What is Projectory?
Projectory is a website created in order to help you prioritize your personal projects. I always find myself with too many ideas and no clue which of them is best. I end up spending more time wondering about what I should spend my time doing as opposed to just picking a project and running with it. This site is a really simple way to track all your ideas and prioritize them so that whenever you have free time, you can login, check out what's on your plate, and get to work.
How does it work?
Very simply. When you create a new project, you define a few things, how challenging you think it is to complete, how much time/help/money, etc. it will require, how likely it is to make you money, and how likely it is to inspire growth / happiness / creativity / whatever it is that makes you feel good. Once you've defined these things, a terribly non-complex algorithm determines how high a priority this project is in relation to other projects.
Friends help you decide.
What makes this different than making a chart of pen and paper? The fact that other users help you prioritize. Don't worry, they don't have A LOT of control, but unlike charting things yourself, you have help in figuring out which projects are most worthwhile. Other users can invest 'support' in your project, which is like them saying "I think this is really worthwhile". Your own criteria decide most of the prioritization, but if you have 2 projects that are of similar importance to you, other users may help you decide to do one instead of another. It's a community!
WTF are 'sparks'?
Sparks are our imaginary currency. The more sparks you have, the more productive you are being. You get sparks for a whole bunch of reasons, checking off an item on one of your todo lists, updating a project's progress as you work on it, completing a project, etc. Sparks are sort of an easy way to measure your motivation, and on the home page you can aspire toward (entirely abitrary) goals that will have you working on projects like there's no tomorrow.
Can I do anything with my 'sparks'?
Yep, we've got a (hopefully) ever-more-prosperous economy of sparks here. On the support page, you can 'invest' your sparks in other users projects. Doing this encourages those users to pursue those projects (if a lot of people get behind a certain project, it becomes high priority for that user). Then, once they complete the project, they not only get bonusses for the sparks you invested, but you double your investment and get those sparks back in order to invest in new projects. So invest in things you think will actually get done and motivate both yourself and other people!