A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to have the time, space and money to enjoy side projects again. Music, art, coding for the love of making something with no other reason than doing. I stopped thinking anything had to be anything - it just was. I could do for the sake of doing and it was liberating.

I've been very happy about this, it's been a blessing mentally. And very productive. I've enjoyed time and space, and I appreciate (again!) how lucky I am to be here.

My most satisfying side projects are often not necessarily my "best" work, in terms of code cleanliness, best practices, efficiency, etc. They're ones where I had a particular creative itch I wanted to scratch. Is this kind of solution possible? What would a certain unusual approach to a problem look like? How can I use this algorithm or library in this situation where it doesn't quite fit, as an experiment?

Projects with extremely loose parameters and no particular "skill acquisition" goals are great ways to grow in ways you didn't anticipate. Which is one way to think about artistic creation, I think: non-goal oriented growth.

  Zen is found,
  Not in a project.

  But in desire,
  To quell a need.

  A need born,
  From purity of thought.

  Thought without,
  Encumbrance.

  Thought without,
  Politics.

  Thought without,
  Concern of outcome.

  But in desire,
  To quell a need.

  To find Zen,
  Not from a project.

  But within oneself.

I'm currenlty juggling a few side projects, one of which is a game I've been tinkering with for 3 years. It's a pretty simple simulation of riding your bike through a city at night. It's never been anywhere near close to anything I could actually release, but I finally at least pulled together a gameplay video I could show off to my familiy and friends. They were all pretty impressed, and all wanted to know when I'd actually release it.

But I doubt I ever will. To me, making the game is my game, and I've tried to frame my side project work to my gamer friends that way. Sometimes it's giving myself new techncial puzzles to figure out, other times it's just letting myself zone out and get creative with world building, snapping together building facades like legos to build whatever crazy city I can imagine. It's so much fun.

Another is a web project that's much less fun and creative, but the more I tinker with it the more it turns into something that may actually be useful to others. And it may actually turn into something I can release and promote, and maybe even earn a little beer money with. I'm currently working up the motivation and courage to do a Show HN on that one here soon.

It almost pains me to say it (for reasons I can't even articulate well) but I've found LLMs to be tremendously useful in pushing through on side project work. I've lost track of how many projects I've spun up over the years and abandoned as soon as I got to the tedious parts you need to tackle if you actually want a marketable product (admin interfaces, user accounts, endless boilerplate html, etc, etc). With a competent LLM I can just delegate all the tedious crap and stay focused on what's actually fun for me. It's great.

The motiviation and tinkering can be similar to a side project, and results in higher quality work IMO. Obviously there are urgent tasks, but it's an ignored vector in the "weighting system" for choosing work for engineers.

If you wait to assign the task in the next sprint, the excitement for that particular task might be gone.

The other type is much bigger and can take months or even years. New features are added from time to time, but must also fit into a well defined architecture.

Both types can be satisfying but require different approaches. The first gives you a bunch of different projects that get shuffled around and easily abandoned. The second requires more discipline as you continually build upon previous layers.

Since they are both side projects, you can go weeks without looking at them or spend all your spare time on them for extended periods.

I have a side project that I have dabbled with for a decade. There are months where I get many features working and others where I barely look at it. It just depends on what else is happening in my life at the moment.

I know people disparage LLMs for not building any serious code. Yes it's only a hobby project and not a production system, but my little project really would never have left the ground without it.

[0] https://mattsayar.com/i-didnt-want-to-pay-for-a-newsletter-e...

Led to my current job, which I love. Hopefully this lasts.