Your Side-Project Should be More Fun, More Dev Pirate

Because Fun is Better than Boring

Let’s say Fun is your number 1 goal for your side-project. Fun means you gotta do EVERYTHING you can do to make it Fun. Or it’ll become boring, you wait and see. These three go together:

• Fun
• Un-opinionated programming in your use-cases you share
• Not Big. Tiny

Read downwards. FUN.

Your side-project is just like Lillian’s Lemonade stand on Sunday. So let’s start with the hardest part of FUN: Tiny.

Big Become Boring

Making your side-project Tiny is harder than it looks. You have to remove EVERYTHING except the bare necessities.

So let’s start removing one bite at the time. Lillian started with time.

Save Time Selling Lemonade

• Make less lemonade, sell less lemonade
• Move to a better location than last year
• Lower the lemonade price from last year
• Give an even lower price for buying 2 cups of lemonade
• Give an even lower price for buying 3 cups of lemonade
• Give an even lower price for buying 4 cups of lemonade
• Give an even lower price for buying 5 cups of lemonade

How does Lillian’s list translate to your coding?

How Do You Save Hours On Your Coding Side-Project?

• Peak time of day = Less Hours
• Less coding tasks = Less Hours

Peak time of day = Less Hours

Find your Peak time of day, the time of day you usually perform at your best. Block out a couple of hours two days a week for your side-project. If you have to tell your boss, do it. If your boss is better off not knowing, don’t say a word 😺🏴‍☠️. Working on Your Coding Side-Project at your Peak time of day will save you hours because:

• You’ll produce less bugs, saving you hours down the road
• Your coding will be tighter, saving you time
• Your decision making will be better, saving you time

Less Coding Tasks = Less Hours

That less coding tasks will save you hours sounds obvious, but how do you do it? Some ideas to save you coding tasks:

• Copy paste the less interesting pieces of your Coding Side-Project from somebody else
• No code tools like … and … We use squarespace for our company website lillylabs.no
• Refuse to build parts of your Coding Side-Project

Lillian’s Lemonade stand on Sunday

More photos Lillian’s Lemonade stand