to your CV or Github page. To be honest, even if you don't have kids and are just tired of work in the evenings, my advice would be: Don't let these over-energetic side project cannons get under your skin. Just making a living is something to be proud of as well. People who write such posts may be good side project creators, but they may suck at other things. Or maybe they don't, maybe they are better people in every respect. I choose not to care, or perhaps better: I choose to try consciously not to allow myself to feel bad about this. It's hard enough in this connected world to try and find out what you like, feeling down comparing yourself to super productive people will only do that: make you feel down. It's the worst feeling to have while you're trying to find out what makes your clock tick (inhibiting I would even say). Young people often don't know what makes them enthusiastic, nothing wrong with that, also nothing wrong if it is doing nothing, daydreaming instead of firing off side project after side project. It'll come... Or it won't. First mission: Accept yourself as you are.
- bryanrasmussen 9y ago
  I'm thinking they're probably just more unmarried, more childless people in every respect.
  - jeffhuys 9y ago
    That's a pretty big assumption, probably not based on anything other than your gut feeling?
    - bryanrasmussen 9y ago
      Well thinking it is not based on research, otherwise I would say after researching the matter... so based on my gut feeling, I guess, maybe based on feelings on how many side projects I used to get done in a year versus how many I get done now. I don't know that I would call it an assumption, since an assumption I think of as something I will proceed from, as the basis of decisions and I'm not making any particular decisions based on what I think on this issue.
    - jimktrains2 9y ago
      Children consume a great deal of time and energy. Even after they're bathed and put to bed, cleaning and preparing for the next day eat into "adult" time in the night. Even splitting a perfect 50/50 with your partner (if you have one) doesn't leave much time for personal projects. Having a house also means spending time on its care. Not nearly as much as children, but it's a non negligible amount. Marriage can be less of a barrier to personal projects. Just depending your relationship and schedule.
    - milesvp 9y ago
      LOL! I'd say it's a fairly minor assumption to say he probably doesn't have small children. The sheer amount of time and effort that children can consume is mindblowing. A six month old gets bored in ways I didn't think possible for something with so little experience in the world. And god forbid you walk away to do some chore, the cry of abandonment makes it impossible to focus on anything else. And then you think, oh by 6 they should be able to help with things, but the mental effort to get any sort of chore out the child dwarfs the effort to do the chore yourself. And when all the children are finally asleep, that's when the PTSD shows itself. Will a child decide bedtime wasn't executed to their liking and come knocking on your door in 30 minutes? And when will the youngest cry for their first night time feeding? Can I start this activity that will likely take an hour? Do I dare stay up? or will tonight be a 4 cries in 4 hours kind of night?
chrisper 9y ago
Here is a side project for 2018 for you: Be nicer to other people.

throwaway2016a 9y ago

This year was the launch of Daughter 2.0 (years). I must say, this product is looking to be awesome. Although she sometimes intentionally doesn't follow the instructions I give her. Unlike Daughter 1.0 that simply didn't follow instructions because she wasn't programmed to do so yet. I must say, Daughter 0.1 was fun to conceive but the nine months leading up to launch were rough and the year after we first showed her to the public we had a lot of issues to work out. Me and my partner were up all night for a year working out bugs. I'm still working on launching my Basement Playroom side project. I have the walls framed out but finding an outsourcing firm for the wiring for a reasonable price has been tough. Finishing the Baby-proofing side project felt good though. I also have two software side projects. Both built on AWS Lambda... those have gotten nowhere due to my primary hustle.

avip 9y ago
That's still the fun part. Wait until your product starts getting traction and you need to build 24/7 customer support capabilities.
- throwaway2016a 9y ago
  The real hard part is we don't have enough funding to recruit more staff and I don't think we'll have an exit until we hit version 18.0 and that won't be for 16 more years. And even then, I hear some projects get to version 24.0 before being able to be self sustaining.
  - phillc73 9y ago
    I've heard that you can allocate roughly 25% FTE by version 14.0. I'm only on v3.5 of the first product. Generally the AI is working well, deep learning is starting to show dividends in many areas. Last night the Self Tidying function actually worked for the first time, although some items were not necessarily stored at the correct allocation addresses. The main problems we're encountering now is AI self awareness and trying to force its own learning path, despite continual re-training on controlled datasets.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Serow225 9y ago

Congratulations! :)

tonyedgecombe 9y ago

It's nice when they can wipe their own butt, a milestone.

grok2 9y ago

Loved this -- you called these "side-projects", but in general, this is "life" :-)....you do a lot of incidental "stuff". Specially when you have kids.

tmaly 9y ago

Curious to know what your method was to teaching the butt wiping. I need to teach my kid this.