I have tried twelve different side projects during my lifetime. Out of the twelve, ten didn’t work, while two became successful. However, the two successful side ventures gave me much less knowledge than the other ten unsuccessful endeavors. Everybody tends to talk about their successes in life; however, true lessons can only be learned through failure. That’s why I would like to tell what I learned from the past ten years of doing things on the side.
Most projects die from friction, not bad ideas
What shocked me the most, however, was that I never killed my projects because of a bad concept. I killed them as a result of friction – a series of small issues that made it somewhat difficult for me to continue my work. Too slow processes, too many steps to go through, complicated tools to use, and so on. All of them were trivial issues, but when added together, they consumed all my strength, especially since they came on top of my regular job, which led to failure.
It all shifted my approach to starting projects in an entirely new way. I become fixated on lowering the friction involved, trying to make doing the work as frictionless as possible, knowing that my energy reserves are limited and that anything else would be another opportunity for me to bail. The two projects that worked weren’t better ideas than any of the other ten that didn’t work out.
Energy is the real budget
The thing you are most lacking for this side project is not your time or money. It’s energy. You are working on it at the end of a long day and you don’t have any left. Any task that requires huge amounts of energy or complicated setup processes or tiresome procedures becomes a death knell for your side project. Being successful at a side project is not about having more time but ensuring that what you are doing uses the least amount of energy.
It means employing easy and frictionless tools that will make you able to get the job done without going through the cumbersome process of setting yourself up for the task. I now build my projects on free, simple options like faddyai precisely because low friction is what keeps a tired person showing up long enough for the project to have a chance.
Start before you are ready
More lessons learned from my failures: I wasted a lot of time preparing. It took time to research, plan, develop sophisticated plans, which made me feel industrious when in actuality I was just wasting time through procrastination. The projects that worked were those that I started despite being unprepared, knowing that I had to figure things out along the way. The allure of getting ready is very attractive; however, one should remember that projects do not succeed based on their preparation, but through execution.
Those two which succeeded, I started off badly but got better with practice; those ten that failed, several did not even get started properly; I overplanned them until I exhausted myself before even starting. There is one lesson that I would teach myself back then; that would be to begin earlier and with poorer results, for a messier beginning always wins over a flawless plan any day, and experience is always gained that way.
Protect the project from your own perfectionism
My perfectionism ruined a number of projects for me. If it wasn’t good enough, then I did not release it, and the product would simply fade away. But those projects that made it through were able to succeed thanks to my allowing them to be imperfect and presenting them to people, thus finding out how things should be done right. Your perfectionism is likely to crush a project at birth.
The honest advice
When starting something new on the side, keep things smooth, take care of your energy levels, get started even when you are not ready, and launch imperfectly. The concept is irrelevant compared to perseverance. Beginning with a stack of free, simple tools like an AI tools platform is one way to keep the friction low so your scarce energy goes into the work itself.
I have learned through ten failures and two successes that projects succeed or fail not based on how brilliant the ideas are but rather whether there is less friction, more energy, and willingness to make mistakes. By reducing the friction, preserving energy, and shipping your project even if you don’t feel ready yet, you will give it the one quality that makes its success possible – survival.
Shipping imperfect, on purpose
In identifying one single trait that set apart the two successful projects from the ten that failed miserably, it had to be readiness to ship despite not being prepared. This is because perfectionist traits often mask themselves as traits of quality. However, for a side project, perfectionist traits may just amount to fear masquerading in an acceptable form and are far more deadly than any competitor. The product that was never shipped does not have anything to learn from, does not get to reach an audience, does not evolve. It remains unborn in the world of reality.
Those projects that did work, on the other hand, were prematurely released by me and iterated upon out in the open, getting feedback from actual users about what really mattered rather than trying to guess alone behind closed doors. Each of these efforts was a leap of faith that ended up being worthwhile since reality is the best teacher. When you apply your standards too early, a project gets killed off before it even has a chance to live. If you apply your standards to something tangible with actual users, they become the force driving improvements.