I launched 17 side projects. Result? I'm rich in expired domains

Upvoted, but just in a friendly "hello, I recognise myself in this comment" sort of way :)

I currently have a little stack of index cards with in-play projects scrawled on them and at the end of the year the plan is to weed those and shut down any resources that aren't required for the ones still in the list. Hmm, maybe I need a domain name for that though...

One thing I will add is that it's ok to recognise that one enjoys some of these behaviours. There's no moral element to being a starter-not-a-finisher of personal projects so long as you're paying appropriate attention to your important commitments (family, the day job, etc.)

I feel like I'm looking into a mirror haha. The number of times I have spent a ton of time planning and then little to no doing over the years is something I try not to dwell on.

i actually buy the domain name at the end. i am stingy. which means i do not buy domain names as i always loose interest after some allnighters. but the code base remains until the motivation returns

I'm actually having some success now with the

> I buy a domain name → I set up a bug tracker → I spec out a bunch of tasks → I let Claude Code do the coding

Seems more sustainable to me than working a full-time job coding, then adding another coding side project. Nice change of pace to just be describing what I want my app to do (during my work day), then letting Claude Code buzz away while I do my day job.

> I can give myself a similar cognitive reward for simply reading on HN about other people completing projects, and even (at my lowest) passively watching YouTube videos of other people building cool stuff.

I struggle with the same thing -- I'm resigned to the solution that even (or especially) when you're doing hobby projects, you might have to resort to blocking HN or other distractors for a bit.

> whether because they're engineered by social media companies who make money off my attention span or because brains are just vulnerable to low-effort high-reward stimuli you couldnt be bothered, i wouldnt overthink it mate. youll end up diagnosing yourself with ADHD

I always buy a domain well after I've finished the MVP and have been using it myself for months. Am I doing it wrong?

Im the same way. I wish I was rich enough to hire like 10 developers and assign them to all the different projects I have in mind.

> I won’t buy the domain name until I get a prototype ready.

Me too. I learnt it after 6 expired domains

I think of this as the "garage band problem". Imagine a bunch of teens deciding to make a band. They come up with a name, make t-shirts, even get the cover for the bass drum -- but how much did they actually play?

Personally, I'll snag a domain if it's really good -- like one word or a proper combo of words, spellable, etc... I won't set it to renew, though.

never bought a domain until i had the first production version ready

IDK, you can stay in builder mode on the same idea. I’m getting old now and I wonder if there’s something in this whole persistence/keeping at it thing VCs love to talk. Not because you eventually figure _it_ out, but because sticking with an idea makes people see you believe in it and then they eventually think they should check think about it.

I don't think it has to be ADHD. I don't have ADHD, and none of my friends have it that I know of. We all start things we don't finish, though. I was going to post some of the more ridiculous domain names I've purchased for personal projects, before I realized I'd be doxxing myself. Too bad, there are some good ones.

I think in many cases, we fail to finish projects because it's so much easier to start than it is to finish. The first 90% is easy, as the saying goes, but the second 90% is much harder.

And I use the word 'fail' advisedly. I think it's fine to not finish everything you start, but it's not good to never finish anything, ever. Not if your intention was to finish it anyway. I think finishing things is a crucial skill, and we need to practice it in order to get good at it, and we won't do that if we tell ourselves it's about as good to give up as it is to keep going.

ADHD is a real diagnosis, but I'm hesitant to pathologize not finishing projects, since that will end up being an excuse rather than an explanation for a lot of people.

That's basically my lifelong addiction.

I have dozens of projects that I will obsess over for a few weeks. When I was younger I would convince myself that what I was doing would change the world and I was going to make billions of dollars, but eventually I became more honest with myself: I do these projects because I want to learn about <<subject X>>.

I built a Icecast server recently because I wanted to learn more about audio encoding and streaming protocols. I built a clone of fzf because I wanted to learn more about Rust and diffing algorithms. I wrote a custom async scheduling framework for my Swaybar because I wanted to learn more about how async scheduling works. I started trying to prove the Collatz conjecture because I wanted to learn more about Isabelle.

