I read somewhere that if you spend even an hour every day making something — something that is truly yours and reflects you, you are ahead of 99ish percentage of people.

But who has an hour everyday? ?

As much as I would love to wake up at 5 AM everyday and spend an hour writing, I have accepted — like really accepted — that it is kinda hard for me.

And have been slowly building a system to still make writing happen.

You are reading this because of that system.

This is my love project, something that really brings me joy.

And that’s what side projects should do. Help you be someone you would really like to be. It shouldn’t turn into a pressure-pot of disappointment, struggle and burnout. You need a system and guardrails that lets you freely enjoy your time creating.

Here are some things that work for me.

? step 1: brain-dump ALL your ideas

Baking. Gardening. Dabbling with Midjourney. Learning to drive. Job hunt. Writing a blog. Painting candles.

Time to accept we are only humans and have only 4000 hours acc to a book.

Bucket these ideas. Some examples of buckets — “helpful for your career”, “good for your soul”, “fuels your creativity”, “solves a burning problem”.

Juhi on Twitter recently shared a template that you could use for this!

? step 2: say no to good things

Confession: I would love to make TikToks.

I did the math. How much free time I have vs all the things I wanna do. Math wasn’t mathing. I had to say “not now” to a few things I would love to do.

Saying no to things you wanna do is the hardest. But that lets you are create ample mental bandwidth for few things that you have picked. They will be more you. They will not be done half-heartedly or inconsistently.

So think hard, and pick 1–2 things you want to do as side-projects. Move fast and confidently on your chosen projects.

? step 3: define a MVP

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