What Counts as Real Signal for a Side Project?

I keep coming back to this question, mostly because I keep getting it wrong.

Not in a catastrophic way. More in the quiet, comforting way where I convince myself I am making progress, when really I am just staying busy in a safe bubble. The bubble looks productive from the inside. Code is being written. Docs are being refined. Ideas are getting clearer. But nothing outside my own head has had a chance to push back yet.

Side projects are particularly good at creating this illusion. They sit in the margins of our lives, squeezed between work, family, and whatever energy we have left at the end of the day. Because of that, almost any forward motion feels like a win. And sometimes it is. But not all progress is equal.

The thing I have been trying to get better at is distinguishing between progress that feels good and progress that actually teaches me something.

That is where signal comes in.

The problem with fake signal

If you are anything like me, you can generate a lot of activity without ever exposing your project to reality.

Some familiar examples:

• A README that gets rewritten five times.
• A landing page that looks great but has no visitors.
• A feature that solves a problem you have not seen anyone actually have.
• Positive feedback from friends who already like you.

None of this is useless. Some of it is necessary. But none of it tells you whether the thing you are building matters to anyone else.

The tricky part is that fake signal often feels very real. Someone saying "this is cool" still triggers the reward centre of your brain. Seeing a tidy commit history still feels like momentum. You can spend weeks here without ever feeling stuck.

I have done this more times than I would like to admit.

A working definition of real signal

I am still refining this, but here is the definition I am currently using.

Real signal is any response from the world that:

• Comes from someone who does not owe you encouragement
• Forces you to update your beliefs
• Creates some level of discomfort or friction

That discomfort might be mild. It might just be silence. Or confusion. Or a polite "no". But it should make you stop and think.

If nothing about the response surprises you, challenges you, or causes doubt, it probably is not strong signal.

A simple hierarchy of signal

One thing that has helped me is to think in terms of a rough hierarchy. This is not a scoring system and it is definitely not scientific. It is just a way to sanity check whether I am actually learning anything.

At the bottom of the pile:

• Internal progress. Code written, features shipped, refactors completed.
• Your own excitement. Feeling motivated or proud of what you have built.

These matter, but they are private. They do not tell you if the project survives contact with reality.

A step up:

• Feedback from friends or peers.
• Likes, reactions, or generic comments.

This is where things start to get blurry. Feedback here can be helpful, but it is often biased towards encouragement. People want you to succeed, or at least to feel supported.

Higher still:

• Someone signing up with no personal connection to you.
• A stranger replying to a message or email.
• Someone using the thing without being prompted again.

Now we are getting somewhere. Even indifference at this level is useful. If someone signs up and never returns, that is information.

Near the top:

• Someone complaining, questioning, or asking for clarification.
• Someone trying to use it and failing.
• Someone asking how much it costs.

These moments tend to sting a bit. That is a good sign. They force you to confront gaps between what you thought you built and what actually landed.

Right at the top:

• Someone paying.
• Someone spending time or effort in a way that costs them something.
• Someone coming back on their own.

Payment is not magical, but it is very honest. Even a small amount tells you that you crossed a real threshold.

Silence is also signal

One of the hardest lessons for me has been learning to treat silence as data.

No replies. No signups. No usage.

It is tempting to ignore this or explain it away. Bad timing. Wrong audience. Not enough promotion. Sometimes those explanations are true. Often they are just comforting.

Silence usually means one of three things:

• The problem is not painful enough.
• The framing does not resonate.
• The effort required to engage is too high.

None of those are fatal. But you only get to address them if you are willing to see silence for what it is.

Why early signal should feel uncomfortable

I have started using discomfort as a rough heuristic.

If everything feels smooth, controlled, and reassuring, I am probably still operating inside my own bubble. Real signal introduces uncertainty. It creates moments where you are not quite sure what to do next.

That might look like:

• Someone misunderstanding your product in a way you did not expect.
• A pricing question you are not ready to answer.
• A feature request that does not align with your mental model at all.

These moments slow you down in the short term, but they save you time overall. They collapse bad assumptions early, before you have invested too much identity or effort.

How this shapes Sidewrks

Part of the reason I am building Sidewrks is to make this kind of signal harder to avoid.

Not by adding pressure or hustle. More by creating gentle forcing functions. Regular outputs. Small exposures. Lightweight reflection on what actually happened.

I do not have this fully figured out. Sidewrks itself is subject to the same rules. Every article, every tool, every experiment is an attempt to invite signal rather than polish something in isolation.

Some things will land. Some will not. Both outcomes are useful if I pay attention.

A question to leave you with

If you are working on a side project right now, ask yourself this:

What is the last thing someone outside your circle did that genuinely surprised you?

If the answer is "nothing yet", that does not mean you are failing. It probably just means you are still early. But it might also mean you are ready to take one small, uncomfortable step towards reality.

I am trying to do the same.