I am ok with this being part of my life; I like learning new bits of math and technology, and the easiest way to actually learn a new concept (instead of nodding along in a book) is to try and do something with that knowledge. I think "learning for fun" is far from the worst hobbies one could have.

> "I start so many projects or hobbies, but just when I feel like I've learned a lot I lose interest".

Similar problem for me.

Every project I've wanted to do, there's usually some technical hurdle I need to achieve, and once I've achieved it, I lose interest and have something that's not even enough to be considered a proof-of-concept, let alone an MVP.

For example, there's an arcade game called Killer Queen that I loved, and thought it was a travesty that there wasn't a PC version, since it's a 10-player game that's played on 2 cabinets, and who has that many friends going to the arcade at the same time? It needed to be online!

So I decided I was going to create a clone of it. The big hurdle I needed to figure out was how to make a realtime multiplayer platforming game that kept clients in sync while also compensating for latency. My implementation worked by having both client and server keeping copies of the last 60 frames of game state, and the client would merely send their inputs and a time stamp (Really a frame number) to the server, which would then go back to the frame state for that number and re-simulate the game with that input. It would also stream the current state (It was only ~300 bytes) to other players with their inputs, which would also do a similar re-simulation.

I even made it mostly cheat-proof. There's no hidden information (All players see the exact same screen), but I figured a modded client could simply see what other players have done, then send inputs with time stamps in the past to put themselves into an advantageous position, but I prevent that by making the server reject inputs older than 250 ms.

But...after getting all that working, and basic platforming working...I got bored. Never touched the project again.

EDIT: I've got another game I worked on and actually got to the MVP part, but it needs a heavy refactor and I just haven't bothered. Mainly because I hate writing and testing front-end code, and I feel like I've already written it once and don't want to write it again. I haven't bought a domain for it yet, thankfully. I'm going to insist on a .game domain for it, which is like $400/year.

No, I think it's just that actually shipping projects is harder than one imagines it, and the glow wears off relatively quickly.

This is not really ADHD but simply the fun part of new projects. The exciting start vs. the grind. Is the difference between 17 abandoned side projects and an overnight success ten years (or more) in the making.

This is a good way to look at it. My issue is that I hate acquiring all the stuff to learn something when I know there is a high likelihood of losing interest after a few days or weeks. I’ve done this far too many times and got really sick of it. It feels so wasteful.

Maybe this is where a lot of my stress comes from. I need that outlet, but I suppress it to avoid collecting future trash or losing money selling a bunch of like-new stuff (and having to deal with the process of selling things all the time).

I called this Opportunity FOMO for myself. I always wish to jump on the bandwagon with the next idea/project instead of sticking to the one I currently work on.

I wrote a short blog post on this a few weeks ago: https://baduiux.de/posts/opportunity-fear-of-missing-out/

I do like learning things, but I wish I could retain better. Abandoning hobbies has set me back in that way, making it harder to pick up more advanced interests. It feels like lost time. I have needed to restart instruments and various maths several times. Perhaps a proper system based on spaced repetition could help, but organization is a hurdle

I think this is perfectly valid. Why waste the resources until you've proven it out?

great work

That’s why I’m writing pure html and css in 2025. These sites can last a very long time. I just wrote about this a couple weeks ago:

https://joeldare.com/why-im-writing-pure-html-and-css-in-202...

I would not subscribe to your new app that is not yet finished when you have a previous product that was cancelled without fanfare.

Yes! Build a "platform". I learned that as well. Also saves your from having to come up with snazzy names for your "new product" as you can just name it after its function, notes.mydomain.com

You can do that for the odd small tool, but you can't launch GreatNewThing™ without having it's own full domain!

Except it never gets any users.

I suppose the plus side to spending months rather than days on projects that never go anywhere is I have fewer domains. Only 7 here. Sigh.

I do that, but I’m never satisfied.