Necessity Creates Productivity

Or at least, that’s how I experience it. Let me explain.

I have a lot of sideprojects. Most would say too many (I’m inclined to agree). I often start these projects because I feel like it, without a particular purpose or useful goal in mind. Programming is just something that I really enjoy, so I tend to create ideas out of thin air just because I want to write something, anything. There is however another group of sideprojects, the ones that I start because I need something. Those that fix an annoyance, or make my life easier. What I’ve noticed is that I’m a lot more productive & less easily burned out when I’m working on these kinds of projects.

One of those projects (and my main project atm) is Vieter. I originally wrote a full description of Vieter here & why I needed it, but that’s really not what this post is about. You can still read about it in the docs if you want. The important part to take away from this is that it’s something I really need. It made me more productive and greatly pushed down my update times, which I personally find very important. That’s why I’m getting a lot of things done for this project, because I know that it’ll be worth it in the end & improve my life.

To show the other site of the spectrum, my original idea for this site was a collection of microservices, with a complex authentication system & a full JavaScript frontend (source). Let’s just admit it here, this idea was way too ambitious and not even that useful. The only part that I’m actually still considering writing is the authentication part, because I do have some other ideas to go along with those, but that’s another post entirely ;p

Due to this overkill idea, I didn’t actually set up this site for over a year I think, just because I just couldn’t get myself to properly work on the implementation. I actually really enjoy writing these blog-style posts, so it’s quite sad I didn’t set up a proper Hugo-based site immediately. Gladly at some point I got through my stubbornness, and I set up this site in less than a day :) This site still runs on a custom backend, but it’s much more minimal and only supports what I really need. My mind’s a lot calmer now that I’ve properly left my original idea behind.

I’m honestly not quite sure what point I’m trying to make. This post is just an observation about how my unpredictable mind can work. Knowing myself, the sideprojects will probably never stop coming, but that’s okay tbh. The important part is that most of them have a purpose, and don’t just burn me out unnecessarily.

Fin.