At least you're actually doing the "I code for 3 all-nighters" step!

I've stopped too many projects at the "I buy a domain name" stage, and added an intermediate "I create a Trello board" step between that and starting to write code. No need to pull all-nighters, which are hard to do with family and a full-time job, if all I need to do is add a card to a feature wishlist. Maybe prototype a few key functions to see how they work, wireframe a unique piece of UI, or follow the tutorial to create "hello world" in a new framework, but it turns out that those steps are also optional.

The problem seems to be that my brain gives me a dopamine buzz for merely _imagining_ accomplishing the project, whether or not I eventually implement, publish, and get users for the it. I can give myself a similar cognitive reward for simply reading on HN about other people completing projects, and even (at my lowest) passively watching YouTube videos of other people building cool stuff. It's all the mental rewards of participating in a group project where the tribe accomplished something great, except I'm barely in a parasocial relationship with a dude on Patreon or Discord a thousand miles away who actually performed 100% of the work. Maybe he likes my comment "Nice work! I really liked how you did [thing], have you considered [alternative strategy]?". Maybe he even comments back. Bang! Neurotransmitter pump engaged, dopamine boost received.

It's a scary thing to realize that you're doing this, and very, very hard to train yourself out of those bad habits. I find it's important to write down and consciously review my daily/weekly/monthly/yearly goals, my productive and unproductive activity towards those goals, and my actual accomplishments. It's too easy to get addicted to fake reward loops, whether because they're engineered by social media companies who make money off my attention span or because brains are just vulnerable to low-effort high-reward stimuli. What did I do in July? X hours of Reddit, Y hours of HN, Z hours of Youtube... and a half dozen things I'm actually proud of.

(Note to self: Don't get too excited about upvotes or replies to this comment, acquiring HN or Reddit fake Internet points are not part of my actual goals and should not be considered real accomplishments.)

I currently have a little stack of index cards with in-play projects scrawled on them and at the end of the year the plan is to weed those and shut down any resources that aren't required for the ones still in the list. Hmm, maybe I need a domain name for that though...

One thing I will add is that it's ok to recognise that one enjoys some of these behaviours. There's no moral element to being a starter-not-a-finisher of personal projects so long as you're paying appropriate attention to your important commitments (family, the day job, etc.)

I get this same buzz from talking about my projects. So today, I do not talk about anything I'm working on because I know I can drain myself of all motivation with one excited conversation.

If I want daydream fuel I buy a Powerball ticket for $2. I get the same dopamine rush doing fictional estate planning as I did spending $10=$50 on a domain and fantasizing about the project succeeding. The Powerball ticket also doesn't circle back around next year asking for more money.

I've also found that having a small homelab that can support Dokku or similar is also very helpful when I want to be productive. Deployable from Day 1 and after every change is a game changer for me, and deploying to an internal host lets me be lazy in all the right ways, as long as I keep track of the sins I commit (you can go a long, long way on a project before you have to add the boring boilerplate that is proper auth, for instance).

Then for my project ideas, I find writing them out to really be what scatches most of the itch for me. I get to think through the problem, think about how I could implement it, maybe even do a little exploring of tech I could use to solve the problem.

For the vast majority of the ideas I don't circle back. For some ideas I will come back a few times and iterate on the plans and designs, but still never build it. And even fewer I actually build. Its all of the fun, without feeling like I can never finish a project. Instead I feel like I can't start them.

You can bed unlimited lovers, all in a moment's thought! You can win the lottery a thousandfold, all before eating breakfast! You can win arguments, all in your mind, even whilst loosing them!

Success!!

I struggle with the same thing -- I'm resigned to the solution that even (or especially) when you're doing hobby projects, you might have to resort to blocking HN or other distractors for a bit.

Eventually I spent so much time trying to make it work, only to remain empty-handed.

> I buy a domain name → I set up a bug tracker → I spec out a bunch of tasks → I let Claude Code do the coding

Seems more sustainable to me than working a full-time job coding, then adding another coding side project. Nice change of pace to just be describing what I want my app to do (during my work day), then letting Claude Code buzz away while I do my day job.

Since otherwise this is a solo side project I don’t need anything more complex than that, though I also use Linear for my day job and so I know you can automate it more if you need to.

In the end it was a weekend hack to make something simpler that turned into an app release, which a year or so after that turned into a business.

Sometimes people have a great idea, build it and feel entitled to success with it, but it's largely about relevant eyeballs. If enough relevant eyeballs find your thing and use/buy it then it's a success. It's quite easy to launch something that gets lots of views on launch, but there has to be a reason to come back (sticky apps/content).

I've also built several things that could have been good but I lost interest and ironically the thing I work on now is arguably one of the most boring topics conceivable, but perhaps that's why few people do it well.

I’ve only bought one domain name since then and got the project out!

I think the domain name is your reward for finishing your minimum viable product.

Me too. I learnt it after 6 expired domains

Personally, I'll snag a domain if it's really good -- like one word or a proper combo of words, spellable, etc... I won't set it to renew, though.

Here’s an easy way to test this: imagine your product suddenly takes off — it gets picked up on Reddit or Hacker News, you start getting lots of users and feedback. Would you still feel uninterested? Or would you find yourself energized, working late into the night to improve it?

