Henri, creator of Selfmail, currently 16

My Problem with Side Projects

Welcome to my small blog in the internet. I used to tend to more and more side projects. They were small ones, like a better search function for my github stars or a directory for websites I like. But with the time, they’ve became to much, I have now more than 120 Github Repos and way more projects accross my devices. I’ve never finished one of these, mostly because I don’t have the motivation to do more than a header for the landing page or a really simple editor.

How it all started

2 Years ago, I was ill and at home. I still go to a college, so I had way too much free time. It was winter and cold outside and I thought, why not just creating an awesome project, a project you could be proud of and you have fun building it. I started on a new, simple app called “dokument”, a note-taking app. I started to work 5-6 hours a day, a week long. After I recovered from my injury, I realized: what did I made???? Something so useless. Back then, I was using Notion, so I hadn’t even a use-case and after half of the project was ready, I stopped working. My problem was, that I’ve not really thought about an good idea, something that would motivate me, for a long time, so I can finish it. Sadly, I didn’t realized it back then, so I made another project, stopped working after that and so on.

TODO: finish the blog post :=)