Sorting Through That Complicated, Awesome Side Project

Side projects and side hustles are an increasingly significant part of how many people spend their working hours, especially in the tech and creative industries. They're often encouraged as a way of gaining and demonstrating new skills, but they also often create a foundation for new beginnings elsewhere. Successful companies including Trello, Craigslist and Twitter started out as projects.

Based on a 2017 survey, an estimated percent of employees are working on a side project. They can be a fun way of learning a new skill or software, but that positive motivation can sometimes become a toxic cultural expectation tied to career advancement. Given that we work at a tech company, I wanted to talk to some of my coworkers about their feelings and experiences with side projects.

Steph has mixed feelings. Because of the pressure to do extra work after hours, it “feels like a trap, and a recipe for burnout. After a long day of work usually the last thing I want to do is look at a screen anymore,” Steph said. “So most of my side projects are more physical: cross-stitch, crochet, stamp carving, drawing, baking and pasta making. Sometimes engineering work just feels so abstract and intangible that it’s really satisfying to use my hands and make a thing.”

For Steph, the best motivation is a more social project, rather than working on something only for herself. In 2019 her friends all participated in Inktober together, and “the anticipation of seeing what they all did was exciting and kept [her] on task.” Similarly, Steph worked on a creative writing Exquisite Corpse app so her and her friends could collaborate on a connected short story. They split up the days in December so they would each get designated time to contribute, and on New Year’s Day they read their Frankenstein story over video chat. You can actually read about Steph’s project in her personal post about it.

For Johnicholas, it can be difficult to keep motivation or focus on a project for an extended period of time. “I have trouble focusing on only one project for longer than a few days or weeks,” He said. “So most of my effort has been about learning to work within those limitations.” One solution he has found is to work on projects that build upon each other. “[It’s easier] to get excited, not about a large months-long project, but about a tiny project that just coincidentally happens to be similar to, and build upon, several other tiny projects that I have previously attempted or completed.”

Johnicholas also participates in Ludum Dare, a biannual “accelerated video game development competition”, at least once a year. In reflecting on one of his games, Glyphwitches, Johnicholas explained, “We did not succeed at making a good game, and since there are no sounds or music, nor any level design nor narrative, it’s really not even a complete game.” But that, in his mind, is one of the benefits of Ludum Dare — he gets freedom in game development that is more difficult in software. “By embracing and affirming “what I am making is a game”, I can challenge myself to get as far up the slope of game-ness or polish as I want while still ‘succeeding.’”

Similarly, Sarah feels joy from initial creating more than polishing. “If I can hack together a proof of concept quickly, no matter how ugly the code or design of the app is if it just mostly works, I tend to get pretty giddy about it,” Sarah explained. “It gives me a cool feeling of joy, like the world is made of play-doh and it’s just waiting for cool creators to sculpt fun things.”

Sarah also describes the bad parts of creating side projects: the shame. The dark side of any good idea is the guilt that you haven’t worked on it. Sarah has worked to make sure this guilt doesn’t impact her long term. “I take [not finishing] as a sign that the idea has run its course. Often I’ll stop because the idea just wasn’t compelling enough for the amount of work required to bring it into existence.”

One project that Sarah has worked on is Turn Around, a browser extension that could support people trying to boycott sites. For example, when Vox employees were on strike, she found it so easy to accidentally click on some of their content — Vox owns a few different sites, so it could be difficult for one person to keep track, even if they want to support the boycott. “A community organizer who is an expert in their field, who has strategically crafted a list of demands, could very easily input all the websites folks should avoid into an app,” Sarah said. “As a person who installed the extension, I could just install it with a click of a button and never really have to do more work than that.”

What Sarah shares with Edwin is that learning new tech isn’t motivating, unless it comes from a need to make an idea possible. “I can’t tell you how many times I opened the React documentation “Getting Started” guide only to lose interest and push it off,” Edwin said. “What made me finally dive into React was coming up with a project idea that React made easier.” Edwin also learned Adobe After Effects, Origami, Rails and more through different projects.

“When I finish a project, I usually push through because I’m excited to share it — I’m interested in seeing a reaction,” he explained. “When I created buy.edwin.pizza, for example, my interest in using the Stripe API was not the only thing I was thinking about.” The aptly named project, Buy Edwin Pizza, is… exactly what it sounds like. You can send Edwin money and he will make a video, at some point, of him eating the pizza he ordered with the money you contributed.

“I’m actually still working on and maintaining that project, so I think social motivation has a lot more longevity than interest alone. This is true for utilitarian projects as well, like chrome extensions or productivity apps — if you can see that people are using them, and benefiting, it can be really gratifying to make updates and improvements over a long period.”

*Ready to start a new side project with Glitch? Visit our Create page.