That thought experiment reveals something important: there’s a gap between building a product and getting people to use it. You haven’t figured out how to bridge that gap yet, so you stay in “builder mode” — because it feels safe and familiar.

I built the prototype in a weekend. I spent the next 8 months turning it into a product people cared about. As soon as people started using it, I realized I was going to spend the next 10 years beating around the bush on a product with a very low ceiling.

I eventually decided to build Phrasing [1]… and kanji plus just kind of disappeared. Dependencies updated, subscriptions expired, service providers went offline. I feel bad because I sold some lifetime memberships - genuinely expecting to just leave it on the internet forever - but man, apparently websites don’t do that out of the box anymore.

Luckily the entire product of kanji plus will fit nicely as a feature in Phrasing, and it’s written with the same front end tech so it should be a very simple copy paste. 2 weeks of work max (famous last words).

Still, I feel really bad that people paid me money and the service just went offline. I didn’t know I was being so naive just expecting things to work for more than 6 months unattended.

If any old kanji plus subscribers are reading this, please feel free to get in touch. I’m planning to give all my old supporters a free lifetime membership to phrasing once it’s ready to go! (a membership tier that will not be available to the general public)

[1]: https://phrasing.app/

https://joeldare.com/why-im-writing-pure-html-and-css-in-202...

These days I do everything with elixir or dependency free (cl)js + react . Learned my lesson the hard way

Check back in 10 years though, Phrasing will still be running, and it will have had all the features of kanji plus for 9 years and then some :-)

https://archive.is/gnhIi

That's ADHD for you.

A former coworker of mine lamented this - "I start so many projects or hobbies, but just when I feel like I've learned a lot I lose interest". I had to point out to him that his hobby isn't - whatever, sheep shearing or book bindery or underwater basket weaving - but rather his hobby is learning things. That's a common thing for ADHD people, absorbing all you can in a rapid amount of time, devoting every minute of thought to something, and then suddenly completely forgetting it exists until you get the domain renewal notice.

At least you (seem to) have (some degree of) acceptance of the circumstance and recognize the benefits of this behavior rather than just focusing on the drawbacks; too many people have this behavior and think it's a personal failing, when really they just have a different hobby than they think they have.

I think in many cases, we fail to finish projects because it's so much easier to start than it is to finish. The first 90% is easy, as the saying goes, but the second 90% is much harder.

And I use the word 'fail' advisedly. I think it's fine to not finish everything you start, but it's not good to never finish anything, ever. Not if your intention was to finish it anyway. I think finishing things is a crucial skill, and we need to practice it in order to get good at it, and we won't do that if we tell ourselves it's about as good to give up as it is to keep going.

ADHD is a real diagnosis, but I'm hesitant to pathologize not finishing projects, since that will end up being an excuse rather than an explanation for a lot of people.

I have mixed feelings about finding this out late in life (early 40s). I do think there was a lot of value in not having it as an excuse when I was younger, to force myself to figure things out and get to where I am today. On the other hand, I spent a good 20 years looking everywhere to try and figure out what is wrong with me. Lots of time and money down the drain… and the YouTube algorithm is what ultimately pointed me in the right direction.

I used to think that these psychiatrists were just trying to diagnose the human condition, as so many of the things I heard just seemed like normal life for me. But I guess I now know why that seemed normal for me, but maybe aren’t normal for everyone.

But they never were in the first place, and being in a category doesn't change your responsibility to do the best with what you've got.

At least star signs don't medicalise you.

There are plenty of other ways of characterising this - Ayurvedic medicine or the Humours - in fact, those are so effective that they've been taken by business coaches and turned into "colour personality types". And they describe the same thing.

You have a deficiency of phlegm and black bile. Ask ChatGPT about how to treat it, and it'll essentially suggest a permanent dopamine fast.

The reality is that, for a lot of people, their struggles aren't "their fault". People with visual disabilities aren't as good at playing darts, people who have issues with gross motor skills aren't as good at baseball. That's all accepted, but as soon as you get into invisible disabilities everyone leaps to say "I can't see it so it doesn't exist". It's a load of BS, and it's why so many people who do have these issues struggle - because they're being told, by people who don't care to understand what they're going through, that it's all their fault because they're just shitty people who need to try harder.

One of the things that people spouting nonsense like yours seem to miss is that these issues that people with ADHD have aren't just laziness; it's not just "I don't want to do work". People will find it impossible to do anything, even things they enjoy. It's not just slacking off from chores and playing video games instead, it's not being able to bring yourself to do chores but also not being able to bring yourself to play video games, or read a book, or go get groceries. It's a fundamental inability for you to direct your executive function, and until people like you stop spouting uneducated nonsense and start actually listening to people's experience it's going to continue to be an uphill struggle for people who have to go through what you're dismissing.

I ran into situations countless times where I have things that had a big negative experience on my life and when talking to others, people just looked at me weird; they couldn’t relate. My sister was the only one who ever got it (her doctor has suggested she get tested, but she hasn’t done it yet). When I stumbled across people talking about their experiences with AuDHD, for the first time in 40 years I heard other people saying the same stuff I was trying to say, when others just looked at my like a weirdo. It’s not about looking for what to blame, it was about finding out I wasn’t the only one dealing with some of this stuff, which is how it felt for the vast majority of my life.

