Why Side Projects Are Important

My Start with Side Projects

A few years ago, I came up with a plan to make $10,000 per month. I had gotten comfortable in my role at work and I wanted to start working on a side project idea that would generate some “passive” income.

One day, a coworker of mine helped me solve (what I thought was) the last problem preventing me from starting and I told him that I was going to start working on it that night. But, after a few months of no updates he asked, “Whatever happened with that project you were working on?”.

As it turned out, I hadn’t actually started yet. My fear of “failure”, intimidation by how much work was on the road in front of me, and/or anxiety about what people would think of it had prevented me from even starting to build my side project.

Two years (and many projects) later, I think back to this moment whenever I start a new one. The total income I ended up receiving from version 1 of that project was $0.00, but the lessons I learned from failure resulted in a much higher quality version 2 and I finally made my first dollar on version 3.

More importantly, however, is that since then I’ve learned how to overcome the various “blocks” that prevented me from starting. Looking back, I also believe that the real value from side projects has not been monetary, but instead has been in the ways their pursuit developed me as a person, a Software Engineer, and a team member.

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Side Projects Give Your Brain a Productive Way to Spend “Time Off”

Similar to how an athlete does drills or a musician plays scales to reinforce some fundamental skills, working on side projects brought a similar enhancements to my professional skill set. I think it’s great, for example, when a front-end Software Engineer tries out backend or hardware projects to develop a complementary skillset.

This approach makes working on a side project seem more like play than work.

For example, despite understanding hardware components like motherboards, CPUs, graphics cards, etc from a software perspective, I had never actually put the hardware together myself. I spent several weeks assembling a gaming PC which deepened my understanding of how these components support what I do on a daily basis.

Eventually, this project evolved into another one where I used my newly built PC to create games in Unreal Engine and Unity.

Title scene for a Halloween game I made called “Monster Mash”. I ended up scrapping this project for a number of reasons, but stay tuned for a post about what valuable lesson I learned from building this game.

While the types of problems were similar for both, the processes for solving them was different. For example, debugging why the game is laggy (side project) vs. debugging why a web page loads slowly (work) is a similar problem, in essence, but each has its own unique processes for solving it.

These projects were productive because they allowed me to learn how to navigate a new language and set of problems, but at the same time they gave my brain “time off” as I worked in hardware as opposed to software or game development instead of web development.

Taking the time to sort of invert my thinking, turned out to be great for preventing boredom or getting “burnt out” from what can, at times, be a very tedious daily routine. And, especially when these side projects aren’t directly related to day-to-day work, being able to make progress and eventually finish them gave me a boost in confidence and momentum to bring to my day job.

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Side Projects Help You Stay On Top of Industry Trends

The “best” frameworks, languages, and technologies we’re using today will be surpassed by some newer, cheaper, or faster version in the coming years. And when that happens, if you’ve only learned how to solve the problems your company gives you and with the tools that they use, then you’re at risk of falling behind the industry trends.

In my case, my company wasn’t using React or Machine Learning and since those were some of the popular industry “buzzwords,’’ I decided to do some side projects to see what the buzz was about. I ended up using React and Tensorflow to build a musical machine learning app:

I created an app where you can input a short melody and a trained neural network spits out a sample tune based off the input

Since when I started this project, these technologies have grown significantly in popularity and influence. As a result of this and projects like these, I feel like I’m prepared for a far wider range of positions than if I had just stuck to the technologies I used at work.

While this is just my experience, I’m sure there’s people out there using React who have wanted to try Vue or Tensorflow users who are curious about the benefits of Keras. The same idea applies that branching out will give you much more context to understand the direction in which your industry is growing.

And as the overall Tech industry continues to innovate and grow rapidly, side projects are, in my opinion, the best practice field on which you can try out new skills and techniques to stay on top of competing industry trends.

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Side Projects Help You Get to Know Yourself and Your Team

Many work on their side projects in private (or secret), but in my case, sharing my projects’ progress with peers and coworkers not only made the journey more fun and rewarding, but it also made me far more likely to complete the project.

Choosing a side project illuminated for both those who I shared it with and myself — which kinds of problems truly challenged and interested me. When I was opting to “work” on something in my free time, I found that I was more honest in scrapping projects I didn’t like and replacing them with others that I truly enjoyed and connected with on a deeper level.

Still, even when working on something I enjoyed, at some point with every project I’d get “stuck”, things would come up, and my progress would stagnate; the “How’s that project coming along?” from a friend or coworker was often crucial in getting me back on track. It also often steered the conversation towards constructive discussions or brainstorming on either my project or theirs. Looking back, I probably learned as much from my friends and coworkers side projects as I did from my own.

I learned a lot from my friend Dmitry Filimonov who wrote an algorithm and built a robot that takes a picture and turns it into string art. Check out his IG: @string.art.bird

As an example, this is a dope side-project a friend and former co-worker of mine created. This project of his took many shapes and forms until he honed in on accomplishing the above end result. He was building this, while I was building a game and we both held each other accountable, helped each other get unstuck, and ultimately learned about an extra field without having to dig in ourselves.

Companies Should Encourage Side Projects

The emphasis that companies put on this type of development varies greatly, particularly across the Tech industry and is often more geared towards developing potential new features for that company.

Still, no matter the size of the company, I’d recommend that companies encourage employees to work on side projects both inside the company (i.e Hackathons) and outside (random side projects). I had friends and co-workers working on eclectic Tech-related side projects from ML-generated rap albums to automated carnivorous plant maintenance. Working on and sharing these types of projects with my co-workers was by far the most impactful “team building” experience I had.

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Starting Your Side Project Is Easier Than You Think

All of these benefits have accumulated over numerous projects, but it all started with just taking the first step: pursuing a topic that both interested me and helped me develop a skill.

To overcome the many mental blocks that prevent starting a side project, I like to fully dedicate one weekend to creating the shittiest version of it (or a feature of it) that I can complete. I found that accepting that the first version is going to be the worst version, removes the failure, anxiety, and intimidation from the equation and then I (finally) have something to iterate and improve on.

If you’ve been stuck on starting a side project shoot me a message with a project you’ve been thinking about; I can only offer my own perspective, but I’d love to try and help you get unstuck and take the first step!