You should always have a side project! Even if you are an executive!

Do you remember those days when you were a student or a junior and had so much time and so many ideas? When you were trying to learn and create something that would improve your professional skills so as to build your career? But then you grew up, got promoted multiple times and stopped doing that.

Well, I want to tell you that you should start doing it again!

In the modern world, technology is fast moving. It’s just more probable that you are currently behind the cutting-edge in your field, not on top of it. Even when you know all the latest trends and techniques, most likely, you still have not used them in the real environment. Likewise, the same is applicable as we know that only reading about “How to play a guitar” won’t make you a good guitarist.

Whenever I am hiring a junior, I always ask what kind of personal project they have and what they do in their free time.

You can’t make a good judgment only by reading their resume. Most of the time they were still learning, so they worked in a team with other people or had direct supervision. You can’t really tell what exactly their role in a project was.

Even when a candidate tells us what exactly they accomplished, you should always remember that people lie or at least stretching the truth very thin.

A personal project for a student is a very good indication that one is very interested in the field and excited to put extra time into it. It shows what exactly interested the person and what she wants to learn more.

Why is it different when you pass a seniority level in your career?

Yes, I get it, at a young age you had much more free time to do things like it. But you also had much less experience, so you had to learn way more and spend 80% of your time on trying and failing.

Today you know how to do stuff. You know how to build and sell a commercial product from a napkin idea. Even when you need to learn new technology, a tool and best practice, you don’t need merely as much time as someone that is completely new to that field. So you can use your knowledge and your skills more efficiently and acquire new expertise much faster.

You might be thinking: “Why would I do that when I am already a professional in my area?” I have a record of successful projects. I read professional publications; I go to conferences. I know my shit! Why the hell would I work at home on the same stuff I do while I’m at work?

My answer is short. You must practice!

Have you ever seen a professional athlete who doesn’t practice? She also has a set of records, has won championships and medals. She already knows how to perform with the best in her field. And yet she does practice every single day.

And it’s not only about staying in a good physical shape. Chess players also practice.

You get stuck in your professional bubble and don’t really know how to execute outside it.

I’ve seen it many times how a successful Sales Executive with 15 years in his field can’t perform as good as before on a new job.

You need to practice to actually try something new and understand how it works through your own sweat. We learn the best when we make mistakes and fix them. You can’t make a mistake by reading an article in a journal nor visiting a conference. You can’t make a mistake when you don’t actually try it.

At your current job, you are too bound in your current technology or business model. From time to time, you have a chance to experiment and try something new, but even then the fear of failure at work makes you less likely to risk with using something new.

Your personal project gives you the freedom to learn without judgment.

If you are a tech person, you have two options to follow. First, you can participate in the open-source community and either help with the existing projects or start your own. Second, you can build a tool or a plugin and either give it out for free or sell it.

Building a successful commercial product is not a point. You don’t need to generate tons of revenue or have a huge customer base. It’s about starting, finishing and learning in between.

However, the quality level should reflect your professional level. Build a product that people can use and prove again that you can do it.

It’s harder for business

There is no “open-business” community as far as I know. But I think it would be great to have one. Where marketers, strategists, and salespeople can participate.

But there are still options for you to explore.

You could tap into e-commerce and sell some products online. That might be a good project to try out the latest concepts in b2c digital marketing, content creation and audience. That might also align with your passion in some areas you are not directly dealing with at your daily job.

Having a startup idea? Go for it! Remember, you don’t need solid revenues, nor a complicated product or VC funding to build it. You do have enough money to hire a couple of freelancers who can help you with the visual and the technical side of the project. However, after that, it’s all on you- strategy, sales, and marketing. Who knows, it could become big and you might decide to go all-in with it. It won’t be the first time when a side project turns into a profitable business.

Such investment of your time and possibly money will have a positive impact on your life.

Working at your own pace on the things you are passionate about would bring you more comfort and a space to enjoy your work.

There is no politics and no bureaucracy in your personal project. There is no one demanding you to do the work you don’t agree with, no one taking credits for the work you’ve done. It’s all yours and you can’t lose in this game.

When failure makes you stronger and success brings you joy what is there to lose?

My last personal project was a file sharing service fileloo.com. There are many services like that, but I wanted to create something simple that works the way I want and practice one or two new things while making it. I built it over a couple of months living with a three-month old newborn and a toddler. My schedule is packed and every minute is taken. I still don’t have as much sleep at night as I would like, living with young children.

But in the end, when I launched it, I was happy. And I still feel the joy every time I think about it or use it.

I highly recommend that you take action on that idea for a personal project that has been in the back of your mind, it is well worth the effort!

Related posts:

We live in a world where sometimes the more busy you are, the more important you are. The more unavailable you are, the more admirable it is because it means you have an awesome job, or an…

As you type a query in a particular search engine, press Enter to find a long list of web results that include the query term. Most users visit sites that appear in the top list of the first page…

Dead silence. Like the void of space rotating outside, it was as if sound could not travel through this ship that sailed on a stellar wind. A spaceship, far ahead of following fleets that would save…