I can't count how many people I know or have heard from who have struggled with "motivation" all their lives, and then they took one ritalin one day and, instead of getting hyper and bouncing off the walls like their friends do, they were suddenly able to just sit down and focus on something in a way they'd never experienced before, without any of the struggles that they've suffered their whole lives, and been blamed for by the ignorant parent poster above.

And yeah, you don't have to medicate; it's definitely not for everyone, and I know someone personally who very clearly has ADHD (and a diagnosis) but cannot tolerate any of the available medications. Instead, she just has to find a way to work her life such that the downsides of ADHD don't affect her as much and she can lean on the benefits of ADHD to get through it. Still, just hearing "you're not a fuck-up, it's just how your brain works" can be extremely healing.

The idea that there's a valid diagnostic test available sounds quite interesting.

- WAIS-IV (full scale IQ)

- WRAML-3 (memory)

- CPT-3 (ADHD - selective attention, impulsivity, and vigilance)

- BDEFS-SR (ADHD - executive functioning deficits in daily life activities, including self-management to time, self-organization, self-restraint, self-motivation, and emotional self-regulation)

- DKEFS (higher-level cognitive functions related to executive functioning)

- ADOS-2 (Module 4) (ASD - diagnostic tool for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in adults)

- SRS-2 (ASD - social impairment)

- PAI (inventory that assesses personality traits and psychopathology - self-report)

- Beck Depression Inventory (depression - self-report)

- Beck Anxiety Inventory (anxiety - self-report)

I think there was more than this, but I wasn't counting. It was about 4 hours of test after test after test. I was told it would take 4-6 hours; I think I finished slightly under 4 hours, taking no breaks.

During the test when I asked what various things were for, they wouldn't tell me, so I don't know which test was for what. There was one that was pretty clearly for ADHD, it was on the computer and to hit space bar or something each time something came up on the screen at random intervals. That was the worst one. I sucked at it.

When getting the results, I spent most of the time asking if I could have gamed it, or if they were just a mill for handing these things out to anyone who seemed like they wanted it. I was told that since it is a mix of quantitative vs qualitative testing, with multiple tests that all have to align for a diagnosis, it would be nearly impossible to do that.

Some testing centers have online screening test, which are going to be better than the Buzzfeed style quizzes. But they are largely self-reports. For me, they were pretty accurate. For my dad, they seemed less accurate, as he has a lifetime of skills built up to help manage things and was taking all those into account. During testing some of those things came up, where they'd ask if I had an issue with X, and the answer was no, but it was because I did Y to make sure that didn't happen, which they said would be a coping mechanism or something.

I have heard some of the things you have about it being hard to get tested. For me, in the US, it was pretty easy. It did still take about 6 months, and cost me about $3k (I think) out of pocket. Insurance didn't cover it. But cost and waiting aside, there weren't any roadblocks standing in my way.

In a lot of cases they can't tell you because, either consciously or subconsciously, you will adjust your behavior and skew the test results. If you're told "this test is to evaluate your capacity for empathy" then your brain is going to start skewing your answers towards more empathetic ones because now that's the thing that's top of mind.

This may be why I haven't done much since the diagnosis. It was initially all I wanted to do, but once several months passed while waiting, my interests shifted to other things, and going back to that topic has a lot less novelty to it, so I already did the early deep dive.

YouTube was actually the most helpful thing in getting me to the point where I felt testing for a diagnosis would be a good idea. There are a lot of channels out there from people who have this stuff who talk about their experiences. I found this much more helpful than reading the diagnostic criteria. While I did read the section of the DSM on ASD, I had to pair that with ChatGPT to ask for example of how this stuff presents in actual life. People on YouTube were a good source of seeing what people deal with and getting these real world examples of how things present, and I saw a lot of alignment to what they were talking about in my own life.

I'm scored pretty high in masking (hiding what's going on), so it's not something others usually pick up on me. Having ASD and ADHD, they can kind of help compensate for each other, so that can also lead to things hiding a bit to the outside world. I talked to a therapist for 2 years before this was even on my radar. I mentioned the possibility to him, and he was like... I don't see it, and then didn't seem to want to talk about it anymore. He was big into just blaming my dad for nearly everything. However, during several of our sessions over those 2 years we'd have a disagreement, where I'd try to explain what I'm feeling and he'd be like, "no, it's this." I'd tell him he wasn't understanding and try to explain further, and he just wouldn't get it. Back and forth for 30+ minutes. It was infuriating. Then as I was watching some of these videos that talked about neurotypical introverts vs autistic people, they basically said the introverts thought the way the therapist did, while people with autism tend to think the way I was arguing. So that's why he wasn't understanding me; he had the wrong framework for understanding the problem. There were many such examples like this in talking to him, but also throughout my whole life.

In terms of management, I haven't done much yet. I think I'm still in the period of processing it and finding it nice to take a break from searching for what the problem is after decades of looking. I feel like when I look at the typical advice, it's a lot of stuff I've already tried over the years from reading various books or taking various courses. I have a theory that the entire self-help genre is being fueled by people with undiagnosed ASD and ADHD. I quit therapy with the person I was seeing the day before getting my results. If I had it, he didn't seem like he could help me with it after brushing it aside for 6 months while I waiting for testing. If I didn't have it, I didn't feel like I was getting any value out of the sessions at all, so it was pointless. The places that did the testing said they had therapists, who would probably be better, but when I emailed the person she didn't reply back. I never followed up, so that's probably on me.

