Comment by rockbruno
2 years ago
From your description it sounds like you're placing "making money" / "success" as your main motivation for these projects, which would explain why you're losing it so easily. Extrinsic motivations are very easy to lose, it sounds like you need to prioritise more intrinsic things such as having fun or learning something interesting. Check out intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation
This!
My side-projects went from "constant failures" to "always a success" when I changed my success criteria to be "I learned something new and had fun". Granted, some see it as cheating, but if it improves my happiness, I'm fine with cheating a bit as long as it doesn't hurt others.
> when I changed my success criteria to be "I learned something new and had fun".
In my view, this is the only success criteria that counts for side projects. If your goal is to make money with a side project, that's not a side project, that's a startup.
> Granted, some see it as cheating, but if it improves my happiness, I'm fine with cheating a bit as long as it doesn't hurt others
It's surprisingly controversial to recognize that the amount of happiness money gets you has diminishing returns, but empirically it's always seemed true to me. If you goal is to maximize happiness, trying to make money from some activities can make you _less_ happy. I guess I'm just not enough of a capitalist to see the value of money that doesn't make me any happier, but after having enough to be comfortable and secure enough about my ability to continue to be in the future, money stops being a motivator for me.