[PaulRobinson]

I wish I had this energy again.

I've got a list of side projects to get on with. I've made little progress in the last year, and suspect its burn out to blame - I'm just constantly exhausted.

I think if you have the energy, this is awesome fun. It might even get to the point where one of them makes some decent income.

But if you don't, like me, just realise that there is a reason for that, and it's OK. You need rest and relaxation, and it's OK to prioritise that.

[90s_dev]

> I wish I had this energy again.

I used to think my youthful energy was gone forever. Then about 3 months ago I had an idea for a project I truly believed in. I was able to write code for 16 hours straight, day after day, for most of the last 3 months. And it's not exhausting, it's rejuvenating. I feel like a young man again, despite my gray hairs! (I was planning on releasing it today actually, but this weekend I had an epiphany that requires a half rewrite for significant gains, which might add another few weeks.)

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I'm 63, and still actively shipping "side" projects (quoted, because now they are my "day job"). Been doing it for at least a couple of decades. Probably more like 30 years.

Here's what I'm working on, right now[0]. It's a major rewrite of an existing app, that's been submitted to the App Store, and will probably go "live" in a day or so (unless someone at Apple has an issue with it, which happens, from time to time. Annoying, but not the end of the world). I'm working on the README and code documentation, now (I'll put together a docc catalog, as well as a Jazzy Docs site, and the supporting pages[1]).

[0] https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/ambiamara (Just a timer app, but a pretty good one).

[1] https://riftvalleysoftware.com/work/ios-apps/rival-t/

[cjbgkagh]

I’ve been doing my ‘side’ project as my day job for 5 years, 10 productive hours a day, 7 days a week. Sunday is dedicated to side side projects for experimental ideas that are not on the critical path.

When working a normal job I could only work part time due to burnout that I later found out was in reality ME/CFS. After a Covid vaccine injury (long covid) I had to pause work for a few years while I found a way to treat it. Once treated I elected to work on my side project even though I make much less money as I considerer the regular workforce to be highly dysfunctional and liable to cause me to relapse into a fatigued state.

[90s_dev]

> burnout that I later found out was in reality ME/CFS

In my experience, burnout is really just a subconscious realization that what you're doing is just not worth doing, even for large amounts of money, and it manifests itself in fatigue or pain, because your mind is trying to stop you.

[cjbgkagh]

100% not true in my case and probably not true in the generally case, it’s a common misattribution. The cause of mine is hEDS which has ME/CFS as a comorbidity. I’ve done a WGS and found that I have 2 TNXB SNPs. By my math a lot of ‘burnout’ especially in tech is related to TNXB or CYP21A2 SNPs. The treatments that I take specifically targets IL-1B cytokines that are linked to brain fog.

I was able to predict that I had these SNPs before taking the WGS test and once confirmed able to divise a treatment that worked. The probability of that happing by random chance is incredibly small.

[myth2018]

I'm going through a similar investigation. EDS + ME/CFS are the main suspects. Could live with the symptoms for very long, but they got too severe after covid (otherwise I would probably still be living with them).

Is the treatment working out well for you?

[90s_dev]

Maybe you're right, what do I know? I don't have a PhD in this field. Just relating what I've seen in myself and others throughout my life.

[hollerith]

WGS == whole genome sequencing

[ChrisMarshallNY]

In my case, I didn't know I was burned out, until after I was -literally- forced out of the industry.

I was really pissed off, for a while, but these days, I have zero desire to return to the Rodent Rally. I have been talking with a friend about a possible effort to create an altruistic organization. I have a couple of bored, rich, retired friends. May not go anywhere, but ya never know...

[datameta]

I think what you're describing is well encapsulated by a term I heard a few days ago - boreout.

[90s_dev]

I think the difference is that burnout can even be for things you're excited about and want to do, but subconsciously don't want to do for other reasons, e.g. the task/project goes against your ethics but you're pushing past that anyway, so your mind tries to stop you through stopping your body, e.g. fatigue or pain.

[PaulRobinson]

Congrats on finding something like that, and can't wait to see the Show HN thread!

What do you think made it something you could believe in? Was it the opportunity, that it aligned with something you were personally interested in or something else?

I had a project a few years ago that was a bit like that. I'd be coding it up every hour I could find around the day job, and loved it. Perhaps I need to reflect on that some more.

[90s_dev]

Thanks! It's hard to know exactly why. What I do know is that I'm surprised week after week with breakthroughs I never dreamed possible and which I think other people will find very useful, and these each renew my excitement.

