I kept abandoning side projects, so I built a tool to fix the real problem

I have a graveyard of side projects. Not dramatic failures, just apps that quietly stopped. A habit tracker I was genuinely excited about. A recipe manager I used every day for two weeks. A CLI tool that was 80% done. All of them died the same way: I stepped away for a few days, came back, stared at the code, and thought, "I'll pick this up tomorrow." Tomorrow never came. For a long time, I assumed this was a motivation problem. I tried fresh starts, cleaner task lists, and better scoping. None of it stuck. Then one evening, I opened a project I hadn't touched in ten days. I spent the first twenty minutes just reading my own code, trying to reconstruct what I'd been doing. By the time I pieced it together, I didn't have the energy to actually build anything. I closed the editor and watched YouTube instead. That's when it clicked: the problem wasn't motivation. It was context. The 15-minute problem Here's what actually happens when I try to resume a side project after a break: I sit dow