How do you stay motivated on your projects as a solo founder?

Show up and do the work. Don’t wait for motivation. That train is highly irregular.

One of the things you will quickly learn if/when you become a founder of a real venture is that you can’t depend on fancy things like inspiration or motivation. If something should be done, you just need to do it. That however doesn’t mean that you suffer through work that you don’t find interesting. Being reasonably excited about your project is necessary.

The nice side effect of just doing stuff is that motivation automatically starts showing up on its own. Action breeds momentum breeds motivation.

Waiting for motivation to make its grand entrance is for those who want to stay where they are.

Sorry about the tough love. It’s the truth.

ps - do cut yourself a little slack because this is hard to do with a full time job, unless the job is ultra low key and not taxing at all.

Solving a problem you're genuinely passionate about will always help keep you motivated.

I've also found speaking with other founders in the community to be useful. Building a product by yourself can be lonely, so it's important to engage with others that you can relate with and learn from.

I try to pick customers I care about helping and then get them involved asap. This shifts my focus from my own product to their needs, and I find it much easier to show up every day if I know folks are waiting for me to make it better for them.

(You obviously can't get customers involved in every type of idea early, but it's possible to choose ideas which allow for it.)

Solo founder here too. For me, much of my motivation issues turned out to be linked to deeper psychological baggage that probably almost everybody struggles with.

Turns out, when we are on our own, it's very easy for our subconscious fears to come at us with thoughts like "What the hell is this shit you are wasting your time with? Do you want to be seen as a weirdo? This will never go anywhere.". Again, this doesn't have to be conscious. One might not be aware of these thoughts, and they could still be there.

At first, this gets offset by the excitement the new idea provides. But the moment the first tiny obstacle starts coming our way, this voice becomes more powerful, and the temptation to escape into a juicy new idea becomes really strong. By the way, this perfectly maps on the Gartner hype cycle. Look at the graph in the "hype cycle" wikipedia article. It seems safer to jump off the cycle before the scary part, and start a new cycle instead.

Everybody struggles with this to some extent, but the more you are choosing the road less traveled, the worse it can get. So for entrepreneurs it is much harder, and for solo founders it's really something else. We are social creatures, if no peer is around to validate your life decisions, your ego will start whispering messed up shit into your ears.

The best cure I found against this, apart from socializing with peers, was mindfulness meditation. I needed to tame that sucker in my head. The book "10% happier" by Dan Harris is a good introduction to the topic if you are starting from scratch.

One of the reasons I like to ship early (and often) is that it gives you the opportunity of talking to current and potential users.

Doesn't have to be a finished product, ship a coming soon page, ship a newsletter while you're building, or build entirely in public.

This interaction has always been hard for me (being an introvert) but very valuable in terms of project success and very motivational.

Either you know you're on the right path, or you realize where you need to pivot.

Set a deadline for your MVP. Make it challenging enough without being reckless about the timing. This will give you the feeling to start. This will give you the itch you need.

hi, i basically keep my motivation by smoking marijuana and i want to tell you it helps a lot, i recently found a company https://mmjcardonline.com/ that told me about how marijuana helps you to relax in your hard days and i want to say this was my best discovery, i don’t know if you smoke or no but you can read if interested

Make a work schedule and keep to it.

You should be building habits; motivation is almost irrelevant.

I always ask myself, "What's the alternative? Just drift in life and be a loser and let it pass me by? Or am I going to grab life by the balls and live it the best way possible?"

When I put it that way, the choice is clear. I don't see any alternative other than creating a successful startup that works for me and takes my life to a whole new level.

You work even when you're demotivated. That's the whole point. Just make it muscle memory to sit down, grind out some good work, and engage customers. Make it your long-term lifestyle.

Whether you succeed or not, just do the work first.

When you take care of the input, the output takes care of itself.

Hey Beggers, I too have really struggled with this. I run a successful creative agency by day and have struggled for months to get a side project off the ground from lack of motivation, until recently...

The biggest shift for me has been:

Finding a cofounder, this has helped find a level of accountability

Having a consistent weekly catchup has forced me to take action to avoid feeling bad when catching up.

