May 19, 2019
I feel like it is important keep doing personal projects to keep learning new things. Keep doing tutorials and using new libraries to find what’s good and bad. What’s even better is making things that are useful or someone else might want. I try and find a need and fill it while I learn something new. It gives me motivation to not abandon the project when I get bored or whatever that makes us give up and not finish a project.
Coming up with ideas can be hard. Sometimes I feel like I am suppose to come up with some new business idea that is totally unique and will make me tons of money. Just stop thinking like that, right now!
To get started build extremely small things that you find useful. Before I really knew what programming was I was into spreadsheets, a lot. I found that Google Drive has its own script language you can use to interact with everything in your drive. Also, I know that every cell phone number has an email specific to the carrier it is on. So I made a spreadsheet with names, birthdays messages and phone numbers with carriers. Then I wrote a script that would check each day at 7 AM if today is someone’s birthday and then email their special carrier email that texts it to them from my google account. I’ll always be the first to message someone Happy birthday on their birthday!
So yes, stupid project but easy and fun.
I used a similar setup to make a Lease Ending Reminder script that emails a customer the month before their lease is up on their home. Did that for a friend.
Another friend had a problem with having to fill out a bunch of contracts with contractor/vendor information. Difficult to fill out over and over. So I made a google sheets script that you fill in pertinent info and it takes a template contract, searches for variable names I setup in it and replaces them with the info from the sheet. Easy peasy.
Notice that some projects above came from friends. If you can’t find a need in your life then ask friends. I have come up with great ideas from friends. Found they with something existed, or worked better, or that they didn’t need to do this or that. Pick something and start small. Fix just part of it. Then add to it. Make it better. Add a feature. Keep going.
A friend of mine with a machine shop had an issue tracking orders and parts he is making. Another owns a store but their POS system doesn’t work well. My brother’s business needed an employee and job time tracking system.
Find a need and fill it.
Start SMALL! Make the minimum viable product (MVP) that someone could use. Get it in use, put it in someone’s hands. Get feedback. If they aren’t excited about it or have ideas on what they wish it could do then try another idea. The idea is if you make the smallest viable project and people aren’t excited about the possibilities then probably not the best idea to continue. If you have to quit something, the earlier you do it the better. Less wasted time.
What you want to hear is things like, “Can you get it to do ‘X’?”. When someone sees its use and immediately is hoping it can do more things then it’s a sign they’d use it. If they don’t see anything else they hope out of it, remembering that it is a minimum viable product, then no, you didn’t make it perfectly. They just don’t see themselves using it. Brain turns off and moves on.
If you’re like me, and most other people that code, you’ll likely start lots of projects and never finish them. I have 3 portfolio sites, several other blogs, a movie app, and who knows what else, that I never fully finished. You need to finish things. At least now and then push a product all the way thru. Deploy, ship, whatever. Get it online, or being used. It looks better on a portfolio site as well. Show off things that work and are done. You get the idea. Just finish something.
I mention I’ve made some small things for friends. I even made a large app for a friend as well. I was stoked, excited, extremely anxious to see how my projects turned out and how much they’d help my friends. Took so much time figuring out the problem, learned something new to solve it, and made it look nice. I give it to my friend to use and…
Nothing. I hear nothing back. I wait. Days go by. Nothing. Why aren’t they telling me how awesome it is? Maybe it is broke? If it were broke the. Why didn’t then tell me so I could fix it? Maybe I should contact them.
That all leads to me finding out they ghosted me. Some of them just never responded to me on Facebook again. Some did but said they haven’t used it yet. And after waiting I find they never did use it. Not sure if they were scared to try a new system or thought it was crap. But they never even tried to use it and find out. So frustrating, but very common.
Make projects! Lots of them. Learn new tech while you do them.
Make their scope small. Smaller than that.
Get people using them and get feedback. If they don’t have excited suggestions then quit and move on. Quit projects early or finish them all the way!
Complete a project 💯%!