I'm on the verge of completing one of my side projects. The most useful thing that I've found that helps me stay focused is to already have users who you know will want it. By staying focused on you users and what they want, you can stop a lot of this shiny chasing before it starts.
How to never complete anything
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Re: How to never complete anything
#12[deleted]
Re: How to never complete anything
#13You are one of the 2/3rd kids who were part of the marshmallow experiment. You cant control your desire for immediate gratification. I feel that with the level that you are in, you need a bigger problem to solve, rather than start a new startup(whatever that is). I know your type, I was like you, most of my friends are like you.
Also did I mention that you are an introvert by nature (read susain cain). You are easily distracted by shiny things.
P.S. I am no expert, those are just the things that I realized about myself....
P.P.S Shit. I think I am still like you, because otherwise I would have worked on the code review that I was supposed to do....
Re: How to never complete anything
#14Offtopic: I got quite a NSFW Ad when I clicked through to this. Well depending on the workplace. But yeah not something I'd love a colleague to see over my shoulder.
Re: How to never complete anything
#15My side projects usually aren't meant to get completed. I specifically use them to try new things. If it works out, I might use the new stuff in my job. If not, I gained some knowledge.
Some of my stuff is good enough to use (as in early alpha), but doing the final 20% won't pay off anyway.
Re: How to never complete anything
#16Infrastructure wise, I'm absolutely guilty of this as well. I have found that there's a middle ground...
You (probably) don't need the microservices and the complexity that comes with it, upfront. A monolith (and the simplicity in terms of deployment, logging, monitoring, etc. etc.) will probably do early on.
However, you don't want to shoot yourself in the foot for when it turns out you do need those things.
I try to write code in self-contained modules, with well defined boundaries, and glue it together in a monolith. If/when it needs to be split out into separate services, it becomes much easier.
So, application/business logic code: keep the standards high, do shit properly. Glue code to keep it all together? Less important. You can rip that out later and move to different infrastructure with the same code.
That's very generic advice, and I seem to always break my own rule on this at some point... but I find it's a better mentality for when shit just needs to get done.
Doesn't help with tech choice in general though (and I'm often guilty of this as well...).
Re: How to never complete anything
#17I can't imagine ever shipping a side project. That's not why I build them. If I ever got to the point in my life where I do want my own company, a side project is not the way I want to go about it. Companies take a lot of work, that work has to be understood, then delegated and shared.
The technology aspect is really only 10% of it. Sure, it's the essential 0-to-1 kicker that gets you going, but once that's done you still have to find product-market fit. That quickly assumes second-job status and can wreck your personal life. I've seen it happen.
A side project means you're taking all that on yourself without any help or real guidance. Not having that help means that when you finally do ship your side project, it's probably not going to achieve the kind of rapid growth you need to make scaling up possible.
And you really need rapid growth in order for working on a startup of your own creation to beat out having a reasonably-decent job. And if you don't have a reasonably-decent job, it's way easier to switch jobs / industries than it is to build out your own company.
What I want out of a side project is the kind of deliberate practice that is often lacking in my real job. Also to chase down random mind hares that seize my interest.
Re: How to never complete anything
#18I feel you’ve been on the right track all along. Instead of doing the opposite on the programming side you might need to do the opposite on the product and selling side. Instead of building something you have no passion for look for ways to sell what you have already created. In other words see if you can productize your "auto-scaling, multi-zone, cloud infrastructure". There’s definitely other people who would like…
> In other words see if you can productize your "auto-scaling, multi-zone, cloud infrastructure". There’s definitely other people who would like to use that.
While working to build out the "auto-scaling, multi-zone, cloud infrastructure" product, OP (or anyone for that matter) will get caught up building his own front end JS framework that will address some shortcomings of AngularJS or reactjs.
If I understand correctly, the point of the article is that it's incredibly easy to lose focus of what you set out to do and get distracted by something that is not very important to your project/startup.
Re: How to never complete anything
#19Bonus reminder: If you're reading this, you'd better go work on your side-project like totally now.
Re: How to never complete anything
#20Well, learning is the fun part for me. As long as I do not have to finish I probably would not.