Whether a Side Project Is Solid Isn't About Effort. It's About Three Questions

I came across a forwarded piece on how to judge whether someone has real potential. Not how hard they work or how many technical terms they use, but whether they can state three things in one sentence each: how they plan to do it, why it should be them, and what stops others from copying it once it works. I put the three questions to myself and stumbled through the answers.

The three questions were meant for judging whether a person is reliable and worth trusting, and they transfer directly to side projects and freelance work. Being busy and speaking jargon are both performances at the execution layer — you can leave the office late every day and talk in acronyms, and still not answer the two more fundamental questions: what exactly are you doing, and why should it be you. What actually separates solid from merely busy is whether you can lay out that decision-layer skeleton. If you cannot, it is usually not bad luck. You have not thought it through yourself. That is also why this standard is more trustworthy than how hard someone appears to work.

Over the past two years I have taken a few freelance jobs and built a few small tools. Looking back, the ones where I could answer all three questions still send traffic my way — not because they were polished, but because from the start I knew why this job should be mine and what would keep the result from being copied. Every time I hesitated over investing more hours, there was a yardstick. The ones I could not explain sank the moment they were finished. I cannot even remember now what I was after.

The standard has limits. When you are just learning a technology or just starting to build something, not having answers is normal — that is exploration, and doing first while thinking later is allowed. But when something has absorbed half a year and the three questions still have no answers, that is not an unfinished exploration phase. The direction itself is wrong, and being busy will not fill the gap. Being able to answer does not guarantee success either — luck and timing are variables nobody computes. But not being able to answer nearly guarantees it will not go far. This is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.

If you have something in progress right now — a job you took, a tool you are building, a subject you just started learning — put the three questions to yourself. You do not need answers today. But noting that you could not answer is more honest than pretending you had it all worked out.