> I buy a domain name → I code for 3 all-nighters → I lose interest → I start again.
At least you're actually doing the "I code for 3 all-nighters" step!
I've stopped too many projects at the "I buy a domain name" stage, and added an intermediate "I create a Trello board" step between that and starting to write code. No need to pull all-nighters, which are hard to do with family and a full-time job, if all I need to do is add a card to a feature wishlist. Maybe prototype a few key functions to see how they work, wireframe a unique piece of UI, or follow the tutorial to create "hello world" in a new framework, but it turns out that those steps are also optional.
The problem seems to be that my brain gives me a dopamine buzz for merely _imagining_ accomplishing the project, whether or not I eventually implement, publish, and get users for the it. I can give myself a similar cognitive reward for simply reading on HN about other people completing projects, and even (at my lowest) passively watching YouTube videos of other people building cool stuff. It's all the mental rewards of participating in a group project where the tribe accomplished something great, except I'm barely in a parasocial relationship with a dude on Patreon or Discord a thousand miles away who actually performed 100% of the work. Maybe he likes my comment "Nice work! I really liked how you did [thing], have you considered [alternative strategy]?". Maybe he even comments back. Bang! Neurotransmitter pump engaged, dopamine boost received.
It's a scary thing to realize that you're doing this, and very, very hard to train yourself out of those bad habits. I find it's important to write down and consciously review my daily/weekly/monthly/yearly goals, my productive and unproductive activity towards those goals, and my actual accomplishments. It's too easy to get addicted to fake reward loops, whether because they're engineered by social media companies who make money off my attention span or because brains are just vulnerable to low-effort high-reward stimuli. What did I do in July? X hours of Reddit, Y hours of HN, Z hours of Youtube... and a half dozen things I'm actually proud of.
(Note to self: Don't get too excited about upvotes or replies to this comment, acquiring HN or Reddit fake Internet points are not part of my actual goals and should not be considered real accomplishments.)
Upvoted, but just in a friendly "hello, I recognise myself in this comment" sort of way :)
I currently have a little stack of index cards with in-play projects scrawled on them and at the end of the year the plan is to weed those and shut down any resources that aren't required for the ones still in the list. Hmm, maybe I need a domain name for that though...
One thing I will add is that it's ok to recognise that one enjoys some of these behaviours. There's no moral element to being a starter-not-a-finisher of personal projects so long as you're paying appropriate attention to your important commitments (family, the day job, etc.)
It's hardly the worst hobby to have. Maybe one goes somewhere? That doesn't really happen if the alternative is working through the list of TV shows people have mentioned.
> The problem seems to be that my brain gives me a dopamine buzz for merely _imagining_ accomplishing the project, whether or not I eventually implement, publish, and get users for the it.
I get this same buzz from talking about my projects. So today, I do not talk about anything I'm working on because I know I can drain myself of all motivation with one excited conversation.
If I want daydream fuel I buy a Powerball ticket for $2. I get the same dopamine rush doing fictional estate planning as I did spending $10=$50 on a domain and fantasizing about the project succeeding. The Powerball ticket also doesn't circle back around next year asking for more money.
I've also found that having a small homelab that can support Dokku or similar is also very helpful when I want to be productive. Deployable from Day 1 and after every change is a game changer for me, and deploying to an internal host lets me be lazy in all the right ways, as long as I keep track of the sins I commit (you can go a long, long way on a project before you have to add the boring boilerplate that is proper auth, for instance).
I always buy a domain well after I've finished the MVP and have been using it myself for months. Am I doing it wrong?
But what if somebody else snatches it and steals the idea???
Only if your goal is collecting unused domains!
i actually buy the domain name at the end. i am stingy. which means i do not buy domain names as i always loose interest after some allnighters. but the code base remains until the motivation returns
That's not stingy, that's sensible :-) After spending far too much money buying things to support some planned activity that I never actually carry out, I now try to follow the rule that I only buy the thing when I actually need to use it.
