Why you need something of your own

In life, there are many things we do with others. We work together, we live together and we hang out together. Even the smallest things we do are based on combinations of opinions and preferences from ourselves and the people around us.

Taking these opinions and preferences in consideration before making decisions lets us create an environment in which we can all feel good. It gives us the feeling that we’re all together as people.

After doing this for years, you need something that’s yours. Fully yours. Something wherein everything you do, is your own decision.

For some people it’s a feeling or thought in the back of their mind. A thought like “What if I could just do what I want?” or “What if I didn’t have to listen to my boss’ opinion just once?”. Others do not even realise it until years have passed.

I believe that working on something that’s yours helps you to get more confident in what you can achieve by yourself. When everything you do is done in a team or instructed by a boss, you can (subconsciously) not know what you’re capable of alone. Making something all by yourself leaves you with a feeling of pride.

Having hobbies or side projects also gives you new interesting subjects to talk about. It can be much more fun to talk (and hear someone talking) about how you spend your weekends building that thing you’re really enthusiastic about, than it is to talk about your job.

Last but not least, people will come to you for advice when they want to make something similar. They would remember you as that guy who built his own bicycle shed and come to you for advice.

So how do you decide on what to do?

The hardest thing for people who don’t spend much time on hobbies is to think about what to make or do. A good source of inspiration for me has always been to remember activities I enjoyed doing when I was younger, such as:

• Customising mopeds
• Making things with Knex
• Playing computer games

By looking at those activities I realised that I barely ever physically built anything anymore. This realisation led me to building a lightbox a few years ago. Last year I bought a racing bike which I customise sometimes.

Always after making something or after working on one of those projects, I feel really satisfied. It’s like when you’ve finally done that big pile of laundry, but with more enjoyable results.

Another way to get inspiration is to think of activities that you get to do at your job, but not as much as you would like. An electrician might love to make a custom wall lamp, while he mainly has to build electricity meter cupboards at his day job. A software developer might be writing backend code all day, while he actually really enjoys making web animations.

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Pursuing a project based on work that you do at your daily job might even grant you a business opportunity. If your boss is willing to pay for it, you might as well be able to sell it yourself.

Finding time for your newfound activities

I hear you “how the hell am I going to find time for this?”. Truth is, it’s hard. Although it depends on the type of activity or project you’re going to work on, for me it works to take an actual day or afternoon instead of “If I have some time left this weekend” to work on it. The lightbox was built in a few hours on a Saturday afternoon.

Like with most activities, it’s easiest to divide them into smaller tasks. Planning on making a shed? Spread it out over a few weekends. Make the drawings first, buy the wood the next weekend and so on.

And when you’ve planned to work on it, go tell people about your new project! Tell them what plans you’ve got, what you’re going to use it for and how you hope it’s going to turn out. They might give you advise and here it comes:

You’re free to use that advice in whatever way you want.

Feel the ‘hummm’? Tell them.
Good advice? Tell them.
Good advice but doesn’t suit your ideas? Tell them.

Because this is your project, it doesn’t matter to them if you do listen to their ideas or not. They will respect your choices for at least one reason: it’s your project. I’m going to make a laptop stand now, see ya!

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I’m Sander Visser. I work as freelance designer & developer under the name Sanderfish and I build products like Wordeys. I design in Sketch and code in HTML, CSS, JavaScript (Vanilla, React, Meteor, Vue), Ruby on Rails and PHP. Lately, I designed and built the front-end of Cribber, worked on Broaap and on Shakabookings.

Looking for me in other places? Find me on Twitter @fishsander or visit my website at sanderfish.com.