

Ask HN: How do you find a project you're passionate about? - Tharkun

I love writing code. But I really struggle with inspiration for side projects. Spending (even) more time at the day job is not an option -- I&#x27;m already getting comments along the line of &quot;don&#x27;t forget to go home!&quot; or &quot;make sure not to come in on sunday&quot;.<p>What are your (successful) strategies for finding (side) projects you&#x27;re truly passionate about?
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lutusp
> What are your (successful) strategies for finding (side) projects you're
> truly passionate about?

1\. Leave the house. Take a walk in an unfamiliar environment.

2\. Clear your head. This might take an hour of steady walking.

3\. Ask yourself what problem exists, that you know about, that you
understand, that can potentially be solved with a computer, that is within
reach but remains unsolved.

For example, my most recent side project was a way to put all my books into a
database by using an Android bar code scanner, something that didn't exist the
last time I thought about this problem. I hadn't thought about it for a few
years, then recently I decided to revisit this issue and see if anything had
changed.

It turned out that _everything_ had changed -- Android devices are cheap, they
can scan bar codes, new books all have bar codes -- it was a "duh" moment.

Here's the result -- my free book scanner project:
[http://arachnoid.com/LibraryDB](http://arachnoid.com/LibraryDB)

Basically, you need to think of a way to temporarily disconnect from your
environment, give yourself a way to think about programming issues from a new
perspective.

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dangerwig
Work on a project that helps other people. Don't do it for personal gains.
It's so easy to be passionate when you are doing something selfless.