This is a good rule for saving money in other areas of life too.
This is me. After I hit ~70 domains, I realized I needed to stop. Now, I have since pared that down considerably, and instead add all of the domains I like to a "wishlist" so I can come back to them (I never do).
Then for my project ideas, I find writing them out to really be what scatches most of the itch for me. I get to think through the problem, think about how I could implement it, maybe even do a little exploring of tech I could use to solve the problem.
For the vast majority of the ideas I don't circle back. For some ideas I will come back a few times and iterate on the plans and designs, but still never build it. And even fewer I actually build. Its all of the fun, without feeling like I can never finish a project. Instead I feel like I can't start them.
Do you just start to code once you have an idea, or do you carry out a market analysis?
I am in it for the thrill. Code first ask questions later.
I feel like I'm looking into a mirror haha. The number of times I have spent a ton of time planning and then little to no doing over the years is something I try not to dwell on.
> whether because they're engineered by social media companies who make money off my attention span or because brains are just vulnerable to low-effort high-reward stimuli you couldnt be bothered, i wouldnt overthink it mate. youll end up diagnosing yourself with ADHD
> I can give myself a similar cognitive reward for simply reading on HN about other people completing projects, and even (at my lowest) passively watching YouTube videos of other people building cool stuff.
I struggle with the same thing -- I'm resigned to the solution that even (or especially) when you're doing hobby projects, you might have to resort to blocking HN or other distractors for a bit.
Im the same way. I wish I was rich enough to hire like 10 developers and assign them to all the different projects I have in mind.
I had that thought once, but immediately realized it is better to build stuff sequentially, so you can put more of your energy per calendar month into each, which makes it more likely that it can take off.
You are, it’s called Claude Code Max.
This actually killed my motivation to do some of my side project ideas. I would spend a lot of time writing very good specifications, setting everything up for succes by really finetuning my prompting and context, but then the AI would output something that looks impresssive but is completely full of mistakes. And it would take SO many tries to make the AI fix it, but every time it creates more and more bloat, and introduce more and more issues. Until the point I decide to throw away everything the AI produced, and try it from scratch again with a different prompt.
Eventually I spent so much time trying to make it work, only to remain empty-handed.
For the down-voters, this is literally what has allowed my to launch a few projects on the side of my main saas focus that I've had in my backlog for years, one of which is now earning enough money to cover Claude Code Max plus some.
Very well said! In this struggle, and as I'm in a new job, and I've tried to not get carried away by the common distractions in not logging in on the corporate laptop on hn, reddit, and a few others. As you can see I already failed, but what a great thought that I could not resist to agree with a longer comment saying the same that an upvote. :)
I feel like even doing this is keeping yourself sharp enough for when someone else makes a tool that lets you bring your idea to life in a more realistically achievable and complete-able fashion, for some definition of complete.
This is a downside?!
You can bed unlimited lovers, all in a moment's thought! You can win the lottery a thousandfold, all before eating breakfast! You can win arguments, all in your mind, even whilst loosing them!
Success!!
I'm actually having some success now with the
> I buy a domain name → I set up a bug tracker → I spec out a bunch of tasks → I let Claude Code do the coding
Seems more sustainable to me than working a full-time job coding, then adding another coding side project. Nice change of pace to just be describing what I want my app to do (during my work day), then letting Claude Code buzz away while I do my day job.
how are you managing keeping up to date wiht the tasks and update to tasks. What bug tracker do you use.. do you mean jira??
I use Linear - it integrates with GitHub so that when PRs go in the status moves to shipped. I spec the linear tasks out, copy the generated git branch name and make a branch on my computer (auto moves to in progress status); copy paste the contents as markdown to Claude code, have it do its thing, then push up the code to a PR and review it/run CI. If alls good merge it in and then the status moves to shipped automatically.
Since otherwise this is a solo side project I don’t need anything more complex than that, though I also use Linear for my day job and so I know you can automate it more if you need to.
Jira is working for me via atlassian MCP.