Forcing myself to spend 10 minutes minimum on the project in the morning. 10 minute makes no difference to my day so there’s no excuse, once I get started I end up getting on a roll and getting hours in.

And getting up earlier to allow more time has helped a load

Hope that helps.

I think if you work on a problem you have that helps alot. You can relate to it and if it makes you fired up then you won't give up. For me I've had good and bad warranty experiences. These bad one's stick out to me and I feel like I've been scammed and misled. Every day I think about someone else being misled like I was and that makes me want to go even faster to make sure bad warranties get called out on and other people don't have to experience what I did.

You answered your own question. Motivation follows action, it's never the opposite. So how do you stay motivated? You keep doing.

Two reasons for my motivation:

1. I want to be my own boss.
2. Money.

As for why I want to be my own boss. I love my job. I'm a web developer and have been for 10 years now. I'm very good at what I do, but I've had a rough life just making it as a web developer, working for tyrant bosses, bosses who knew nothing about their own business, and at my current job: I had trained a supervisor to do his job, and once he thought he knew everything, he turned on me, and tried to get me fired. In fact, he not only turned on me, but he got three other bosses: a "senior" developer, his boss who oversaw my department and her own, and the VP of operations of my entire department to turn on me.

I had to go into a room at least two times a week to hear about mistakes I made. This was ongoing for a year. No one else that I worked with was being called into this room. Three of the bosses would hop on the phone, while he would sit there, staring at me, as I cringed in fear. I had to explain why I made this mistake, what led up to it, how I was going to prevent it from happening again. I loved my job. I really did. Great pay. Amazing benefits. And especially the somewhat creative freedom I was allowed, to an extent. They moved me across the country, and here I was, about to get fired. I did whatever I had to do to keep my job, and I did just that, at great cost. I even had other co-workers make the same mistakes I had made and nothing was happening to them. No reprimands. Nothing. So I did the only thing I knew to do: I worked hard at not making mistakes. I did whatever I had to keep my job.

But I would no longer be as loyal or trusting. I also knew I was "going no where" at this job, but they paid me very well. So I started my own business on the side. I started figuring out where my company's flaws were, their weak points, and I started building a variety of different web applications, and still to this day, am working on multiple projects that compliment my company's product. I probably won't ever be able to make a replacement product, but I'll damn sure try.

Anyway, karma would eventually kick in, and the "senior" developer thought he would blackmail the company into giving him more money. He got fired. The boss of the one I trained lost her position and control over my department. The boss who is the VP? She still oversee my department, but is more concerned with her own projects than anything I'm doing. I'm her money maker and that's all she cares about. As for the boss I trained? I put in a request for some time off, and he approves it. That's about the extent of his job.

So... I know that was a few paragraphs full, but... I never want to lull myself into a sense of security nor do I want to work for anyone anymore other than my own clients who are using my products, so IndieHackers keeps me motivated. Reading the interviews. Reading the forums every so often really puts things into perspective that-- if these guys are doing it, why the hell can't I?

I've not made enough at all from any of my products to quit my day job, but I know I'm on the right path and it feels right. I have to keep going because other than keeping my day job as my money maker that pays my bills and affords me to keep doing what I'm doing, this job allows me sooo much time to keep working on my own business. I don't want to do anything else. And that's how I stay motivated.

Part of my dream is to someday go into my day job knowing I want work but don't need to work there. By the way, what came from four bosses trying to fire me for almost a year? I mentioned and highlighted earlier that keeping my job came at a great cost. I was diagnosed by a doctor with PTSD. I now live with severe anxiety, but I got a medical marijuana card from the ordeal and smoke weed daily and legally to deal with it.

I think if you believe in the idea and you enjoy the work around building out your idea, the motivation will come naturally. The hardest thing is getting started. You have to just keep reminding yourself and knowing in your head that no matter what, you will gain something from this journey. Be it; learning new technical skills, learning about marketing, enhancing qualities or skills, meeting new people. That's not to mention if the idea will bloom into success and profit. You will 100% take something away from the experience and journey no matter the outcome. But the first step is just getting started 😁😁 I believe you can do it!