I haven't tried any meds for the ADHD, I'd have to talk to doctors about that. I'm on the fence on the whole idea. I've made it this far without them. I've also worked with people while they were trying to get their meds dialed in, and it was a nightmare. There are some valid arguments on both sides.

For the ASD there are no meds, as far as I understand. I probably need to force myself to go out into the world more. The pandemic really gave me an excuse to be alone all the time and 5 years later I haven't really stopped. I feel like it's making it worse, because I'm more out of practice of how to be around people.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44745215

One of the nice things about medication for ADHD, and I've mentioned this to a few people who are new to having (or supporting people who have) ADHD, is that the medication is very straightforward and you get roughly instant feedback.

That is to say that, if you compare to something like SSRIs for treating depression, you get a medication and a dose picked out, you start on the medication, you get awful side effects for weeks, and then maybe after a few weeks you start to see some benefits. Then again, maybe you don't, so you spend a few weeks tapering off so that you can try some other medicine, etc and see if that has any benefit.

With ADHD medicines just being (mostly) short-acting stimulants, in a lot of cases people can get a prescription, take one dose, and find out within an hour or two if it's making a difference. There can definitely be side effects and getting the right medication and dosage can be a lot of work, but being able to take a medication at 8 AM and be feeling the effects before noon is amazing - and having them wear off by the evening is also amazing. You don't have to struggle with juggling your brain chemistry for weeks just to see if anything happens, and you don't have to spend weeks undoing that to be clear of it; you can start and stop in a day.

> For the ASD there are no meds, as far as I understand.

Well, because ASD isn't a disease or a condition, it's a difference in how (and how much) you perceive the world.

> I probably need to force myself to go out into the world more. The pandemic really gave me an excuse to be alone all the time and 5 years later I haven't really stopped. I feel like it's making it worse, because I'm more out of practice of how to be around people.

This is true for me as well, to some extent, but I've also gotten to the point where I don't really care that much about masking or fitting in any more than necessary. I'm open about being neurodivergent, I'm not afraid to discuss it, and thankfully I'm in an industry where a lot of people are the same way - diagnosed or not - and at least kind of get it to some degree. Still important to not just be "outright weird" as some autistic people can be, so I'm not going to start telling our lead marketing strategist about the human leather and organ trading outpost I set up in Rimworld, but being open about it has made it a lot more relaxing to be around other people.

Maybe part of that is getting rid of the "what if they think I'm weird?" worry after realizing that eventually they're going to think I'm weird regardless and I just have to be sure to come across as "harmless weird" and not come across as "stranger danger weird".

The biggest hurdle to trying right now is the act of finding and setting up an appointment with someone. I've been putting it off until "later" for probably 8 months.

> I don't really care that much about masking

I don't even know who I am. I had to mask just to be in my family growing up, so when people talk about unmasking... I have no idea how to do that. It's so engrained into me. I'm typically pretty quiet when I meet new people, around people I don't know well, or don't see often. I thought this was just me, but have come to realize it's me putting on a blank mask until I can figure out how to act around these new or less familiar people. When I've tried to rush this process in the past it's been awkward.

Funny enough, when I told my dad about the diagnosis, within 90 seconds he said, “I think I might have that too.” Then he went off and did a bunch of research. He doesn’t feel it’s worth getting a diagnosis in his 70s, but is pretty sure he has it as well after the research. Funny how life works out. This actually helped me forgive some of the harder parts of my childhood, as I could better understand where he was coming from.

[1]: https://www.adxs.org/en/

It definitely doesn't have to be ADHD, but that loop of "new interest" -> "hyperfixation for a period of time" -> "no interest" is classic ADHD, and in almost all of the people I know who do have ADHD this was the first major sign for them.

There is definitely a difference between starting projects that don't turn out to be interesting or useful and not bothering, but the way OP described their experiences is textbook and should definitely not be minimized as it is definitely not the typical case for neurotypical people.

> I don't have ADHD, and none of my friends have it that I know of. We all start things we don't finish, though.

One of the other things I've noticed about people with ADHD or autism, even undiagnosed, is that they tend to congregate together - neurodivergent people tend to cluster together through similar interests and thought patterns. This leads to the logic of "I don't think I have ADHD because everyone is like this", but that's a selection bias that hides the distinction that people could otherwise make.

> think finishing things is a crucial skill, and we need to practice it in order to get good at it, and we won't do that if we tell ourselves it's about as good to give up as it is to keep going.

Again, this sort of phrasing can minimize the impact of the executive dysfunction inherent with ADHD; again, not saying that you or the OP definitely do have ADHD, but this idea that "finishing things is just something you need to practice at" is the ADHD equivalent of "have you tried not being sad?" For many ADHD people, it just does not, and cannot, work that way, or at least not without interventions like medication and conscious coping strategies.

> since that will end up being an excuse rather than an explanation for a lot of people

I dislike this line of thinking, because it sort of inherently (if subconsciously) implies that, without a real diagnosis from a professional (which can cost thousands of dollars that people don't have), it's probably just an excuse people are making for... what? being lazy? being incompetent? ...and that we shouldn't take those explanations seriously. If we want to destigmatize neurodivergence then we need to be willing to take people at their word and support them.

