Of projects and boredom

[Creature]

I was wondering what you guys do to prevent getting "bored" with a project and bailing out. When I wasn't programming long I always dropped projects after a couple of months at most and later went on to something new and exciting. I've managed to counter this partially by writing out design documents of what I specifically want to do (usually without deadlines however, since these were always projects in my spare time). Now that I've finally broken my record of working on one project for a longer period, I notice that I'm starting to get that feeling again. It's that feeling where something doesn't turn out or work as you intended, and then you notice a lot of other things that still need fixing and you sort of feel overwhelmed and don't want to spend any more time working on it.

So my question is, what do you do to counter getting bored or unproductive with a (be it personal or not) project?

[NickJohnson]

Work on a different part of the project. That's the benefit of an OS project: there are a lot of components, but the dependency tree is wide and shallow.

[SDS]

I always find not having a deadline quite useful. This means that you can have several projects on the run at any time, and switch between them whenever you feel.

Additionally, it is worth bearing in mind that there will be irritating bits of a project that aren't particularly fun, but do need doing. Sometimes you just have to blast through them, even if you don't really feel like it...

[Jezze]

I have the exact same problem. On my github page I have 5 different projects and none of them is anyway near production quality. It's like I always get stuck right before I'm ready to take something to the next level. I had a more or less a working rpg that I just scrapped even though I probably could have gotten a few people to play it.

[TylerH]

Don't scrap them. I used to do that. In fact, I did that with more than 3 attempts at getting a kernel up and running. I almost did it again with my most recent attempt about a year ago, because I totally lost interest in even trying to work on it. But, rather than trash it, I decided to just shelve it for a while -- which turned into a year. Now, I'm back working on it and enjoying it again without having to start over for the umpteenth time.

In general, I do this with all my projects now. It gives me a good rotation of varying types of projects to work on. If I get tired of messing with bit fields and really huge manuals I can take a break and improve the UI of my fractal viewer or something else really simple or mess with some random math project. I find that staying away from OS dev for a while reminds me of why I enjoy it so much.

[qw]

Don't throw away old projects. Someday you may suddenly feel like taking up one again, and there it is, patiently waiting for you.

[Solar]

Do projects that you actually want to have finished. Not as in "I want to brag about having done it", but in "I sure need the end result". I never dropped one of those. (Though I admit that I found I didn't need one or two of them that urgently, once I realized how much work they involve or how little sense the end result actually makes. )

If you don't need the result, and get bored with it - shelf it. You're doing those for the pure fun, don't you? So who cares if you shelf them if they aren't fun anymore?

Corollary: Don't talk about "fun" projects before you get v1.0 ready for shipping. You won't look stupid for shelving them, then.

[CrypticalCode0]

I personally go to a friend let him read the source and talk about it.
Call it peer review.

It has as a added bonus that bugs can be flushed out and you get a fresh look at things, why you did somethings the way you did in your code.
Usually this charges my battery back up and makes me go on with it.

The end result is a better understanding for and hopefully a better performing code.
This has helped me more then one's finding problems with my coding style.

[CWood]

For me, it's when it dawns on me that this is pointless, and nobody is ever going to use my project. To counteract this, naturally, I release the project, as an alpha, in its current state, work on something else for a while, while posting links on forums etc, and when I get back, take a look at peoples reactions, and use this as a kind of litmus test to see if the project is really worth doing or not. Killed several projects this way (though I still have all the source codes for every project I have ever done.)