How do you all come up with ideas / things to tinker with?

Hey all,

Bit of a random post, but I think there’s a lot of intelligent / creative people on here, so I wanted to pose a question.

I’m a Golang developer by day, and while I deeply enjoy it, I struggle to translate that into working on personal projects. I get stuck on figuring out “what” I want to work on, what new things to tinker with. I also struggle to figure out how to break into working on open-source projects.

So my question is: how do you all come up with projects for self-learning, maybe bettering open-source, that sort of thing? How do you set aside the time and “force” yourself to do it, if that makes sense?

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I’m not nearly as active in personal projects as others, but for me it always comes down to solving a problem I already have instead of looking for one that might not exist.

It means that I’m invested in the problem.

Sometimes that means digging into FOSS projects and seeing if I can contribute or just use it as is with a few local tweaks.

Sometimes that means learning new tools and technologies but not really doing any active dev work; it’s merely me learning about something so I understand it as I deploy on my home network.

A lot of time it means stepping back and re-evaluating the tools I use and analyzing how I use them and considering alternative hardware and workflows.

I find all of that keeps me more than busy enough while also keeping me learning skills that translate into other areas.

Edit:

Examples would be:

Learning about Plex, video streaming and hosting and encoding, various audio and video codecs, TV technologies, Audio technologies, etc…all from a simple desire to have a simplified, yet high end quality home theater setup in my living room.

How music services work, different bitstream sizes and how they effect things, what FLAC is, what Tidal MQ is, how DACs and AMPs work, various products and how they differ, etc…all cause wife asked me to switch from my noise canceling Bose QC35 II, so I decided to do a good setup of open backs and then see how best to take advantage of that.

Digging into how browsers function, how ad blockers function, digging into various FOSS projects like uBlock Origin, digging into Firefox and it’s mobile versions, digging into VPNS and TOR, and so on…all cause I decided I wanted to have a better understanding of my personal data, privacy, and security and see about finding a personal balance of convenience vs privacy and security

And I could go on and on about scoop and appget and winget and chocolaty for Windows and WSL as I look for better ways to optimize and simplify how I setup windows installs and stuff.

These are some personal things I tackled and continue to tackle, which in the end, taught me a bunch of various topics to various degrees.

I’m always looking for ways to change my hardware and software and home setup in order to improve my QoL and workflows and that’s an axe I find can constantly grind away at lol

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^This

I don’t think I can put it better myself.

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This is wonderfully succinct and also applies to commercial/professional projects. What does the client need vs. what does the client want? The client can be you or someone else but getting to the heart of the actual problem that needs to be solved is what matters.

How do you find the problems you want to work on though?

I’ve been doing more outdoors work lately. Initially I just started throwing stuff at the wall (or plants in the soil…), but I’m beginning to understand that it’s better to observe for periods of time to determine how to proceed in managing the land.

Where does the sun come from at different parts of the day? How does this area handle rain? What native plants grow nearby? What pests or invasives will I have to deal with? What animals live here? Etc etc. I’ve done this kind of observation + questioning in my web design practice (watching how a user interacts with a product, for example), but I’m now finding it’s doubly important for designing spaces for living things.

My professors often harped on the value of “Observe, Reflect, Record” as a motto for artists. Give attention, think about what you’ve seen, and then record your thoughts and questions about it. A journal is ideal for this but of course we wouldn’t say no to a forum thread either. :wink: Once you start really seeing things, you can begin to understand them to improve them, which makes self-directed work a lot simpler and enjoyable.

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I like that motto. I find the forum is extremely helpful for “Journaling” my thoughts. I have a written one as well for more personal things as well but the forum is nice for having constructive input or checking myself if I am going off course.

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As others said, “solve a problem”. However, reading between the lines, I sense that there is some other un-asked question here.

My grandmother has evidence that I have been doing projects to solve problems since at least 4 years old. It is just the way that I look at the world; problems are not things to STOP progress, they are things to be overcome.

