Yes a combination of what you mentioned, plus the possibility that it'll all fail (which happens 90% of the time), which wasn't really something you thought about when you were still building.
Ask HN: Why is nearing completion so demotivating?
131–140 of 171 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is nearing completion so demotivating?
#132Find a partner. Often I found that where the fun stops for you, it begins for someone else. I personally like creating PoC or solving complex problems. The whole story that comes afterwards, it being sales, marketing, polishing or any other stage is killing me inside, but it is often the start of someone else's challenge.
Re: Ask HN: Why is nearing completion so demotivating?
#133I believe that the journey can be exhausting and fatigue as well. The closer you get to completion, the longer you’ll have worked on the project, the more like you are to be fatigued. Any long journey will take its toll on you.
Re: Ask HN: Why is nearing completion so demotivating?
#134When your project is finished, the dream is dead and the reality is born. The death of a dream is like the death of a friend. It's probably been with you for a long time -- longer even than the length of the project. A dream is the manifestation of what's possible. When it is over, the possible diminishes very quickly and you are left with what actually is. Will people respond well to your project -- in the dream sta…
This is exactly it. Tens of my personal projects have died in this stage. It was always much easier to move on to the next dream. There is always the next big problem that could use a solution. Why not build when it is what we do best? Rinse, repeat. I took a break from side projects for several years but recently got back to it and couple weeks back finished building. It is the same story all over again. Same feelin…
I think this is why it's super useful to have a cofounder for a side project: there's someone to let down (besides yourself) when you give up too soon.
This is also why funding (and employees) helps a lot of startups. Not so much the money itself, but an ever growing consortium of people who literally have a vested interest in the thing continuing. It's harder to give up when people are counting on you.
If your side project isn't the kind where you want to make money in the end then you're going to need to have higher intrinsic motivation I suspect as none of these pressures will likely come to bear and help you stay motivated.
Re: Ask HN: Why is nearing completion so demotivating?
#135I can only speak for myself but I consider myself to be some sort of pro academic. I should maybe consider a career at a university. Because one of my biggest flaws is that I love starting projects and following them through until I've learned everything new I can squeeze out of them.
Then just before the finish line when I feel that I have a good understanding of the project my energy and willpower falters and my focus is drawn to new projects.
Re: Ask HN: Why is nearing completion so demotivating?
#136I’ve built a dozen apps over the past 10 years, most of them commercial, and I always encounter this dip that you describe as I approach the finish line. A number of commenters are suggesting it’s the fear of what comes next that is causing it, but I don’t agree.
For me, it’s so regular that I can see it creep up on me — all the major features completed, only the polishing and websites to complete, and it starts to hit me, trying to drag me down.
Steven Pressfield wrote a short book called The War of Art that talks about this. It’s common to any creative endeavour, whether you’re writing a novel or building a product. I’ve written a novel as well, and it hit me at the same time and in the same way — near the finish.
You need to power on through and come out the other end. All the problems and issues others have talked about will be there waiting, bit that’s a different can of worms.
Re: Ask HN: Why is nearing completion so demotivating?
#137I am in the same boat right now - a project is 90% complete but I have no motivation to do the last 10%. I blame laziness, but really it boils down to a few things:
1. The enjoyment of building - I quite enjoyed building this project, and once it's "done" that joy ends.
2. The fear of failure - what if it's a flop after I publish?
3. The hatred of sales - I'm a programmer, I don't want to deal with selling the product!
Re: Ask HN: Why is nearing completion so demotivating?
#138One cautionary note: Beware pushing/powering through incipient burnout, rather than addressing it. "Emotional debt" can be hard to pay off. I've had valuable projects that I was very reluctant to touch again, even years later.
Re: Ask HN: Why is nearing completion so demotivating?
#139“It's not that students don't "get" Kafka's humor but that we've taught them to see humor as something you get -- the same way we've taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke -- that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey…
In short, "One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die." - FK
Re: Ask HN: Why is nearing completion so demotivating?
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to this HN discussion you're probably not covered by GDPR: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16751791
Thanks for that! That actually makes sense (not something that's expected to be true of laws...) So by my reading of the advice linked there: If an individual is in the EU, they're covered by GDPR - whether they're a citizen or not. If a company is based in or does business in the EU, all it's users are covered by the GDPR - whether they're in the EU or not, and whether they're an EU citizen or not. That's much less…
I think it's even less reachy than that - if a foreign multinational has a subsidiary in the EU, I don't think the parent company is covered by the GDPR unless they directly deal with subjects in the EU. So they can compartmentalize the parts of the company that must deal with the GDPR, by redirecting every EU user to the EU subsidiary.