3 ms·

Another aspect of personal projects is that if they’re truly enjoyable they can be a kind of salve for burnout.* If you feel like you can’t even open your IDE,

by gdubs 5y ago

Another aspect of personal projects is that if they’re truly enjoyable they can be a kind of salve for burnout.* If you feel like you can’t even open your IDE, a personal project can generate the excitement that reinvigorates your passion. There’s also less of a speed limit with personal projects — the things like: “before you go down that road let’s talk with X; hold off on that idea for now; let’s wait until...” This freedom is conducive to learning new things. My career success rests heavily on skills I gained pursuing personal projects, where I was able to try ridiculously complicated or “out there” ideas. I’ve worked for people in the past who were strongly against me spending free time on personal projects, but benefited from all the skills I had gained doing so. Beware of this mindset — it’s fear based and leads to unsuccessful outcomes in other ways. * Side note is: careful not to burn out on what’s supposed to be a fun personal project.

convolvatron 5y ago
I disagree about the sidenote. go for it. get as far as you can.
- EarthLaunch 5y ago
  I'm curious, why push through on a fun personal project into causing burnout? Asking for...a friend.
  - notsureaboutpg 5y ago
    Do you remember in Uni pulling all nighters for projects / classes? It was stressful, often painful, often resulting in you being a mess for a few days afterwards. If you did this, you'd know it had all the signs of burnout attached to it. And yet... sometimes your projects ended up super cool and you were really really proud of them and when you showed them off you felt really accomplished. And sometimes that feeling is worth a little foray into burnout world.
  - convolvatron 5y ago
    I guess I have a different theory of burnout. to me it happens when I can't connect the dots anymore. its not because I worked too hard. company found a vertical and how I spend all my time trying to fix 'bugs' that are really because the product is being mis-applied. most of the senior team left and its clear that we aren't going to be taking on any other work than cleaning up. sales are flagging and its clear that the whole narrative was corrupt to begin with. the only projects I can remember, paid or not, are the ones that took up a huge fraction of my output and really did something cool. do that. shoot big. make something really different. don't turn programming into sitting at the end of an queue, picking up random things and gamifying retiring them as fast you can. you have a chisel. make a sculpture.
    - jimbokun 5y ago
      Amen.
rikroots 5y ago
Paul Graham's essay really resonated with me - I was saying 'yes, yes!' as I read every sentence. But I think the most important bit for me is in your comment: "This freedom is conducive to learning new things." I have many projects; I've always been this way. School work was interesting (sometimes) but things only got really interesting when I took something from school and turned it into something of my own. Like the time I decided that while atlases were really interesting, building my own atlas with different continents and countries would be much more fun[1]. Or the thing that happened when, after a couple of weeks of starting to learn French I decided: I can do better than that![2]. I taught myself how to build websites not because I wanted a job building websites - it turns out that building other people's websites is quite boring, though the money comes in useful. I learned to code because I wanted to show off my work on my projects to other people - even if the displays looked nonsensical (or, as family members have suggested: a waste of time). For instance I've learned a lot about designing and building fonts, and had much enjoyment doing the work, even though the end products will never be used by anyone else[3][4]. The face that, as a consequence, I can now have heated arguments with designers about font kerning issues is a useful byproduct of my hobby, nothing more. [1] - Example map: http://rikweb.org.uk/map/images/bigmap.jpg http://rikweb.org.uk/map/images/bigmap.jpg [2] - I called the result Gevey: http://gevey.rikweb.org.uk/ http://gevey.rikweb.org.uk/ [3] - Example font: http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/oyis/index.php?page=script http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/oyis/index.php?page=script [4] - Another example font because this one is a bit mad: http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/wakat/index.php?page=script-logo http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/wakat/index.php?page=script-...

by gdubs 5y ago

convolvatron 5y ago

I disagree about the sidenote. go for it. get as far as you can.

EarthLaunch 5y ago
I'm curious, why push through on a fun personal project into causing burnout? Asking for...a friend.
- notsureaboutpg 5y ago
  Do you remember in Uni pulling all nighters for projects / classes? It was stressful, often painful, often resulting in you being a mess for a few days afterwards. If you did this, you'd know it had all the signs of burnout attached to it. And yet... sometimes your projects ended up super cool and you were really really proud of them and when you showed them off you felt really accomplished. And sometimes that feeling is worth a little foray into burnout world.
- convolvatron 5y ago
  I guess I have a different theory of burnout. to me it happens when I can't connect the dots anymore. its not because I worked too hard. company found a vertical and how I spend all my time trying to fix 'bugs' that are really because the product is being mis-applied. most of the senior team left and its clear that we aren't going to be taking on any other work than cleaning up. sales are flagging and its clear that the whole narrative was corrupt to begin with. the only projects I can remember, paid or not, are the ones that took up a huge fraction of my output and really did something cool. do that. shoot big. make something really different. don't turn programming into sitting at the end of an queue, picking up random things and gamifying retiring them as fast you can. you have a chisel. make a sculpture.
  - jimbokun 5y ago
    Amen.

rikroots 5y ago

Paul Graham's essay really resonated with me - I was saying 'yes, yes!' as I read every sentence. But I think the most important bit for me is in your comment: "This freedom is conducive to learning new things." I have many projects; I've always been this way. School work was interesting (sometimes) but things only got really interesting when I took something from school and turned it into something of my own. Like the time I decided that while atlases were really interesting, building my own atlas with different continents and countries would be much more fun[1]. Or the thing that happened when, after a couple of weeks of starting to learn French I decided: I can do better than that![2]. I taught myself how to build websites not because I wanted a job building websites - it turns out that building other people's websites is quite boring, though the money comes in useful. I learned to code because I wanted to show off my work on my projects to other people - even if the displays looked nonsensical (or, as family members have suggested: a waste of time). For instance I've learned a lot about designing and building fonts, and had much enjoyment doing the work, even though the end products will never be used by anyone else[3][4]. The face that, as a consequence, I can now have heated arguments with designers about font kerning issues is a useful byproduct of my hobby, nothing more. [1] - Example map: http://rikweb.org.uk/map/images/bigmap.jpg http://rikweb.org.uk/map/images/bigmap.jpg [2] - I called the result Gevey: http://gevey.rikweb.org.uk/ http://gevey.rikweb.org.uk/ [3] - Example font: http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/oyis/index.php?page=script http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/oyis/index.php?page=script [4] - Another example font because this one is a bit mad: http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/wakat/index.php?page=script-logo http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/wakat/index.php?page=script-...