[patcon]

I don't suppose you're using LLMs for coding? The number of my older friends who've found energy for side-projects since LLM coding became a thing is very notable

In the most extreme case: a new father of twins just uses his IDE and home projector to put up the work on the wall and builds little things by voice and reading, as he's home with his daughters. It's pretty eye-opening.

Obviously, he won't want to divide his attention so obviously in the near future, but he's the sort who will likely be making things with and for them very early -- I imagine it will be like kids spending lots of time growing up in their father's woodshop.

[TeMPOraL]

This is me. I just put up an LCARS MQTT logger and a clock with touch support, on a Raspberry Pi 2B V1.1 with a 3.5' TFT touchscreen, all of which I bought for that purpose 10 years ago. I took a few stabs at it over the years, but in that time I also married and started a family and ultimately could never find enough time or sustained drive to do it.

Five days ago, I stumbled upon that package again, and in between my work tasks I casually chatted with o3 on how to get that screen to show something. I explored my original idea (driving via SPI interface directly) but that turned out to be a dead-end - and then went back to the framebuffer approach (system overlay handles the screen, I write to /dev/fb0); o3 made me a quick prototype to prove the concept - and then I fired up Aider with gemini-2.5-pro, and got the MVP the same day. I casually iterated on it over the next 4 days, improving performance, functionality, style and adding touch support.

I can tell you, if not for LLMs, that board would continue to gather dust in the drawer for the next decade. Instead, I'm on my way to extending this to realize my other old dream - making it into LCARS A/C control panel to replace the vendor-provided wall-mounted one.

Also, in the past couple months, I explored many other ideas and did a few prototypes, and started feeling again the energy I last had in high school. LLMs are just that good at removing the "blank page syndrome" and making every incremental task just more cost-effective, to the point they start to fit in my otherwise busy adult schedule.

[aaronbaugher]

I'm not using an LLM for programming (at least not yet), but I'm using it for business planning, estimating target audiences, summarizing research, etc. All stuff I could do myself, and that I have to verify, but it saves time. More importantly, it's making some work more interesting that was previously too tedious to ever get started on. Maybe that benefit will wear off for me once it's not novel anymore, I don't know.

[90s_dev]

I've never touched an LLM and won't use AI. Everything I ever have and will make is hand crafted.

[jonwinstanley]

I use Cursor and still think of my work as hand crafted, the project is exactly what I wanted, I just didn’t have to press every single key

[90s_dev]

Actually maybe this is one way to explan it:

When Pico 8 came out, I immediately had a feeling of recognition and familiarity: "Oh! So this is the app I was half dreaming of making all these years!*

The app I'm making now gives me the exact same feeling, which is already a reward in itself, but it also means it'll probably give others that feeling too. So it's doubly exciting.

[AlecSchueler]

> a project I truly believed in

I think you're onto something here. I find that as I'm aging I'm not losing energy anywhere near as fast as I'm losing the belief necessary for commitment.

[radlad]

Careful not to fall into the trap of never releasing - it can always be better.

[90s_dev]

Definitely something I've worried about. But a major architectural change is different than an improvement. I've left a lot of low hanging fruit for me to fix up after release. But with this change it would literally become a new, backwards-incompatible product. That's where I personally draw the line for when to wait.

[parpfish]

Or not?

If his joy comes from endlessly coding and refactoring and tinkering, just have fun doing that.

Not every side project needs to turn into a side product

[radlad]

Of course, I assume OP is smart enough to realize they have free will and that I am not being prescriptive! OP had stated they were planning to release it, but held off, so I believe their intent is to release it.

By the way, one can release a side project without it turning into a product. :-)

[90s_dev]

That's actually all it was in the beginning. Just writing code for fun. But the more code I wrote, the more it evolved into an app that demands to be released, especially since the nature of it is to be a platform, SDK, and API for others.

[90s_dev]

Well I released it today and I'm kind of regretting it. It's woefully underdeveloped.

[dmos62]

Happy to hear this, good luck!

[yard2010]

Ship it! Ship it now!

[90s_dev]

I'm on the fence. But the new idea would fully break compatibility, and is much better. Should I continue to indefinitely support a product I no longer believe in?

[joshu]

don't tease us like that, what is it?

[90s_dev]

A cross between love2d and pico8 with TypeScript and webgl2 that's plugin-first and community-centric. Basically my ideal pixelart gamemaker dev platform.

[joshu]

I love where you are going with it!

[bluedino]

I think it's more the drive or the interest, instead of the energy.

I miss walking out of Borders with a PHP book dreaming of the websites I would build, or walking out of Best Buy with a iPad, imagining new games to create.

