I have recently started a new personal project, and as is the case with all new projects I am super keen and willing to spend my free (i.e. non-work) time working on it, with the aim of getting it far enough along to be of value.

Rather than following my established pattern for personal projects where I am super enthusiastic for a couple of weeks and then run out of steam without achieving anything I have been trying a new approach.

By treating my personal project in a similar way to my day job, I have managed to add a lot of structure to the project, and have been working along on for a month in a half with a clear milestone in sight.

So what did I do differently this time around:

  • I created a backlog of tasks with clear milestones.
  • priorities the task to be completed, understanding which would add value and which would not.
  • set realistic expectations for the amount of time needed to complete the tasks.
  • don’t forget to have fun - there is no point trying to spend every waking moment working on the project, you will just burn out. At the same time, I did pick and choose which things you do.

And finally, things I didn’t do:

  • worry too much about adding tasks to my backlog if they are important.
  • worry too much about deprioritising tasks in the backlog as my vision of the project changed.
  • panic about taking two weeks out while I was sick.
  • get so caught up in the goal I didn’t do any fun coding. I added cool graphs to one page.
  • get caught up in the fun code and lose sight of the goal. I added cool graphs to ONLY one page.
  • be afraid to delete/rework the problem if the first attempt wasn’t very good.
  • use tooling - Trello, etc. - to keep track of my backlog, I have a simple about page listing the outstanding tasks.