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Why Your Side Project Keeps Dying (And How to Fix It)

Alex••3 min read

We've All Been There

You start with fire energy. The idea is perfect. You can already see yourself giving the TED talk about how this side project changed your life.

Week 1: You're coding until 3am, fueled by energy drinks and delusion.

Week 3: The repo hasn't been touched in days.

Week 6: "I'll get back to it eventually" (narrator: they didn't)

Sound familiar? Yeah, thought so.

The Real Problem

It's not that you lack discipline. It's not that you're lazy. The issue is you're setting yourself up to fail from day one.

You're Thinking Too Big

That app you want to build? The one with AI, real-time collaboration, mobile apps, and a Chrome extension? Stop.

Start with literally the smallest version that could work. Like, embarrassingly small. If you're not slightly uncomfortable showing people the first version, it's too polished.

You're Working Alone

Solo dev mode hits different, but not in a good way. No accountability, no feedback, no one to hype you up when you're in the trenches.

Find:

  • An accountability buddy who's also building
  • A community (indie hackers, BuildSpace, whatever)
  • Anyone who will ask "how's the project going?" regularly

You're Not Shipping Fast Enough

If you haven't pushed something live in the first week, you're cooked. The dopamine hit from deploying keeps you going.

What Actually Works

The 30-Day Sprint

Commit to shipping something - ANYTHING - in 30 days. Not perfect, not beautiful, just live.

Set a hard deadline. Tell people about it. Put it on Twitter. Make it scary.

Stack It Stupid Simple

Stop overengineering. You don't need microservices for a todo app.

My go-to stack for speed:

  • Next.js (obviously)
  • Vercel (deploy in 2 minutes)
  • Supabase (database + auth done)
  • Tailwind (no time for custom CSS)

Build What You Need

The best projects solve your own problems. You're both the builder and the user. You know exactly what features matter because you're literally the target audience.

The Mindset Shift

Stop thinking about your side project as your magnum opus. It's just practice. You're allowed to:

  • Start it and abandon it
  • Build something "useless"
  • Copy ideas that already exist
  • Make it ugly
  • Ship it broken

The goal isn't perfection. It's reps. Every project makes you better, even the ones that die.

My Challenge to You

Open your text editor right now. Create a new Next.js app. Deploy it to Vercel.

You've got 30 minutes.

No excuses. No "I'll do it this weekend." Now.

Because the difference between developers who ship and those who don't isn't talent. It's just starting before you feel ready.

Ready? Set? Ship. 🚀

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