

Ask HN: Have you ever lost focus on your personal project? - wornoutman

I been working on a personal project for almost a year now. Its nothing too complicated, just an online text editor. However recently can&#x27;t even focus on the project. I really need to get this project working, I want to drop out of school and I plan on using this project to get a full time job(use it as a portfolio). How did you gain back your focus?
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unoti
Several things that have worked for me.

1) Exercise, a lot. Put it first, so that you'll actually do it.

2) Eat right. These things, exercise and food, can have a far greater impact
on your work than you might realize.

3) Discipline. Show up and put the time in. Force yourself.

4) Pomodoro technique. Commit to yourself that you'll put in 2 solid 45 minute
periods per day. Work your way up from there. You need to do it even when you
don't feel like it.

5) Get friends who encourage you to be your best. If you don't have friends
like that, contact me unoti2@gmail.com

~~~
lfx
Great advises!

I would add:

\- one more: do it fist time in the morning, i know it is hard, but after
30mins of coding you will feel good about your self end progress.

~~~
jimkri
I agree with this so much, waking up early starts the day of on a productive
note, and you keep going. Also it clears your mind before you start coding,
helped me figure out a lot of problems I couldn't get the night before.

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freedevbootcamp
Here is how I got my passion, motivation, and ambition back. Let's call it my
slump-buster. 1\. Find Inspiration. It could be music, watching a movie about
a start-up or some other inspiring story. For me it was listening to Brian
Stevens keynote speech from the RedHat Summit on YouTube. If you listen to the
past 3 years he makes it clear that software developers and Linux are going to
rule the world. Use this as a tool to get you into your command center to get
stuff done. 2\. Do not come home from work and go to your command center or
computer room. You need time away from the computer to remember what your
passionate about. Watch TV, go exercise, spend time with your family, whatever
makes you happy. 3\. Go to bed early. When your lying in bed, think about your
side projects and what you want to build. Go into detail about the code, UI,
technology stack, where your going to host it. This will help you dream in
code and get you excited to wake up. 4\. Wake up early. I get up around 3am
without an alarm clock now because after dreaming about my passion projects
I'm so excited to get up and make things happen. You would be surprised how
focused you can be at 3am with no distractions. In the last 6 months since I
started this new me I have read over 20 books and wrote several documents for
my passion project. 5\. Setup the perfect development workstation. I use my 27
inch mac for development but I also have 3 laptops running Linux. I told
myself I was going to setup and learn all the best productivity tools to help
me code better/faster. I setup my dotfiles perfectly with all the vim plugins
I wanted to use, tmux scripts, and pushed it up to github and synced it to all
my workstations. It is such a rush to have everything running perfectly. 6\.
Start a ritual or habit and set goals. Document all your ideas for your
passion projects in as much detail as possible. Go to Trello or Evernote and
document everything. Include pictures, links, sound, video, whatever to help
you describe your idea and get yourself motivated. I call mine my 5 year
project plan even though it will only take me about a year and a half.

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Throwaway90283
Strip the project down to the basics and get a working prototype online. Don't
try to develop a fully featured project by waiting until step 10 is finished
before launching. Instead, spend a weekend on step 1 and launch the site, then
develop step 2, step 3, etc.

This way you and others can use the project as it develops. It's a lot more
fun when you can play with a working prototype of your project at any given
time, and you have users enjoying the service and requesting features. It's
great motivation. Also, if you notice at step 3 or 4 that no one cares about
your project, you can toss it in the garbage, move onto the next idea, and be
glad you didn't wait until step 10 to launch and waste all that time.

When you bite off too much, the finish line is so far in the distance that you
lose all motivation.

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michaelpinto
I think the problem is that your passion is for dropping out of school rather
than the project at hand. When I look at coders (or anyone) who has a passion
for something they'll do said task even if they're going for hours without
sleep or even forget to eat.

Also if the project isn't that complicated how good of a demo can it be to get
you this undefined full time job? Honestly finishing school may help you more
in the long run (unless what you're doing at school has nothing to do with
your career).

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jclish
Many times. Usually I become disheartened at how difficult the project really
is to complete. Then I ask myself if the project is really important to me. If
I answer yes I try to break it down to the next 3 steps, and just commit to
doing those three. Sometimes you need to learn something to make progress.
After a few question - recommit - work cycles more will have been done on the
project. Then you wind up refactoring!

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haidrali
I am also having my personal project alongside my full time job. Yes it is
difficult to keep your focus on side project. I use to gain focus during the
time i travel back to home from office ( plan all stuff during that period )

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leekh
What you need is discipline.

~~~
wornoutman
I agree I do need discipline, but is easier said then done. I been reading on
how to build discipline.

