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Your #Career : Starting A #SideProject In 2018? Here’s How To Make It Successful..While some #Projects go on to Become a Full-Time Business, Even the Ones that Eventually Fizzle Out Serve an Important Purpose.

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For businesses, giving resources and time to side projects has proven over and over to be worth it. Slack, everyone’s favorite communication hub, started life as a simple tool for a group of game developers.

“While some projects do go on to become a full-time business, even the ones that eventually fizzle out serve an important purpose. Building and launching a side project is about the experience, and the people you meet along the way.”

Side projects help us uncover new interests, promote divergent thinking (one of the building blocks of creativity), and can potentially take your life in an unexpected direction. However, that’s also what makes them scary. They require time and money–and more importantly, you’ll need enough motivation from the meaning the side project brings to keep going when it’s tough.

So what makes a personal side project successful? After reading the stories of 10 creators, I found these 7 common “ingredients” for starting, building, and launching a successful personal side project.

1. FIND SOMETHING THAT SITS BETWEEN “THINGS YOU ENJOY” AND “SKILLS YOU WANT TO BUILD”

As Julie Zhou, product design VP at Facebook and avid side project champion explains, “Side projects work best when they live at the interaction of ‘Things you enjoy’ and ‘Things that help you practice a marketable skill.’”

While this is simple in theory, it can quickly get murky. Start a side project solely because it will help you get ahead in your own job and you run the risk of that project becoming just an extension of your work. Rather than feeling motivated to spend time on it, you’ll approach it just like another task on your work to-do list.

However, if your project doesn’t help you build a skill you can use in other parts of your life, you’re just having fun. Which is fine, of course. But won’t necessarily bring in a level of meaning to your life.

The goal then, as Zhou explains, is to find that sweet spot in the middle. A good litmus test is that side projects are typically productive, not consumptive. That’s not to say side projects have to be 100% focused on production.

For example, you may be interested in building an app, but not (yet) have the technical skills to do it. So step one would be to take an online course on app development. Then, throughout the course, you could work on the app, knowing it will take a while, but always with that goal keeping you motivated.

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Related: Your 5-Week Plan To Starting A Side Hustle Over Your Lunch Break

2. TREAT YOUR SIDE PROJECTS AS EXPERIMENTS

The hard thing about side projects is that there’s a lot more of us in them than in our usual work. When you’re having an off day in the office or on a work project, it can be easy to push through. You’re getting paid for this after all, right?

But when we’re doing something for ourselves, that mental strategy for motivating us falls short. According to freelance web designer-turned entrepreneur Paul Jarvis, to get over this hump, we need to treat our side projects as experiments.

“Experiments don’t “fail”—they simply prove or disprove a hypothesis. For example, despite my day job as a designer I had the hypothesis that I could also write an e-book. I then simply started writing. I didn’t focus on the outcome, how the book would be received or what others would think of it. I figured, ‘let’s give this a try’.”

The point here is that you’re simply trying something out with your side project. Rather than place the same level of importance on your side project as you do on your job, focus on getting something done. Getting early results will help you learn and grow.

3. PITCH YOURSELF

If you want your side project to be more than just a hobby, successful creators say you need to learn how to talk about it.

Before he built multiple startups (which all started as side projects) and created one of the largest design communities in Israel, Sagi Shrieber was just another design student with one side interest: He felt passionately about starting the first design blog written in Hebrew. Rather than building it in private, however, Sagi took the stage at a local event and told the 300+ room what he was doing and when he would launch (even though he didn’t have anything made yet).

Going public with your side project can give you the momentum to go through with it and also help you find a community of like-minded people to help you along the way.

Related: Dear Art School Grads, Do What You Love, But Never For Free

4. CHARGE FOR YOUR WORK

Selling seems antithetical to creation. One is pure, unadulterated originality, the other simply squeezing hard-earned dollars and cents out of another person. But if you want your side project to be a success (and it’s something you plan on selling), this is the wrong way to think about it.

Successful side project creators don’t think about price, they think about value. If you value the work you’re doing, and you’re creating something that has meaning to you, then there should be someone else out there who feels the same way.

As a full-time marketing director, Noah Kagan was no stranger to the art of sales. Yet, when he launched his side project, AppSumo, he still fell into the trap of feeling guilty about asking for money. To get over this awkwardness about pricing, Noah reminds himself of a few simple facts every time he launches a new side project:

  1. Whatever you’re doing, you’re creating value for someone else.
  2. People pay for time. If you make something that helps them save time, they’ll feel good about paying for it.”
  3. It’s human nature to feel better about things we pay for. Going the free route isn’t always the best way if you want people to take your side project seriously.

5. FIND PARTNERS, COLLABORATORS, AND CHAMPIONS

Side projects are a great opportunity to not only learn new skills, but to work with people you’ve always wanted to. When we let other people into our creative process, we learn to challenge thoughts and values that have been so stubbornly ingrained in us.

