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#pet-projects#productivity#RePeaks#psychology

Cognitive Debt of Pet Projects: How I Wanted to Freeze Everything but Unfroze RePeaks

There's a special kind of fatigue that can't be cured by weekends, coffee, or even "I'll sleep it off." It feels like noise. You're not thinking about anything... but something inside keeps humming.

This weekend I finally decided to do what I'd been putting off: prioritize my pet projects.

A Dozen Ideas as a Way to "Break Free"

Honestly, my pet projects aren't just hobbies. They're an attempt to break free. To prove to myself that I can build something of my own, launch it, see results.

The problem is there are already more than one or two of these "my own" projects. Utilities, mini-SaaS, philosophical stuff, projects "for the future." The result is a feeling like I have a dozen browser tabs open in my head, each one flashing notifications.

Incompleteness as a Source of Background Tension

A thought came to me that was both uncomfortable and clarifying:

perhaps the complexity in my head and background fatigue are formed by incomplete tasks.

Even when I think I'm not thinking about anything — my brain continues somewhere in the background:

holding unclosed gestalts
cycling through "I should"
reminding "you promised yourself"
comparing "how many ideas" with "how many results"

And a strange paradox emerges: I'm resting, but not recovering.

I Decided to Freeze Almost Everything

The logic was simple: choose 1–2 projects that can realistically be brought to production, and freeze the rest without guilt.

Yes, I even had a list of "this now" and "that later." And in this list, ChatGPT (as an internal strict product manager) would say: "Do the karma and philosophy projects, freeze the rest."

...And Then I Do Exactly the Opposite

But then the classic happened: I pick up one of the frozen projects — RePeaks.

RePeaks was originally conceived as a platform for selling/exchanging used gear. And honestly: it didn't show great results. Not because the idea was bad — but because of the market, user behavior, and the "chicken and egg" problem with content.

And precisely because of that background "brain process" that processes ideas while you think you're not thinking — a new connection came to me.

New Idea: RePeaks as a Platform for Routes, Hikes, and Reports

Instead of being just a "gear classifieds board," RePeaks can become a place where people:

choose routes,
organize hikes,
keep trip reports/journals,
and only then naturally buy/sell/exchange gear.

That is: not "a marketplace for the sake of a marketplace," but a community around hiking, where gear is an organic extension.

What Exactly I Want to Add to RePeaks (Feature Expansion)

1) Routes and Hikes
Route (OpenStreetMap-based map), description, difficulty, seasonality
Ability to attach GPX track (for those who've already been)
2) Hike Announcement (Planned or Completed)
"Planning to go" — and inviting interested people
or "Already went" — and adding photos + GPX
Can add a price (e.g., participation fee/guiding/organizational fee)
Photo gallery
3) Trip Report as a Journal
The hike becomes a journal with photos and notes
Author can add participants to the group
Participants publish under their own name within the report (if added by the author)
Result: a "collective trip story," not just one post
4) Gear Collections: "Pack Your Backpack"
User assembles a gear set as a collection
Each item can have weight specified — and you get the total backpack weight
The backpack itself is also a gear item into which everything else is "packed"
When planning a hike on a route, you can attach a ready backpack (and understand what you're going with)

Weekend Irony: Movies, AI, and "How Did They Do This Without AI?"

I was also rewatching a fantastic film — "Pirates of Silicon Valley."

And I kept catching myself wondering: how did they do all this without AI?

Today you can throw in a prompt — and get a text draft, a feature framework, an architecture sketch, even a code skeleton. Back then — just your head, paper, conflict, ambition, sleepless nights, and a lot of manual work.

And you know what's the funniest part? Even with AI, the main barrier remains: choosing what exactly to finish.

The Conclusion I Want to Test on Myself

It seems my task for the near future is not to "come up with more," but to:

close loose ends,
complete in small iterations,
and reduce cognitive noise.

Because perhaps productivity isn't about speed.

It's about the silence in your head that appears when you've actually finished something.

Working on pet projects or struggling with cognitive debt of unfinished tasks?