[cableshaft]

I've got all sorts of ideas with various levels of work done on them in the dustbin. Sometimes you get an idea that you think will make money, but you're not really that passionate about it, and find that it takes a lot of effort to get back into it. That could be a sign that it's not worth pursuing and let it die. But if you do keep coming back to the idea, even with some time in between, it's probably worth sticking it out until the end. At any given time I've got about 15 ideas that I have varying amount of energy for, and 10 that I started briefly but never went back to, but usually only one main project per medium (not everything I do is programming) that I keep going back to over and over again.

Those are the ones you really need to make sure get out there. Then finish those and see what's next you want to go back to. It's taken me over 8 years to finish a novel, for example, but I already know what the second novel I finish is likely to be, because I keep coming back to it and putting a little work into it here and there.

Sometimes those ideas you got super excited about for a week and abandoned will be incorporated into future ideas too, and they'll all meld together into some super idea. I've got something like that percolating that I noticed is basically combining three of my past ideas into something simultaneously simpler and more powerful.

But I'm not doing it for a business, just for fun. If I did it for business, I'd have to focus a lot more, and have a lot less fun, I imagine.