When you’re planning your project, think about who you could include. Who would be a good partner? Who could you ask for feedback from early on? Who will challenge the way you think and push you into uncharted territory?

6. BE OKAY WITH FAILURE

Big, audacious goals are great. But focusing too much on the potential end result of your side project can kill your motivation and leave you drained and bitter if things don’t go exactly as planned (and they never do).

Over the course of interviewing hundreds of people who’ve launched and grown side projects over the past few years, entrepreneur and side project coach Ryan Robinson found that the benefits aren’t always what they seemed at the beginning:

“While some projects do go on to become a full-time business, even the ones that eventually fizzle out serve an important purpose. Building and launching a side project is about the experience, and the people you meet along the way.”

 

FastCompany.com | January 6, 2018 | Zapier.com

 

#Strategy : One Thing I Did Last Year That Nearly Doubled My Productivity…Adopting this Schedule has Helped me Become more Efficient, But it wasn’t Necessarily my Output that Saw a Spike this Year; It was More of an Increase in Quality.

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It’s difficult to nail down an effective, efficient workflow. There are many things to take into account – your diet, your environment and immediate surroundings, even the temperature in the room can impact how much, or how little, you’re getting done. We can spend a lot of time studying different strategies and attempting to make everything perfect, but sometimes no matter what we do, we just don’t see the results we’re hoping for in terms of increased productivity and output.

Free- Iphone with Gadgets

Well, last year I added something to my daily routine that helped me increase the quality of my work, function in a more clear-headed way, and ultimately become much more productive: I started working out in the middle of the workday.

The change

I have to begin with the admission that I’m fortunate in that I am able to work remotely, and more or less dictate how, when, and where I do my job. That’s an advantage a lot of people don’t have, so it’s important to mention. I also have access to a gym, 24 hours a day, seven days per week, in my apartment building.

And I must bring up the circumstances under which I added my mid-day workout, and that allowed me to act as an observer as well as participant in seeing how it impacted my workflow. Due to a lingering (but relatively minor) medical issue, I had pretty much given up on serious exercise for a couple of years. After having said issue surgically repaired earlier this year, with ample recovery time, I was able to devise an exercise strategy with the intent of not only getting back into shape, but also seeing how physical activity affected my productivity.

I’m happy to say it’s paid off.

I suspected it would, as science backs up the notion that physical activity is closely associated with improved cognitive ability. When I exercise, I find that my head clears, and I’m able to think with improved clarity. It also opens me up to an influx of ideas – something else that researchers have linked to exercise. But the real trick, I think, was adding the workout into my routine during the middle of the day, rather than in the morning (I would become exhausted earlier), or after work (I would miss out on the boost in cognitive function).

 

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My routine

I came up with an exercise plan (including both weight lifting and cardio), and set the wheels in motion. It took a while to get the right pieces in place through trial and error, but I finally figured out what worked best for me.

First, I worked out at night. Then I tried going to the gym early in the morning. Finally, I settled into a routine at which I was going at around 11 a.m. or so, which is about five hours after I typically begin my work day (I’ve become a morning person). This, I found, was the ‘sweet spot’.

Essentially, I would (and do) spend the first chunk of my day responding to emails, outlining, and doing other tasks that don’t require my brain to be firing on all cylinders – all while waking up, drinking coffee, and eating my daily breakfast: three eggs, no yolk, on an English muffin. I am able to get the lion’s share of my work done this way, and leave the ‘surgical strikes’, or things that require some serious critical thought, for the post-workout period.

This is reminiscent of the time management hacks brought up in Tim Ferriss’ book The Four Hour Workweek, in so much that I was basically minimizing the time I was really ‘working hard’ throughout the day. It’s not an exacttranslation, but a similar principle for those of you familiar with the book.

I then head to the gym around the middle of the day, laptop in hand. I continue to work from the gym, finish up, head back, eat, drink, shower, and then tackle the tasks I had been putting off. That’s my workflow, in a nutshell.

The results

Adopting this schedule has helped me become more efficient, but it wasn’t necessarily my output that saw a spike this year; it was more of an increase in quality. In fact, if I look back at the amount of work I was doing last year, I’m probably doing less. But I’m getting more bang for my buck. I’ve merely found a way to get the most out of the hours I am spending on the clock.

The difference has really been in quality. I’ve made fewer mistakes, and have been able to work more efficiently, think with more clarity, and even be more assertive and confident. The big difference has been in the intangibles, which can be hard to describe or measure – but I’m able to better get in ‘the zone’, for lack of a better term.

This was a big change, and it’s not something that everyone is going to be able to incorporate into their daily routine, unfortunately. And it was coupled with changes to my diet and sleeping patterns as well. But once I was able to nail it down, I’m reaping the benefits.

Will it work for you? The science suggests it should. But then again, everyone is different. Either way, if you’re looking to boost your productivity, try giving your routine a shakeup, or adding exercise if you aren’t already.

Follow Sam on Facebook and Twitter @SliceOfGinger

 

CheatSheet.com | January 12, 2016 | Sam Becker