The Rules of Successful Side Project, Even When It’s a Failure.
Every great idea started with a little spark of inspiration that spinning around the mind. And sometimes that little spark can turn into tremendously successful endeavor (I’ll describe a few such stories) or just teach us something valuable. It’s amazing that project we start with no specific intentions can open a new chapter in our live.
I have a lot of personal side projects, the vast majority of them turned to be unsuccessful in a goal-oriented sense, but when you look at them in terms of process-oriented, they all turned out to be very successful. Not in a conventional way (money, fame, status) but they gave me a tools that proved to be extremely helpful in the long-term because it puts me in a position of leverage. It's like Scott Adams's Talent Stack concept (if you are unfamiliar, I strongly encourage you to check it out). I even wrote a post about Scott Adams' book. Great insights.
I found that the purer the intentions in working on a side-project (you're focused on your own growth), the greater the chance that it will turn out to be a positive black swan. This is exactly the story behind the launching of for example Unsplash.
Quick tip: Don’t get attached to outcomes, seek lessons.
The Power of 20% Projects - chance to build an empire
The 20% Project is an initiative where company employees are allocated twenty-percent of their paid work time to pursue personal projects. Google is a company that significantly contributed to the popularization of this initiative. It's worth noting that many of their services, such as Gmail, Adsense, and Google News, were originally conceived as side projects.
Google Gmail was created by computer engineer Paul Buchheit, who developed the original Google AdSense prototype as part of his work on Gmail. He also runs an interesting blog where he shares his thoughts. However, in order for a side project to fulfill its functions, certain factors must be met.
There are several factors that play a crucial role in a successful personal project.
First of all, side project must arouse curiosity and excitement. So it's better to focus on something that you are good at, or at least that you see potential at.
Secondly, the right attitude matters, so see it as an experiment. It may not turn out the way you would hope,
Thirdly, balance on the edge in order to keep an excitement high and learn something new, at the same time. Don't push the boundary of the edge too hard to not get overwhelmed by hardships.
And lastly, focus on long-term process-oriented work. The lower the goal-oriented expectations, the more enjoyable the process and, possibly, the weaker the fall in case of failure.
36 Days of Type - my failed story of getting a dream job
Since high school throuought couple years I was trying to get my dream job as a Vans designer, or even better creative director. I tried various tactics: wrote a ton of emails - it didn’t work out, being active on their social media - it didn’t work out. Eventually I tried my hand at creating illustrations that I hoped Vans would start using.
So I took part in a challenge that is well-known in the world of designers - it's called "36 days of type". Basically, for 36 days you create letters and numbers, which are interesting and unusual in their own way. For many people, taking part in such a project has contributed to increase in the pace of their career. I thought it would be the same case for me.
For 36 days, every morning before work and evening after work, I spent full of enthusiasm designing letters and numbers in the form of illustrations that were supposed to be my Holy Grail. I even remember talking to my parents, telling them about my trip to the USA, where I will start working in the design department for Vans where I’ll create a collection that will conquer the world! I was very confident in my project, unfortunately I looked at it more through the prism of the goal than the process itself.
As you can imagine, none of the above-mentioned things happened
I didn’t go to the USA
I didn’t start working for Vans
I didn’t design a collection that conquered the world
Most of the time I saw my first big personal side project as total failure. The amount of time spent compared to the result I got, which is zero feedback from Vans… you can subtly say the ROI wasn’t too high.
But when I change the perspective and saw how much I learned during this project, it turned out to be quite successful. For over 30 days, I was able to maintain a huge work ethic. Secondly, the technical skills themselves have improved. Thirdly, I broadened my horizons and began to look at projects in a bigger picture.
Oh, I forgot to say, I got a like on Twitter from VANS Europe!
