How I Ship Side Projects Instead of Abandoning Them

I have abandoned more projects than I have shipped. The ones that made it out shared the same three constraints.

One sentence, one weekend

If the idea cannot be described in a sentence and sketched in a weekend, it becomes a second job. Cut until it fits.

Deploy on day one

A live URL from the first commit turns a project into something real. Every later change is an improvement rather than a prerequisite.

Finish, then polish

Ugly and released beats beautiful and unfinished. Polish is far easier when people are already using the thing.