To be fair, not all problems have easy solutions. I suppose that most problems that have turned into projects have been “problems that I am confident are solvable”. I may not know how to solve the problem NOW, but I usually feel confident that someone else can solve the problem, and I can learn how they did it.

You would not be on this forum if you did not share at least some of that philosophy.

So my question to you is, “Where do you get stuck (in the problem-solving process)?”.

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This is a very good question. I think it’s a core motivational issue. I haven’t had the “spark” to learn something new in a while. I just graduated college, but before college and in the early days I was spending a lot of time learning Linux, programming, sysadmin stuff, all of that outside my Comp Sci coursework.

Now that I’m a developer full time, I often feel too drained to work on programming things in my off time, even though I want to do it. So maybe there’s some mental work I can do there.

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Do you exercise at all? I find that when I get in a mental rut that often physical activity helps to get my creative juices going again.

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I do (mostly strength training), I started a good exercise routine when COVID hit. However it’s been off the last week, had wisdom tooth extraction surgery and that’s thrown me off for sure.

I spend a lot of my time just mindlessly consuming information, but not applying. I’ll watch videos on programming concepts, psychology videos, a myriad of things but never put it into practice. Think I’ve just also been lazy outside of work lately.

Part of it is probably environment, I work from home remotely and play / sleep all in my bedroom

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The separation of bedroom and work is a big thing. If there is a way for you to change that situation I would encourage you to.

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This is a normal thing for engineers. If you’re feeling mentally drained, means you’re actually being productive at work.

Everyone handles this various ways.

Some older engineers (ie, Dad and co-workers) handle this by explicitly avoiding tech stuff for personal projects and instead taking up more physical hobbies and projects, ie, building a desk or other furniture, boating, etc…

I certainly don’t have mental energy for super technically complex personal projects that require big chucks of dev time; I focus on little QoL things and look for ways to remove barriers and friction points where I can.

I certainly admire people who feel energized to spend all their free time doing something like contributing to the Linux kernel while working normally, but I don’t measure myself against them.

Everyone is different and not everyone is Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or Wendell or Linus…just figure out what makes you feel more satisfied in how you go about your day.

Might I propose that you might enjoy building and setting up and managing a home lab setup? Don’t think about anything complex just use it to setup something like adblock pi-hole, self hosting and backups for files, etc…small QoL improvements that you can expand on in scope and complexity over time.

edit:

Also, I can empathize on remote work screwing with work-life balance and separation of concerns. Wife has suggested I try working from a library or cafe, before when I start having issues. I find having a stricter work schedule helps, so I’m not inadvertently working 12h without realizing it

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Yeah that’s probably one of the biggest improvements I could make. Not possible in my current living situation though; got a couple of roommates. May try getting my own place without roommies when this lease is up, just been doing it as a cost savings so far.

I appreciate that call out, I compare myself a lot of different people, even though in the case of Elon / Steve, I would not want the stress that their jobs bring / brought them haha.

This is a good idea, I thought about starting small and setting up a pi-hole just the other day. Along the lines of what you said before, I wouldn’t mind learning about containers more (since I use them at work extensively, and some of the two big players Docker / Podman, are written in Go which I use for my job), obviously not solving a problem but could teach myself a lot about how they are implemented.

Haha this seems like a dumb thing maybe, but I recently learned how to make homemade pizza for the first time (never baked before, never knew how to make dough from scratch) which was a lot of fun and felt rewarding. Probably worth keeping perspective and being happy with those “smaller” victories.

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Yeah, it’s a problem my wife faces as a hard type A personality; constantly defines success by measuring herself against others instead of what actually makes her happy.

Well, I think you’re contemplating that wrong; do ads annoy you? Would you like there to be a simple way to avoid them on all devices on your network?

There you go: a small, solvable problem.

I do the cooking in my household, so I don’t find this dumb at all. I actually enjoy cooking and think it’s a wonderful (also healthier) way to spend your free time. It’s not a “smaller” victory. It’s simply doing what you enjoy; it doesn’t require being measured on a scale and certainly shouldn’t be looked down on.