History of Unsplash - from 19$ Tumblr theme to industry-leading company
Even if you have never used photos from Unsplash, you must have seen them on the Internet more than once, because their database contains over 2 million freely-usable images. I've been using Unsplash on a daily basis for a long period of time. In my opinion this company is one of the most valuable if not the most valuable that offer free stock images. In 2017/2018 they raised over $7 million. And to think it all started with a stupid side project, that little spark that could turn to something greater. I learned about their launching story from a tweet of one of Unsplash co-founder. Later I read some interviews and their story seems to be one of the most inspiring in terms of product development. Extremely simple, but innovative in its own way, that is, what a personal side project should be like. You start working with what you have, nothing fancy. Step by step. Then you start adding more bricks - website, marketing and so on until you build a well-functioning household. As people say “Rome wasn’t build in one day”. They couldn’t have foreseen that this little spark will change their reality and build a new economy around photography.
Before Unsplash was created, the founders work on startup called Crew. They couldn't find a good photo for their homepage of their webite, so they hired a photographer. After the photo session, they had a lot of unused photos. So they decided to share their images for free and they’ve put it on Tumblr blog with direct subtitle - “10 free photos every day”. They started promoting their blog on HackerNews, where they spread virally, getting a couple of million visitors and a couple of hundred thousand redirected clients to the Crew that was close to bankruptcy.
Unsplash hit million downloads within first year. This is called real return on investment ;) They decided to drop a Crew and begin focusing on building company around new internet photography. As you can see it paid off.
Twitter - the ability of changing direction
Twitter originally functioned as startup Odeo intended to be a podcast platform, founded by two ex-Google workers.
Odeo in 2005 had 14 people working full-time (including Jack Dorsey who worked as web developer/designer). Odeo's founders, however, stated that they had hit the wall and saw no further opportunity for growth in the podcasting industry. Partly it happened because Apple released its own podcasting platform that they had no chance of competing with. So they asked employees to come up with new ideas about which direction Odeo could go.
During a brainstorming meeting, Jack introduced the idea where an individual could use an SMS-based tool to communicate with a small group of people. However, Odeo investors were not in favor of the Twitter idea, so Evan Williams (co-founder of Odeo) dediced to buy all the stock back and began working on an SMS-based social network. But not everyone of Odeo's workers was fascinated by the idea of twitter as much as Evan or Jack.
Original sketch by Jack Dorsey, SMS-based social network
Initially, Twitter was known as twttr. Evan and Jack have contributed significantly to the development of the phone-based social network, which allows you to notify your friends in real-time what is happening. They were right to abandon work on the podcast platform because Apple with iTunes wiped out all the comptetition. On March 21, 2006, Jack posted first tweet and the rest is history.
15 years later, it was sold as NFT for over $ 2 million.
There is a reason why I wrote the story of Unsplash and Twitter because in their cases I see the essence of what side projects should be. I also see some parallels between their founding story.
The companies we know originally were meant to be something completely different.
They had a great abillity to adapt to changing circumstances and taking full advantages of the opportonutites that they created themselves.
They seeked a new directions of development by simple methods.
What we can learn: Don’t look out for ideal conditions, we create great opportunities ourselves by noticing that small spark
“Play For Thoughts”
The blog you reading at the moment is also my next personal side project that I devote a lot of my free time between day job and university classes. Working on "Play For Thoughts", which was originally intended to be a podcast, but now seems to be a full website, gives me a lot of fun and also allows me to develop holistically.
I not only break down design and mental models in a broader context, but I also learn many other useful skills as it goes - efficient writing, marketing, building my own products and so on. I've always had trouble finding a job where I could cover all the areas of interest, "Play For Thoughts" filled that gap.
I don’t know how the situation with "Play For Thoughts" will turn out, but the work I put into it will not be wasted, I can say that I already see the positive effects of dealing with this side project.
As I wrote at the beginning, I try not to attach to external results, but to internal intuition that makes me work on it ;)Summary:
The initial excitement that pushes us into routine work with the right attitude can perform a miracle.
There’s never a right time and you’ll never be properly prepared.
Notice simple opportunities and take small steps
Be flexible and adapt to changing circumstances.Don’t get attached to the results, I have more failures than wins, my ratio is around 9:1. Not bad though.
If you find it valuable, I encourage you to follow me on Twitter ;) - click