Ask HN: How to start coding my product?

This.

Fear is a multi-faceted and very powerful, yet often times extremely irrational, emotion that can destroy you even before you get started. A few people here have brought up Seth Godin's Lizard Brain concept, but what's missing from it is a deeper dive into fear being a huge blocker to accomplishing something. "Just ship it", or "ship early and ship often" are techniques that are of great help but they're farther down the pipeline than getting started.

Of immediate and initial importance is needing to understand why you are getting in your own way - what is the cause of the fear that is preventing you from executing your idea? Is it a fear of failure, of success, of being judged once you finish, of making mistakes, of having too much responsibility, of making the wrong decision along the way? It's not a question that you can answer immediately, and unwrapping fear can sometimes lead you down a path where the only thing you have feared is more fear (sounds like a very familiar quote, eh?).

When it's someone elses idea that you're working on and you're not the one in charge it's much easier to meet and often exceed expectations b/c many of those fears aren't possible outcomes (to the trully paranoid mind they might be, but since you can accomplish tasks at work you don't fit the bill for this).

It's not easy to understand the 'why' of our psychopathologies. Everybody has their own that they struggle with. Some people create coping mechanisms and live within the pathologies, and some people overcome their pathologies through a combination of technique / drugs.

Two books that I found of personal help on first helping me understand the 'why' of my personal struggles and then provided helpful techniques to break through them are:

"Do It!" by Peter McWilliams http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Get-Off-Our-Buts/dp/093158079X (there's a free version @ mcwilliams.com but the website seems to be down)

"The Procrastinator's Handbook" by Rita Emmett http://www.amazon.com/Procrastinators-Handbook-Mastering-Art...

Hire me as your boss. We write a contract. The contract stipulates that you have complete ownership of the idea, I get profit sharing for payment, but if you don't execute at a reasonable time pre-negotiated then I can throw the idea out there to have someone else get this project coded--with you still retaining complete intellectual ownership of the idea but they are added to the profit sharing pie.

=)

Logically your reaction will be heck no because you can do it yourself and keep all the money to yourself, but you have just then created a paradox because this is exactly what makes you execute and seems to be what is preventing you.

That was all in hypothetical fun of course but I think would work in practice. Sometimes people don't need to find or "hire" co-founders, rather a "boss". But to overcome your biggest challenge, which is yourself, @JonnieCache and others here definitely know what they are talking about.

Ian Ayre (and others) have challenged the study that Derek Sivers based his 'keep your goals to yourself' talk on - http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/are-public-...

I think the OPs problem is primarily about fear [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2185833], not instant gratification. It's necessary when building a website to get a VPS and S3 account (or equivalent) to host the site/files on. I completely understand what you're getting at by suggesting that putting easy things ahead of hard things gives a false sense of accomplishment, and I tend to agree. I just think there's something different at play here for the OP to focus on.

On a related note, I know that Derek frequents this board often and I've had the pleasure of learning from some of his insights along the way. I'd love to hear his reaction to the above article or a link to such a post from the HN crowd.

Accountability - find a buddy (or anybody) that is remotely interested in what you are doing. Your boss (and even other people you interact with) probably asked you when it's going to be done and you are eager to "please". You may be one of those people that feel that if nobody else cares about your project, why should you. So find a person to work with on this project ... maybe a future client or user with the problem you are trying to solve.