
Ask HN: How do you stay motivated when working on a side project - maephisto
This is my constant struggle. 
I start building something, I invest myself heavily in it for about one week but after that something breaks and my brain starts telling me that it&#x27;s not such a great idea anyway, that there&#x27;s something already on the market that solves this problem and that I should probably move to the next idea. How do you keep yourself motivated and deliver?
======
itamarst
1\. Base your idea on research.
[https://stackingthebricks.com](https://stackingthebricks.com) has lots on
this. But basically if instead of "I HAD AN IDEA" your process is "read read
read read read WOAH these people have a PROBLEM", you have evidence that your
idea is useful to someone. (My audience for my product is programmers.
Research led to blog post, which ended up on front page of HN, created another
blog post which again made it to front page, and _then_ I started work on
product. Made a big difference to long term motivation.)

2\. Have more than one motivation. Sometimes motivations can be contradictory:
"learn new technology" is bad motivation to pair with "build a business"
because it slows you down with irrelevant details. But "learn how to do
content marketing", say, is great paired motivation because it both helps you
with feedback loop and means when you're stuck on building you can switch to
something else, keep going, and still feel you're getting value out of your
work. Longer version, with slightly different focus but same basic idea, here:
[https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/08/03/stay-
focused/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/08/03/stay-focused/)

------
gnode
I think to stay motivated it's important to validate your believe that it's
worth building. Otherwise you'll find doubt creeping in. If you're making
something for other people, then you should show other people what you're
making, and get them using it early on. I find there's nothing more motivating
than other people being interested in what I'm doing, asking for XYZ features,
and telling me what they're trying to do with it.

Also, try to work quickly towards a minimum viable product. It helps to have
something to show for your effort as early as possible. Until then, all you
have is your imagination, which is much easier to be sceptical of.

