Latest / Career Skills with Fexingo: Hard Skills, Soft Skills, and Future-Proofing Your Career / How to Build a Side Project That Actually Teaches You Something
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this marketing analyst named Priya—she worked at a mid-size e-commerce company in Chicago. About two years ago, she decided she wanted to learn Python and SQL, but not through a course. She wanted to build something real. Luna: I love that instinct. What did she build? Lucas: She built a bot that scraped vintage furniture listings from a few marketplaces, estimated resale prices, and flagged underpriced items. She didn't even plan to sell anything—she just wanted an excuse to code. Luna: Right, a 'learning project' as opposed to a 'shipping project.' I think a lot of people confuse the two. Lucas: Exactly. And Priya's story is interesting because it's not about the bot—she never made any money from it. But six months later, she had a portfolio of Python scripts, a working SQL database, and a clear story to tell in interviews. She landed a data analyst role at a larger company. Luna: So the project itself was almost irrelevant. It was the skills she built along the way. Lucas: That's the key insight. A lot of people start side projects with the goal of 'building something cool' or 'making money on the side.' But if the real objective is skill acquisition, you need to design the project around that. You need a learning contract. Luna: A learning contract? Tell me more. Lucas: Before you write a line of code or sketch a design, you write down three skills you want to end up with. Not vague ones like 'get better at coding'—specific ones like 'I want to be able to query a relational database with joins and subqueries.' Then you design the project to force you to use those skills. Luna: So Priya's contract might have been something like: one, scrape data from a web page; two, clean and store it in a database; three, build a simple pricing model. Lucas: Exactly. And the project itself doesn't have to be original or impressive. It just has to expose you to the muscle you want to build. Let me give you another example: I know a product manager who wanted to learn UI/UX design. He didn't build a new app. He redesigned his own kitchen cabinet layout in Figma. Took him two weekends. He learned layers, frames, components, and basic prototyping. Luna: That's almost too simple. But I bet he remembers it better than if he'd watched a tutorial. Lucas: That's the learning-by-doing advantage. But there's a trap: the 'tutorial hell' where you follow along with a course but never build anything original. Or the opposite trap: you start a project that's way too ambitious, get stuck on some infrastructure problem, and never actually practice the skill you wanted to learn. Luna: I've been there. I once tried to build a full-stack web app to learn React. I spent two weeks configuring Webpack and Babel and never wrote a single component. Lucas: That's exactly the kind of failure a learning contract prevents. Because if your contract says 'I want to learn React components,' you don't start by writing a build pipeline. You start with a single component, even if it's just a button. The project is just scaffolding. Luna: So the project is essentially a curriculum in disguise. Lucas: Right. And you have to impose constraints. A deadline, a budget, a scope limit. Because without constraints, you'll tend to over-engineer or avoid the hard parts. Priya gave herself one month. If it didn't work in one month, she'd scrap it. That forced her to make decisions, not perfect them. Luna: That's a good rule. I've noticed that when I give myself a tight deadline, I learn more because I can't afford to get stuck on one problem for too long. Lucas: And there's another dimension: public accountability. Priya blogged about her process—not because she wanted to be a blogger, but because writing about what she learned forced her to understand it well enough to explain it. Luna: The Feynman technique in the wild. Lucas: Exactly. So let's say you're a finance professional who wants to learn Excel VBA. Your learning contract might say: 'I want to automate a monthly report that currently takes me two hours.' The project is a VBA macro that does that. You don't need to build a trading platform. You need to automate one report. Luna: And then you can put that on your resume as a concrete achievement—'Automated a monthly reporting process, reducing manual work by 8 hours per month.' That's way more powerful than 'Completed an Excel VBA course.' Lucas: That's the hidden value. A good side project gives you a story. And in interviews, stories beat bullet points every time. But there's a subtlety—not every skill is best learned through a side project. Some skills benefit from structured instruction first. Luna: Like what? Lucas: Take accounting. You can't really 'side project' your way into understanding deferred revenue or consolidation. You need to learn the framework first. But after you've taken a course, a side project could be modeling a mock company's financial statements to internalize the concepts. Luna: So the side project is the practice, not the instruction. Lucas: Right. And I think the most common mistake people make is using side projects as a substitute for instruction when they actually need both. Priya learned Python syntax from a free online course—maybe ten hours. Then she applied it in the project. That's the sweet spot. Luna: So the learning contract should also specify what you'll learn first, before you start the project. Lucas: Exactly. Let me give you a framework. Step one: identify one skill you want to build. Step two: write down three specific sub-skills—things you can't do today that you want to be able to do in three months. Step three: design a project that forces you to practice all three. Step four: give yourself a hard deadline and one constraint—like 'no more than two hours per week' or 'I must publish something by the end.' Luna: I like the time constraint. It forces you to be efficient. Lucas: And the final step: after the project, do a retrospective. What did you actually learn? What gaps remain? Update your learning contract for the next cycle. That's how you turn a side project into a skill-building engine rather than just a hobby. Luna: I think a lot of people abandon side projects because they feel like they're not making progress. But if you frame it as learning, not output, it's easier to persist. Lucas: Yeah, and the output doesn't have to be perfect. Priya's bot was buggy and she never used it. But she learned what she needed. I think that's the lesson: the project is a vehicle, not the destination. Luna: That reminds me: if this episode helped you think about your own side projects, or if you've ever built something that taught you a lot, we'd love to hear about it. And if you find value in the show, you can support us—it's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's the smallest possible way to say 'this was worth my time.' Lucas: Yeah, listener support is what keeps this ad-free and focused on content that's actually useful. So if today's framework clicks with you, consider it. And even if not, we're glad you're here. Luna: So back to the framework. One question: how do you decide whether a skill is worth learning through a project versus, say, a part-time job or a formal class? Lucas: Good question. I'd apply a cost-benefit test. If the skill is something you can learn in 20 to 40 hours of focused practice, a side project is probably the fastest route. If it's something that requires a credential, like a CPA or a PMP, you need formal instruction. And if it's something that requires real-world complexity and stakes — like negotiation or project management — a part-time job or volunteer role might be better. Luna: So side projects are best for technical, hands-on skills. Not for everything. Lucas: Exactly. And even within technical skills, some are more 'projectable' than others. Data analysis, coding, design, writing—these are great for projects. Leadership, communication, emotional intelligence—those you need real human interaction to develop. Luna: But you could still design a project that forces you to present findings to a group, which builds communication skills. Lucas: Absolutely. The key is intentionality. If you don't design for the skill, you won't learn it. You'll just build something. Luna: So let's say someone listening wants to start today. What's the one piece of advice? Lucas: Write down one skill you want to learn in the next 90 days. Then think of the smallest project that would force you to use that skill. Not the coolest project. The smallest one that still stretches you. Then start this weekend. Don't plan for another month. Luna: And if you finish it, you'll have more than a project—you'll have proof that you can learn anything. Lucas: That's the real takeaway. Side projects aren't about the output. They're about proving to yourself that you can acquire a new capability. And that confidence carries into every other part of your career. Luna: So here's to building something imperfect this weekend. Lucas: Cheers to that.