If someone says "I can't finish projects because I'm so ADHD lol", then you can either say "that's just an excuse unless a psychologist has said otherwise" or you can say "If that's the case, how can we support you, and what are you working on to support yourself?" and, if those supports don't work, then you look for alternate explanations.

I have dozens of projects that I will obsess over for a few weeks. When I was younger I would convince myself that what I was doing would change the world and I was going to make billions of dollars, but eventually I became more honest with myself: I do these projects because I want to learn about <<subject X>>.

I built a Icecast server recently because I wanted to learn more about audio encoding and streaming protocols. I built a clone of fzf because I wanted to learn more about Rust and diffing algorithms. I wrote a custom async scheduling framework for my Swaybar because I wanted to learn more about how async scheduling works. I started trying to prove the Collatz conjecture because I wanted to learn more about Isabelle.

I am ok with this being part of my life; I like learning new bits of math and technology, and the easiest way to actually learn a new concept (instead of nodding along in a book) is to try and do something with that knowledge. I think "learning for fun" is far from the worst hobbies one could have.

Maybe this is where a lot of my stress comes from. I need that outlet, but I suppress it to avoid collecting future trash or losing money selling a bunch of like-new stuff (and having to deal with the process of selling things all the time).

Living in the city I sometimes wonder if this isn't what garage sales were amazing for; gather up all your stuff that you don't touch anymore, lay it out on the driveway, and people come to you to take it away rather than you having to hunt them down.

Maybe there's benefit in some kind of "temporary hobbyist" FB group or similar, where people who are excited to start a hobby they know they won't continue with can pick up an entire batch of like-new equipment from people who started a hobby they didn't continue with.

> Maybe there's benefit in some kind of "temporary hobbyist" FB group or similar

Many libraries have a bunch of stuff like this now. They call it the Library of Things. Looking at my local library, they have things like a record player, gardening tools, a ukulele, steel drum, knitting stuff, some electronics kits, etc. That could be a good "free" resource for things like this. I looked at it before, but should probably actually give it a try.

Similar problem for me.

Every project I've wanted to do, there's usually some technical hurdle I need to achieve, and once I've achieved it, I lose interest and have something that's not even enough to be considered a proof-of-concept, let alone an MVP.

For example, there's an arcade game called Killer Queen that I loved, and thought it was a travesty that there wasn't a PC version, since it's a 10-player game that's played on 2 cabinets, and who has that many friends going to the arcade at the same time? It needed to be online!

So I decided I was going to create a clone of it. The big hurdle I needed to figure out was how to make a realtime multiplayer platforming game that kept clients in sync while also compensating for latency. My implementation worked by having both client and server keeping copies of the last 60 frames of game state, and the client would merely send their inputs and a time stamp (Really a frame number) to the server, which would then go back to the frame state for that number and re-simulate the game with that input. It would also stream the current state (It was only ~300 bytes) to other players with their inputs, which would also do a similar re-simulation.

I even made it mostly cheat-proof. There's no hidden information (All players see the exact same screen), but I figured a modded client could simply see what other players have done, then send inputs with time stamps in the past to put themselves into an advantageous position, but I prevent that by making the server reject inputs older than 250 ms.

But...after getting all that working, and basic platforming working...I got bored. Never touched the project again.

EDIT: I've got another game I worked on and actually got to the MVP part, but it needs a heavy refactor and I just haven't bothered. Mainly because I hate writing and testing front-end code, and I feel like I've already written it once and don't want to write it again. I haven't bought a domain for it yet, thankfully. I'm going to insist on a .game domain for it, which is like $400/year.

Your willful ignorance of objective fact does nothing to improve the discussion, and just shows you as being unwilling to engage intellectually.

Put aside your preconceived notions and do some actual research and you might learn some really interesting things.

I wrote a short blog post on this a few weeks ago: https://baduiux.de/posts/opportunity-fear-of-missing-out/

People who don't have this sort of ADHD level of executive dysfunction are capable of completing projects. The "exciting start" vs "abandoning them as soon as they're not exciting" thing is a core criteria for ADHD in my experience.

Neurotypical people don't have this same experience; they don't start something new because they're excited about it and then bail out halfway through and never go back. I can't understand what that kind of life would be like, but they do it. Meanwhile, people with ADHD, especially undiagnosed, are constantly starting projects because they're excited, hyperfocussing on them for some length of time, and then bailing out never to return.

In my experience, comments like yours usually tend to come from people who have undiagnosed ADHD. Maybe that's not the case, but from what I've seen it often is.

I've rarely felt so seen.

This could be my bio. And yes, I do have ADHD (it hyperactive).

"My wife calls me a serial obsessionist"

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Okrent

...but don't necessarily renew them.

I was diagnosed ages ago, relatively speaking, but my wife didn't get diagnosed until after our first child was born. We'd go for walks with him and he'd try to talk to her or ask her something and she wouldn't have any idea. I'd have to get her attention, let her know he was talking to her, and she'd ask him to repeat. Thirty seconds later, she's off in her own world again. After a diagnosis and a pretty low dose of medication, she's far better at being present in the moment, and she gets more out of life as a result.

