Ask HN: How do you stay motivated to complete your side projects?

Money from the day job goes to paying the bills / mortgage / living expenses. Money from side work goes to toys be it a new laptop, phone, vacation, remodeling a room of the house, etc...

I probably wouldn't freelance if I was content with what I have and soon, that freelance money will start to be saved for a down payment on a bigger house instead of going towards the latest iPhone.

2ndary to this is the drive to keep abreast of new technologies. Sometimes, I can do freelance projects in a different language or framework - which makes me marketable for further side work. IE: I hated Wordpress - but then I started getting requests to do freelance work in Wordpress, so I learned it. Knowing Wordpress has scored me more work then when I ust' to write everything manually in PHP. (Not that Wordpress is new; but I wouldn't have learned it unless I was requested to write in it, for example)

I've found that if I REALLY want to do something, I'll just find time to do it. Unfortunately I haven't found a way to fake that kind of motivation. It's kind of there or it's not.

One technique I've used though, is to make my side-projects bite-sized (little tiny MVPs). That way, even if they only hold my attention for 72 hours, I'll still be able to finish them and put something up live. Later on, if I'm still interested in it, then I can iterate on it more.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8800788