[deadbabe]

Side projects lately feel the same as creating a blog: why bother, no one is ever gonna read it? And it’s not going to make much money or gain you karma.

[socalgal2]

I sometimes feel like that. All of the side projects I've done in the last 25 years have been mostly for my own enjoyment. I haven't done a single side project for money. I also used to run a blog for enjoyment. I stopped enjoying it, so stopped doing it.

I do sometimes feel like, if I'd spent 25% of the time I spent on these side projects on something that would have made me $$$$$$$$ then maybe I could now spend all my time on anything I want, or live in a nicer place and that sometimes dissuades me from some new side projects.

I think probably the biggest thing that gets me to start something is if I believe (even wrongly) that I can make tons of progress quickly. Usually that means I think I can get to something working in a few hours.

[mjr00]

The great part about side projects is that unlike a business, it doesn't matter how much money it makes or how much traction it gets on social media. You can build something that you think is cool or useful and release it to the world and be proud of it. Then when someone stumbles upon it and also finds it cool and useful, it's a nice feeling.

A focus on revenue or external validation is what turns a "side project" into a "side hustle" or just a plain old "business" and those tend to be a lot less fun to work on.

[yard2010]

For me, a good side project is one you keep working on despite knowing these facts ;)

[naeemnur]

Totally relatable. I’ve stepped back a bit since my son was born. It’s a different pace now, but that’s fine. Rest isn’t a pause, it’s part of it.

[cmgriffing]

This might sound crazy but I started live streaming partially because I wanted to work on side projects.

You will be less productive than getting into a focus state off line. But 0.5x is still infinitely higher than zero.

On stream, you don’t get to randomly hop into a game or doom scroll social media or hackernews.

[drish]

totally feel you, I also have a list of projects I wanted to jump in, but I feel exhausted, and blame myself for not working on them.

[PaulRobinson]

Blaming yourself is something I can relate to.

[Comedy take: I blame you for my projects not being done too! :) Bada-tish!]

Seriously though, guilt, blame, shame all that stuff: it's not helpful. It just compounds the feelings that make it hard to get started again because those feelings are emotionally draining.

What I'm trying to get myself into the habit of is a 5-minute dip into something. If I just say to myself when I'm feeling slightly exhausted "I just need to put 5 minutes into this next task, and then I'll stop", I frequently find myself spending 30+ minutes on it. I can then feel a sense of over-meeting my "goal". That builds a little momentum, it makes you feel good about getting something done.

I also have reminded myself of the advice I gave others when younger: don't underestimate rest - particularly sleep, but also generally doing nothing - as being part of getting stuff done.

I don't do this well at all at the moment, hence my comment you're replying to, but I absolutely 100% will not let blaming myself get into my head like that, and that does help a little with the 5-minute trick.

[immibis]

I've diagnosed myself with a lack of motivation, not a lack of energy. (Which is also what "burnout" refers to, by the way)

I could, in theory, spend six months writing Uber for dogs. But why would I? That hardly feels worth it. Or I could try to implement AF_ONION in the Linux kernel. Also doesn't really feel motivating. Or (let me check the list) port libsodium to WUFFS. Write a framework for interactive tablet applications (at least on the pinetab2). Try to compile something by telling an LLM to pretend it's gcc, just for laughs. Set up an IRC botnet (the legal kind). Write an SSH honeypot. Set up an MQTT server so I can log my own location via an app on F-Droid. All stuff that seems slightly interesting but not enough to actually do it. And what seems interesting enough to focus on it for a few months to the exclusion of all other possibilities? Nothing at all.

Just today I wanted to post a link to a meme in IRC, but all the Google results were on garbage sites like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Imgur. I could go build a meme hosting site where you just have direct links to images. Maybe it would even be the best one. That's how Imgur got started. Still doesn't feel worth doing.

[bigyabai]

It sounds like you're a little too focused on metrics of success. Something can be "worth it" if it works well and nobody but you uses it. If you look at everything through the lens of opportunity cost, you'll be kicking yourself for not curing cancer. It's okay to work on an unambitious, likely unsuccessful side project. That time is only "wasted" if you're not proud of the work and can't show it to future employers.

[immibis]

I'm not focused on any particular metric other than motivation here.

I'm sure some things on my ideas list could make a bunch of money - like taking some SaaS everyone hates because it's enshittified, making one that's not enshittified yet, then selling it to an enshittification company in a few years for a big payout. You'd think the possibility of money would be motivating, but it's not.

I do have unsuccessful side projects that I do sometimes work on, and I'm not motivated to finish them to any substantial degree either.