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How to never complete anything

ewanvalentine.io

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Re: How to never complete anything

#81

Post by ttoinou »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #55
exDM69 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a similar situation to GP. I've done tons and tons of side projects but I rarely have anything to show for it. And why should I? I'm doing it mostly for the fun of coding, and striving to "ship" things takes some of the fun away. I most certainly do not want to start a start up from any of my side projects. Perhaps an established open source project at most. I do "release" my project, ie. push them to GitHub,…

I think you are doing great that you're releasing them into public, but your problem is you are not sharing it enough. I have many friends who release things like you. I'm not saying you are doing this but these guys just release and make no effort to promote them. They are afraid that they will get hurt if they try hard and no one still wants their thing. I understand this is totally valid fear and I have it too, bu…

   They are afraid that they will get hurt if they try hard and no one still wants their thing.
I'm in this kind of release, not because of fear, but because promoting project takes times (a full time job for some people) and I prefer to spend my time programming something else

Re: How to never complete anything

#83

Post by Touche »

Keeping things simple is so key. For anyone working on a SaaS startup I would strongly encourage you to do the boring CRUD method using Ruby on Rails or Django or whatever the default framework is in your preferred backend language. Don't get into the JS SPA world, that's a rabbit hole of decision making you'll never escape from.

You can put that off until you have a successful startup and I bet by then you'll realize you don't need it anyways.

Personally, my problem is that I just have too many side-projects. I have one startup side project, but I probably have a half dozen of other OS side projects that I'm either working on here-and-there or I'm at least thinking about when I should be thinking about my startup.

I think this is one of the disadvantages of doing a startup as a side project while still working full time. Even though I allocate 1 hour and a 1/2 to 2 hours a day to work on my startup I still find myself working on other hobby stuff nearly half the time :( A lot of those hobby OS projects come out of some problem I'm experiencing at my day job but don't have the time to solve in the elegant OS way I would prefer to.

I'm super happy to have read this article and plan to take the advise. No more side-projects, just get my startup shipped. ‍️

Re: How to never complete anything

#84

Post by at-fates-hands »

vinceguidry wrote: post #75
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe your answer to this is to "just work harder." To that I just have to say, 'absolutely not'. I said "ship" it. not work harder. You can even ship something you built in a couple of hours. It IS ok to not ship every single project you work on, but it is not ok to be proud of how you never ship. Personally in terms of "learning" I learned 90% of what I have learned AFTER shipping. You think you are learning but…

It still takes time. Time spent away from your loved ones, away from your friends, away from doing the things you really want to do with your time. It's great that you find meaning in learning from the market. But the only love the market can really give you is colored green.

As someone who started a side business with the thought of doing both that and my normal 9-5 until my side business took off, everything you've said in all your responses is completely accurate.

I found out that after landing six clients and taking on a ton of business, myself and my partner (who was also working a full-time job too) got in and suddenly my personal life vanished. Sure, the money was rolling in, but all of my relationships suffered, I didn't have time to do the things I really wanted to do.

Worse yet? I felt like all my clients would want the latest and greatest web technologies and applications to make their businesses run smoother and easier to manage. Nope. They just bickered with me and it was a series of struggles to get anything done. Twelve iterations of design and several "come to Jesus" meetings couldn't stop the non-stop changes for one client. Another client was stuck in a paper and pen world and didn't want to automate or change anything about the one process that hindered their business. Another wanted web design from 1995. It was maddening.

After a year, I fired three of my clients, finished two of the sites and cut those clients loose and then kept the only one that was a joy to work with.

My life returned to normal, but it made me realize exactly what you said. My LIFE is more important than a pile of money. Maintaining my relationships with my family and friends should be more important.

Re: How to never complete anything

#85

Post by yitchelle »

doc_holliday wrote: post #9

The number one thing to remember is almost no one cares what tech you used. Just get it shipped. People have built million dollar business that had it's first iteration in MS Excel, if it is useful to someone and kind of serves the purpose then that is enough for a start.

Totally agreed. It is all about your solution for removing the customer's pain. The sooner you can do that, the better it will be for you and your customer.

Re: How to never complete anything

#86

Post by borplk »

gerlv wrote: post #26

Ship daily This is the advice I can give to anyone who has a side project. Get to the point where you can show something to the users and just start adding stuff. Even if it's just two lines of code or changing the favicon - still worth it. In practice, it's harder to do than it sounds, but I've been doing it for some time and it's been going great. In reality, you won't have millions of users on day 1 no matter how…

100% agreed. I used to think that I "understood" this. But as you said it's much harder to do in practice. To anyone else who thinks "oh yeah I know all about that" without having actually done it, don't get so self-confident until you pull it off.

Re: How to never complete anything

#89

Post by DizzyDoo »

lubonay wrote: post #59
DizzyDoo wrote: post #49

I finished my side project a couple of years ago, released it, and then found I was able to quit my Python webdev job and go full time making video games. The key difference is that my project was a video game (this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwXl8lDrxn8 ) and that takes a lot of temptation to do what the OP is writing about, rewriting stuff in Haskell for example. The interesting bit when it comes to side…

Thanks for the inspiring story. One question - how hard is it to actually deal with the administrative, non-code tasks of turning your side project into your main business? I'm talking about incorporation, supporting clients, basically all the stuff that goes on outside the source code repository.

Honestly, not very much. I'm incorporated in the UK, which involves a 15 minute filling in of a web form to accomplish. I have an accountant who really helped me in the early days walk through some things I needed to know (normal stuff like save my receipts) and handles the VAT filings. The biggest time killer for me is the quarterly MOSS filings (registering European VAT) but that's a couple of hours of work four times a year.

Supporting my customers ought to be the biggest time sink, but actually, I never needed to patch the game.

Organising discounts and Steam sales and things like that takes thought, but I actually really love that side of my business.

For my current project, marketing is going to be a big deal for me, but I learned a lot doing that for The Cat Machine, and for me it's as important as anything that goes on inside my Git repository.

Re: How to never complete anything

#90

Post by exDM69 »

ttoinou wrote: post #81
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are doing great that you're releasing them into public, but your problem is you are not sharing it enough. I have many friends who release things like you. I'm not saying you are doing this but these guys just release and make no effort to promote them. They are afraid that they will get hurt if they try hard and no one still wants their thing. I understand this is totally valid fear and I have it too, bu…

They are afraid that they will get hurt if they try hard and no one still wants their thing. I'm in this kind of release, not because of fear, but because promoting project takes times (a full time job for some people) and I prefer to spend my time programming something else

Yeah, it takes a huge amount of time and effort to make your voice heard and your project promoted.

I have a feeling that naturally extroverted people do not understand that it takes a real push from other to show your work to strangers.

Same thing as the discussion about "demo days" earlier today. Those who are good in promoting are not necessarily those who are good in building projects. This applies to other aspects of life as well as it does to pitching startups.

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