When she was on her way to the doctor to discuss things, she asked me for a list of the things that made me suspect she had ADHD; I sent her a small list of my suspicions and she said afterwards that it was a really difficult thing to read about herself - strange to me, because, at least from my perspective, those are all 'normal' things for someone with ADHD to have and obviously not her fault.

It's worth mentioning that medication doesn't make you not have ADHD, though; she's still the same person with the same thought processes and habits, starting new projects all the time, and leaving stuff until the last minute unless she's put it in her calendar immediately. The difference is that it's easier to be conscious about how and why those behaviors affect your life differently than other people might expect, and to compensate for them if they're affecting you or others negatively.

I honestly think that this sort of diagnosis should just be a normal thing that they evaluate kids for in school. Let the parents do with it what they will, ignore it or look further, but I think a lot of people would be a lot better off if they understood from childhood why the gulf between society's expectations of behavior and their own were so different, rather than finding out after feeling like a failure or a screw-up for 10-20 years.

That particular domain was going to be like a Netflix DVD style subscription product for Eurorack modules but I never even ended up trying to build that after buying the domain.

Apart from this I see myself represented in this post.

Except it never gets any users.

I suppose the plus side to spending months rather than days on projects that never go anywhere is I have fewer domains. Only 7 here. Sigh.

[0] https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/

Not having the "right" domain is never the blocker

It offers searching in transcriptions of all Norwegian podcasts in (roughly) real-time. Also offers subscribing to alerts, for example if anyone mentions your business name. Launched some days ago

i have lots of ideas for fun little side projects that would never be revenue generating.

i'll go on a tear and start building it, but when it comes time to figure out how much it'd cost each month for domains/cloud services/etc I talk myself out of it. I'm not talking about big LLM bills here, just things like $25/month for the database, $10-50/year for a domain, etc.

I don't think it's just that I'm being cheap, it's that I don't like the idea of having to pay for something in perpetuity. Because that leads to me thinking about how long I plan to keep it active and when I'll sunset it. And once you start thinking about that before you've even launched, it's pretty easy to conclude it's not worth the time to build it given its limited shelf life. If I could just do a one-time upfront payment I'd probably go through with it.

The solutions to this are either buying a server and self-hosting (no thanks) OR making peace with having a recurring 'goofy computer stuff' monthly bill.

So... how much do yall spend each month on your side-projects? Having some numbers would help me contextualize and justify this

I ran a paid business app on a $5/m VPS. No complaints.

If your $5/m VPS cannot handle some load, then that's when you upgrade it. And, TBH, at the point that your $5/m VPS is at 80% load on a paid product, you're already getting a few thousands of dollars of revenue from it anyway.

but my problem is that my fun project ideas are usually some variant of "theres a huge dataset, lets build some fun dataviz on it". which is a problem because a) i need a big db to store that giant dataset and b) the db size doesn't scale with usage, so i can't just put it off until later

$5/m droplet + $10/m storage gets you 100GB of storage that you can put a PostgreSQL (or other) DB onto.

The storage situation is not quite as expensive as it used to be.

https://www.digitalocean.com/products/block-storage

I have saved so much money over the years just not having to pay $20/mo * IDEA_QTY. The Mac mini doesn't take much power and is dead silent.

[1] https://dokku.com

I ran many projects in it

1. You send me a pdf 2. I print it out on white sheet cake and deliver it. 3. Profit?

Before that, i only started them and lost motivation after ~2 weeks. The projects a wanted to do were cyclic though, so i often came back to restart things i had left unfinished.

It took me time to change that, but the main thing i did was starting with extremely limited projects, that i knew i could finish in 2 weeks. I did very basic things at the beginning, like hosting a pure html website (but it was by first website i hosted, with nginx and certbot). Sometimes i would get back to it and improve something, like styling, text, SEO,...

I say "finished" because the bottleneck is finding users, not the code. So i still work on these projects, but not at the same speed.

Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/products/icorner-2/icorner-2/lau...

Welcomet to https://icorner.net/

But I have a decent half-baked AI based investment portfolio manager, one month of hard work (nights/weekends) dreaming of selling it for a bank. Projects of such complexity are impossible for people stuck in the ordinary life (job/family). PS: I'm not complaining - I love my family. But it demands energy.

Stopped working on it because Mastodon is good enough for me.

I had a Handshake domain registry/registrar: https://neuenet.com

Stopped working on it because Andrew Lee tried to take over the blockchain.

An analytics tool: https://chew.sh

Gauges shut down and I enjoyed that service. My previous domain is now owned by someone who's last name is Chew, which is cool.

Forgot I just let https://design2code.me expire because I didn't put in the work to get my name/services out there.

---

I'm currently working on https://nickel.video and think I'll stick with it for awhile. I also registered https://neue.host a few weeks ago, with the idea that a lot of the side projects I had in the past would actually work as a collection of services.

> I think it’s part of the procrastination cycle; buying a domain name feels like progress towards the goal, but is incredibly low effort, and thus feeling like I’m making progress I wander off and get attracted to the next shiny thing.

So, yup, except that it sounds like you typically make more progress than me!

Edit: Context is https://paperstack.com/hntags/

One the other hand, I have a great idea for CI and it's an itch I am currently suffering...

