On the contrary; since they are right next to the thing that needs work you always encounter them Just In Time. And you can just delete them really easily if you decide they're truly stale. This may not lend itself to planning or management visibility, but for a small private project I prefer them to the overhead of separate tracking.
Actually, I'm increasingly finding that because my work on these types of projects happens sporadically, it's easier for me to get stuck not remembering what I did or need to do.
I don't have anything resembling an issue tracker, but I've begun collecting brain dump style notes in either a gist or the Apple notes app.
I'm the same. I fully expect all my side projects to be interrupted / paused for months at a time. This for me this does include a ticketing system, version tracking, rationale documents, wiki etc aren't optional for me.
Some of my side projects have more process around them than my work projects because the side projects will definitely get shelved at some point and resumed much later. Future me is always happier when the process was applied.
On the contrary; since they are right next to the thing that needs work you always encounter them Just In Time. And you can just delete them really easily if you decide they're truly stale. This may not lend itself to planning or management visibility, but for a small private project I prefer them to the overhead of separate tracking.