How do you plan your personal projects?

I have a couple of ideas rattling around inside my head, and I know if I just sit down and start typing away something will happen but it'll be crap and I'll end up starting over numerous times before giving up.

But if I try and plan then I end up procrastinating, then other things like work, family, and distance learning degree eat up what little time I have available

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Seriously, just start something - doesn't matter if it's crap. You can start again if you want having learnt something about it, or you might decide what you have is good enough to work with, or you might decide it's not for you anyway and move onto something else.

Don’t spend time planning personal projects.

Having a big backlog of shit to do doesn’t help one bit if you don’t take time to do it.

Maybe just write down the top 5 most essential features right now - then scratch 2 of them, rank the rest and start working on the most essential one.

You SHOULD implement shit in a quick and dirty way when it comes to hobby projects.

Cause honestly there’s a higher chance of you being happy you got shit done - and then a few months from now you’ll be working on a new idea, not giving much thought to if that old project has perfect code or not - as long as it runs at all.

I'm a fan of the "Riskiest Assumption Test". List your ideas, rank them by "if I can't get this to work, doing anything else is useless". That stops you from wasting time with easy but unimportant work first.

Another suggestion which may sound weird at first: Take a look at subreddits for creative writing, e.g. /r/writers, /r/writing and /r/outlining.
What you're describing (sitting down and just starting typing) is called "pantsing" in writing. The opposite is "plotting" (or also "planning" or "outlining"). There are good tips out there for both, and maybe pantsing just isn't your thing. That's fine, e.g. pantsing isn't for me regardless of whether I'm coding or writing.

@jiraTicket "You SHOULD implement shit in a quick and dirty way when it comes to hobby projects"

On the other hand, if you don't like being a cowboy coder, don't be a cowboy coder. My hobby code is even cleaner than my job code because that just floats my boat.

@VaderNT true! to each their own. But it’s more OK to cowboy code in a hobby project than at work (in most cases... lol, some bossed would love cowboy coders - but will pay for it later)