How do you motivate yourselves to work on side projects? like I just wanna sit on my ass play video games

I wish I knew how I can convert my motivation to game to study better or work on side projects but I don't have the secret recipe.

For me, it was having a good friend in need.

He was making a game && needed some help w/ it, so he reached out to me.

Try to make something for the game or a tool to train your game skills.

Please tell me when you have figured it out.

when I found programming I thought programming was the ultimate video game and it actually ruined video games for me

the amount of self expression in code, how much you can build / the degrees of creative freedom, and how complex and difficult you can make the "game" for yourself is just nowhere near what video games can anticipate to give you

For me, setting a timer/alarm has been the most helpful to get out of the "just one more game" mindset or if you're really not feeling, it doing it inverse, set a timer or alarm for the study side project. Also slapping all options I'd like to do at some point on here: https://wheelofnames.com/ (excluding procrastination stuff) if I really don't want to do an option I'll skip it, it breaks the "I don't know which thing I want to do" cycle

If you don’t do the side project that earns you money, you will work for the rest of your life. Simple as that

you mean you don't get overwhelmed by a sense of your own utter insignificance whenever you spend your free time in an uncreative way?

For me, side projects are fun.

Perhaps, key is doing low effort side projects. Time consuming, large, hard side projects aren't fun.

And publishing it to people, or putting it on your website is fun. Without this, I guess there is no point.

@kanyewest how do you like publishing to people or even talking to people tho

By the way, my motivation thing works for me astonishingly well. Without an active side project, I feel like the biggest loser in the world. I _have_ to have a good side project to get much needed dopamine. Because I'm bipolar, I can use every bit of dopamine I can have.

My current side project is so fucking amazing in every single aspect that y'all will shit your pants when you see it. The design, the code, the content, everything is perfect. Truly my magnum opus.

There are two parts to it: free one and paid one. Free one is 100% ready. Paid one is like 30% ready, so yeah, I'm really doing it and not just talking about doing it.

@jestdotty I just put it on the app store, and add it to my projects list on my website

I don't know anything about marketing and once I put something on show HN, it had 0 comments 0 likes. But marketing seems to be really important.

> How do you motivate yourselves to work on side projects?

It's easy, I don't.