Ask HN: How to start coding my product?

Here's something I did to get past my own wall two months ago. I told myself to shut up, set aside some time each day (after I started working it was a lot easier. The only time I had was after work hours till 10 30 in the night) and then follow these steps.

1) make sure you are fresh, preferably having had shower 2) phones, distractable media all shut off and put away. block everything except your resources on the net if you have to 3) put down what you are going to do either on a small A4 size like whiteboard, or an A4 drawing paper (blank white is best to focus) When putting down the stuff do it this way a) write down the features you want to implement in your current development cycle b) draw up the screen designs if you need to c) think through the logic and put down what's needed.

Get to Work!

Methodologies are there for a reason. They do actually work. Btw, before starting. Make sure you have a clean overall view of the project as well. Not just the 'pitch'. Put down your main use cases and the features for each use case there (two levels max you can elaborate during the main cycles).

What's wrong with you is not lack of motivation. It's a lack of focus. I've dealt with it when learning languages too. I'd spend hours reading the material and come away with nothing. You need to know what you will achieve and that within a practical time frame. If you are having a really bad case of not being able to focus, I suggest a maximum time frame of two days. I currently work on a functionality a week/fortnight basis.

Good luck :)

The most effective thing seems to be getting someone else involved. That way, you are committing not to yourself, but to another person as well. If that person is a coder, then you don't have to do all the programming work yourself. If not, maybe they can help you to get around some of the shortcomings in your own skillset.

Some people just don't work well alone (I'm one of them). It's not that I can't do all of the work myself (I can), but just that I don't enjoy it. I've learned to accept that, and then to get around it by bringing others into my projects at an early phase.

All you can do in that situation is step back and remind yourself that this project probably won't change the world but might be fun to make. Consciously work on replacing the grandiose fantasy with a more realistic one: Imagine yourself ... coding a neat little Rails app in your free time! Staying up late to fix an annoying bug, and then feeling satisfied when you've fixed it! Not being a billionaire but being a guy who made a cool little web app!

And then sit down and start coding, even if you're not really in the mood.

On one recent project, I got going by knocking out a rough plan in Pivotal Tracker and then doing some pair programming on some portions of the code with someone I hired on oDesk. Having booked someone for a couple of hours a day for a week or two meant that I got started, and by using them only for small portions of the functionality meant that it didn't cost too much and I was motivated to get the other bits done myself that were dependencies for the next bit of functionality I was going to be working on with my pair programmer.

I'd say write 1 of the many features your trying to work on. It could be because you're overwhelmed with the whole project.

Also, it seems like you have a "sheep" mentality rather than a "wolf" mentality (when your employers asked you to make an app but wont make one for yourself). If you can recognize it, you can most likely change it.