[1]: https://github.com/elkowar/eww

I’ve considered using this strategy after my 3-day bender (like op) and then three months of trying to gain traction. Instead of just letting the domain rot and expire, I could put up a for sale sign, like you did.

Another thing I do more, which I find hard as a developer but somewhat more rewarding, is talking to potential users. Sometimes it makes you realise your ideas are crap haha.

But it's a different thing to build for fun, which I tend to do less these days and want to do more.

And agreed on the learning side. Building full-on projects is the best way to learn. I've picked up so many skills that have landed me new amazing jobs, i.e. that's basically how I transitioned from a native iOS developer to a full-stack React/React-Native developer.

Keep building! and don't forget the user side :)

In 2025, with new vibe-coding projects being pushed every second, I think it's not even worth the time unless you have $$$ upfront for marketing (and/or a massive audience). Otherwise, you're wasting your time.

ALWAYS, it comes down to one thing. If you built the best thing in the world, and no one visits it, then it's a "failure" at least in terms of earning anything.

Work on a side project because it's interesting (e.g. you want to learn the tech) or because it's useful to you (i.e. you want to use it). Not because it may make you rich.

In the former case, you may lose interest, but that's okay: you've learned in the process. In the latter, if you get to a point where you can use it, it's really rewarding.

Sometimes I spend a week refactoring core stuff, sometimes it stays forgotten for months on end. I still come back to it when I want to test some ideas, mostly because it has a decent chunk of data to feel I’m “solving problems at scale”.

[0] https://www.tacavo.com/ [1] https://abrega.com

By the way the link is broken on your website.

As a learning project, copy a successful project and mind map it, program it and find customers. You will learn so much that you can apply to whatever project you come up with. You'll get frustrated because you will need to go out and learn a lot but power thru it. You'll be better off for the hard work. Good luck!

[1] Lacking Any Major Excitement

And this is a couple weekends ago: https://www.danesh.app/

Let's be friends! I've hacked couple websites with other people before and honestly the learning itself is worth the time even if the project doesn't take off.

Haha we are building one too!

Got any advice for us?

Here's the waitlist page with all the features: https://waitlist-tx.pages.dev

Email is in profile if you want to connect.

Thanks in advance!

I myself have left 6 domains expired over the last 4 years so you are not alone! 3 are from this year alone

Now a days I don't buy the domain until I have actually set up the server with the codebase. Project might get dropped just before that. It has happened

Edit: I feel validated after reading the replies. I am not alone!

Looking back, how do you think you did on the marketing/sales front? I don't mean the results of the efforts but I mean the input front.

Curious if those pivots were caused because the problem addressed wasn't painful enough, the solutions didn't address that pain well enough, or if it was simply distribution.

If the former two, I imagine it's only a matter of time until you strike gold. But if it's the final third, there's a chance one of the 17 could have worked out well.

It helps devs build parallel agents from the cli. (think claude code, gemini, aider)

And simplifies the git workflow for testing and accepting the best solution.

Check it out: https://github.com/sutt/agro

I keep a little text file pr.txt and try to link my project to HN / X / other aggregators once a day...

This way I spend a few hours each day coding, and a few minutes each day promoting and refining me message.

And, I bought my last domain less than 10-days back. Built a landing but left it to research further and talk to customers. :-)

It helped me a lot that every time a have a new idea or want to start a new side-project that I wait at least two days before I dig deeper and get really started. Only then I really know if I really want this or if it’s just the initial hype/momentum.

Far too often I build a project, only to get ready to deploy it, then struggle to think of a name/domain for it.

Then coupled with the thought of struggling to market the project, I end up fizzling out at that stage.

If I already have users of the project, then I'll deploy it as a subdomain and forget about it until a user complains.

"Vibe coding" has actually been a boon for me on this front. Fewer than 10% of my side projects are serious and 95% of it are static pages, so there's no big security concerns to worry about. Most of them are joke pages anyway, which I've started calling "Sht Coding," as in Vibe Coding + Sht Posting.

side project, business partnership, personal music streaming site, serverless blog.

It's hard to do if you have a regular 9 to 5 and also some other hobby(I'm into motorcycles :D).

Only remaining domain is of my name pusparaj.com (but it's in auction mode)

I have also lost ownership 2 times or more i think, because i tend to rotate registrars and forgot to renew it.

now 3 domains are remaining, will let them expire.

But, I'll likely come back to build another some day when the mood strikes me.

https://retroclones.com/

Then it came down to producing customers not artifacts and I ran out of steam. I posted on Product Hunt and a few other places but never took it further. I'm glad I did it once as a solo dev, but now I know how far I'll go on my own.

https://www.mallardgames.com/

Maybe some of them could make money, with more polish and marketing. Who knows! I have never tried.

I just make whatever I feel like.

I’ve done the same , bought many domain names, got super hyped, coded for a few nights… then lost interest. Now I’ve got a bunch of random projects that never saw the light of day.

But honestly, I learned a lot from each one. Even if they didn’t go anywhere, I got better at building stuff. And who knows, maybe one of them will work out someday.

Glad I’m not the only one doing this.

Haha. Thanks this made me laugh. I also know the feeling of being rich in expired domains.

