It all started when my friend Tonya Mork posted the following tweet about focus on twitter the other day.
The tweet triggered something I've been battling with for a long time which is applying focus on side projects. I have a hard time choosing which side project to do. Tonya replied with an interesting take:
So according to Tonya, there are two types of side projects. One of them is healthy, and the other is not so healthy (why just cannot I say bad? ). Let's try to visualize to digest it a bit.
What about an example?
This is how I internalized and digested what Tonya just said . Let's assume this how the human brains looks ( I have a feeling that I will be murdered by neurologist)
If I understood Tonya correctly, then the healthy mode for side projects would be something like this.
As you can see above, we are hitting different neurons. Therefore there could be a possible stimulation that get generated by
Where an unhealthy mode of side projects could look like this
What's happening here that we are diverting the energy from the vital work and hitting the same neuron. An excellent example of that if you are a coder by day and your side project at night is coding as well.
However, I still have a couple of questions:
- What if I am not utilizing my creatives neuron or creatives cells 100%, can I still use them again?
- What if over time and by building experience, I am outsourcing my creative work to be autopilot neuron, where I don't need that much energy? Is that possible?
Finally, This is one take on side projects. I hope that I cover different aspect of side projects in the future.