The Importance of Side Projects and a Book to Help You Find an Idea for One

The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away. — Linus Carl Pauling

What type of side projects you are usually getting involved in?

I believe each of us at some point of our lives had an idea about our own business. If not seriously considering it, at least letting ourselves dream it.

💡 I love side projects because they let you step out of a zone you are working in 90% of your time, and explore your skills and personality from a totally different perspective.

My side projects were usually related to giving back my knowledge and experience to the community I belonged to. I like the feeling of being a part of someone else’s growing process.

Being a Technical Recruiter by title at my previous jobs, I launched tech meet-ups and conferences, took part in starting up HR community, organized coding workshops for girls — all of it just for fun — those weren’t my direct job responsibilities. In recent years I haven’t been doing or even thinking much of a side gigs, as I was changing career and it was, in a way, one big side project of my life.

Also, in order to give back knowledge, energy, and experience, one, first of all, needs to have some spare amount of those. It takes quite some time to get there when you are a newbie in what you are doing and gather the resource before you start sharing them. Finally, now I feel like I’m getting to the point when I can slowly start doing it.

So with getting more confident in a field, this time has come and ideas of little side hustles started popping up in my head.

📚 Artiom Dashinsky, Generating Product Ideas: Actionable Techniques for Finding New Business Ideas

Same as with the first book by Artiom Dashinsky, “Solving Product Design Exercises: Questions and Answers”, the second one “Generating Product Ideas: Actionable Techniques for Finding New Business Ideas” came out just in time for me. I was ready to start generating product ideas more proactively.

Generating Product Ideas was exactly what was happening to me while reading this book. I made a promise to myself that I’m leaving skepticism and fear of failure out of the room and just staying open to any crazy insight that crosses my mind. I decided that putting an idea on the paper doesn’t require any commitment from me, I don’t even have to tell anyone about it, and I can always scratch it off the list later.

In the same manner, as the previous Artiom’s book, this one is an actionable guide. It is super structured, filled with dozens of examples, links, and canvas for you to practice. It’s tiny but, important part about it is that you would need to allocate time for carrying out the instructions and researching all the shared resources.

My advice would be to find an ideas generating partner. Someone you can read a book together and brainstorm the ideas, maybe someone you want to start a business or a fun project with. I think, it’s always better to have two heads in those kinds of drills.

I liked the book because it really activates your brain to make you think of problems as opportunities to find for solution.

To build your generating ideas muscle you’ll have to practice, practice, practice. Ideas might not come easy at first, but it’s worth trying! The worst thing that can happen you’ll have fun and learn.

Are you working on any side projects right now? Would be great to hear what are those!

💡Thoughts that spoke to me:

Always be aware of the problem you are trying to solve.

Everything is a remix of existing things and everything can be improved.

“Ideas are cheap, execution is everything” Chris Sacca