Anyone who knows me from a techy view knows that I always have a side project on the go away from work. At least one. I really should have been working on my current side project this weekend, but I'd had my first vaccine jab and to be honest I wasn't feeling it. So I posted this on Twitter.
Okay so I've written a blog article and made a pretty big update to my Slack library
— Steven Pears (@StevenPears) May 8, 2021
What's next on the "list of things I can do to put off working on my side project"?
Oh yeah - gaming! 😁
And off this back of this I was rightly asked - aren't those things side projects?
The things that are side projects, but aren't
I have tech out there on the internet. I have my blog, I have my open source projects, I usually have a new piece of tech I'm trying to learn.
These are entities that I have a clear emotional attachment to. They warm my heart and quiet my mind. That's the reason for their existence and I'm never sure which projects are going to become part of that group.
When I feel like the world is too noisy, or more likely my head is too noisy, these are things I can work on with very little conscious thought. My fingers just run over the keyboard and I'm barely looking at the screen half the time as the cogs in my head turn free.
The things that are most definitely side projects
Side projects are very different beasts. These are ideas that were created due to a very specific idea or goal and I have to get to that goal no matter how long it takes. They weren't a natural creation and they require whiteboards and clear next steps.
Side projects require focus, a clear head, and often increase the level of anxiety I feel about my skills and ability to do the job I am so often employed for - which is probably what I was originally thinking of when the random idea that created them popped into my head.
Side projects are more me arguing with myself about my own ability to achieve something.
So yeah
This is very much something that is personal to me - I'm not trying to dictate a term or say this is how it should be. I'm aware how my mind rarely works the way people expect, which is kind of why I'm writing this post. I often find a need to question the strange way my mind organizes itself :)