A tip to everyone: subdomains are free, and you can set up a 301 redirect once the project gets some traction. As others have mentioned, I only buy a domain once there is some traction, or when I start getting organic/indirectly referred traffic.

I first remember reading this phrasing here on HN and I've been using it for years to explain to others that what I am doing is not "work", its just a hobby.

Vibe coding actually helped me get a few projects out of the door finally! But even now I can't resist the urge to buy a domain when I get an idea for a new side project.

Okay, there were some beers involved...

I however have a similar but more expensive problem, I develop side projects to an MVP and leave them up for literal decades with no one but myself using them, paying for the domain and hosting. I can't let things go.

I rewrote a number of things in Go recently so they could scale down to zero on Fly.io and save me some money.

For example though I have been developing a note keeping SaaS for fifteen years. It fits my own needs perfectly and I use it every day, but everyone I have ever had try it has bounced in a couple minutes. I literally removed the sign up after GDPR scared me in 2018 and never put it back. I should put it back, everything is client side encrypted and I don't keep any PII.

I have an ad free emojipedia-esq tool, a tool for making API controlled README badges, a tool for converting MIDIs into print outs of colored sheet music for children's keyboards, a joke API, so much more.

I did accidentally let the domain expire for my Wordle knockoff where you guess the soup based on the ingredients. It never worked very well anyway.

I'm paranoid that some squatter can tell which domains i'm searching for and they'll swoop in and get it as soon as they know there's one interested party

And FWIW, your (our) paranoia is justifiable. As mentioned in another comment, GoDaddy is historically-notorious for front-running domain searches. ICANN tried to make that a bit less practical, but I just assume that they (and other sketchy registrars) still do it.

If you search directly through whois (i.e. from the command line), you should be OK. That's been my strategy, and I think it works.

That said, I often have project/product ideas at times when I cannot work on them. In fact, always. But I enjoy noodling on names and branding, and if I come up with a really good name that's available in .com, I register it.

I have revived project ideas 15-20 years later, and have been happy to have a great domain for it which would absolutely not have been available "now".

Of course I have many more domains that are patiently awaiting their prioritization.

The registration fees add up (and I do feel bad about reserving them for myself, although I've given a few away to persuasive requesters, and I've sold a few which, in aggregate, more than cover all of the registration fees).

Don't search on GoDaddy. I read somewhere GoDaddy raises the prices of high value domains by choosing them from searches

So does my github or the 5 rack servers in my homelab lol. At least the servers aren't running and consuming power 24/7

the whole too-many side projects is for indie-hacker influencers like levels who make money on notoriety. for the rest of us -- going deep helps.

After 1 or 2 failed side projects, you should have learned roughly 80% of what you need to know. A few more might get you the next 20%, but 17 failed projects is likely not teaching you anything you couldn’t have learned before, you’re just wasting time at that point.

The optimal amount of failures before a successful project is probably about 3. After that, you need to seriously consider that maybe you just don’t have what it takes and move on. Otherwise you spend your whole life chasing something that will probably never happen, and avoiding better opportunities.

I'm also have a decent graveyard of domains. I've all but accepted that I'll never create anything of value in my life or even anything awesome.

But the dark side of that is now there's no point to being alive, so I'm planning to die. What are these better opportunities you referenced? Anything that will make a life of mediocrity bearable?

By definition most people lead mediocre lives — few doing anything extraordinary. What makes it ‘bearable’ are the simple things: family, friends, work, hobbies, helping other people, contributing to society, etc.

Planning to end it because life seems pointless is depression. Please get professional help.

I've heard these things and have thought about them previously, but then I think, "How can I meaningfully contribute to society?" And then I get stuck in a loop realizing my contributions will not be anything of merit. And then I think, what would cause a lasting impact and be achievable? And then I realize how mass shooters are born.

A life without side projects seems pointless, but at the same time the projects are probably ultimately pointless or of too slow progression to merit career leverage.

I seem to have found a path too late in life. Catchup or die seems to be transforming solely into die.

The question is then reduced to the expected value of success achieved at some point, discounted by how close it is to my stastical life expectancy. Is it positive? Seemingly not. Then I ask what's the point of a life with negative expected value?

It seems like lots of people believe that life itself is a positive, so even a mean existence is worthy. This isn't something I'm able to accept for whatever reason, as I consider life to be EV+ only when it is one, if not two, standard deviations above the mean.

I've got way more than 17 failed projects, and that's fine, because the project was never the point.

What if we started with a product idea for which we know there is demand for: things people are already paying money for. For example: apples, or tires, or etc. something you know people are paying money for. and then try and either build that product or another product that makes building the product easier.

Unless your market is location-dependent, most of the time the incumbents have waaay more experience, so the only advantage you can bring to the market is a lower price, as the first expansion any incumbent will do is to higher the price band with better quality offerings.

Think about stuff like an Air Fryer. Convection ovens had been in the market for several decades. Someone (Philips? I’m not sure they were the first) proved there is a market for a smaller counter-top convection oven and all of the sudden there are Air Fryers from literally any supermarket brand out there.

The thing is that figuring out how to realize an idea is the fun part. Making it into a polished product that others can easily use with proper documentation is as important as it is tedious and exhausting.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44656115

i have a lot of cool ones i tried to give away or at least start the conversation w a few relevant sites but i guess that seems weird to randomly get