Wouldn’t you rather be excited by your cooking adventures and sharing that with others? Would you look down on, say, your boss wanting to share his sowing project with you, when he obviously put time and effort into it?

edit: Mostly, I think you just need a change of perspective and how you define some things in your day to day.

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Since I have a universal interest for anything technical, I find “inspiration” in various tiny things, want to know how or why they work and dig myself a rabbit hole.

For small electronics projects, drawing up plans and/or running a circuit simulation only takes an hour or so. That time is still covered by the initial high of excitement for something new.
When that works good enough, I compile a partslist (wich will then age like wine for a couple of weeks).
“Forcing” yourself to continue working on a project when it physically sits around in its box or bag judging you on a daily basis is easy.

For the occasional software project, I find they get archived just after becoming vaguely functional for lack of them being physically in my way.

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If your life is a steady grind, day in and day out with nothing new all day, it will be draining to your energy and creativity really fast.

New ideas stems from being exposed to new environment and new situations. Try a different route home. Cook a new food. Demand novelty in your experiences.

Also, little bit of randomness and chaos can bring out new solutions and better efficiencies in the long term. If your process has always been A-B-C-D-E-F-G, how will you know if A-B-D-E-F-C-G actually results in a faster process?

Try out stuff. Monotony is the death of ideas. But do temper it with reason. Dont do drugs and shit, no not that far.

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OK, so you are young. Your brain does not stop growing until 25-ish. Make sure you are eating fatty fish (salmon, sardines, mackerel, herring, trout, anchovies) and/or taking fish oil. Your brain needs them all your life, but they are especially vital when your brain is growing.

Not necessary. When the mood to create strikes, you will wonder how to make time for sleep and friends. :slight_smile:

That is actually a good solution! When you do not have the spark to do a project, the best fall-back is to learn and think (and exercise). Inspiration will come.

Those two may be linked. First let me say that learning to make a professional-quality pizza is complex, and it is a skill worth learning.

Now, consider stopping eating pizza,as well as other simple carbohydrates. Flour and sugar are the main culprits. Also, throw out seed oils; they are toxic (low-grade, but they do damage over time).

Insulin resistance and micro-inflammation is killing most people over 40 or 50 in the USA. It is the basis of most cardiovascular disease. It also is the leading cause of mental decline in older people.

This is probably a topic for a different thread, but the sooner you learn to eat for your brain, the longer and happier your life will be.

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These cost money and time (food prep). You can buy cheaper, readily available foods, but there are non-monetary, non-temporal health costs.

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Not really. Eating right doesn’t cost any more than eating junk food. It’s more about understanding what your body does with various nutrients. Prep time can be minimal as well.

A can of salmon costs about as much as a sandwich. Prep time: zero.

A dozen eggs costs LESS than a sandwich. An egg contains all of the nutrients required to build a chicken; it is nature’s perfect food. Hard boil in 13 minutes then chill: now you have portable near-perfect nutrition. For a few bucks.

It is even possible to eat semi-well at fast food places: throw out the bun and skip the ketchup (and fries, of course).

EDIT: But, yeah, if you are saying that you, “pay now or pay more later”, then I agree!

EDIT 2: It’s really more about what you do NOT eat.

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I’m a sysadmin, so I can’t really contribute code. What I do contribute is documentation. I write a lot of how-to’s and tutorials, in the hope that people who need them, find them and use them. Sharing is caring and I apply it especially when information is concerned. I want to see more free flow of information, we’d all be better-off if we’d all have easier access to information. If I can automate stuff, I share it with people. If I find myself doing something I don’t know, I document what I’m doing and share it with people.

That’s just what I do in my free time. Not sure if that helps, but that’s my routine (for better or worse, sometimes to a fault, because I need to take care of more important stuff - I usually don’t let important stuff for too long, but some things I tend to deprioritize if they can wait).

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I appreciate everyone’s insights!

One good motivator would be to make a thread to journal some random stuff I’m working on, once I come across something interesting enough.

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