Ask HN: I am overflowing with ideas but never finish anything

My own personal 'hack' has been focusing around a core and doing things fast. I've done a range of things but they've always been roughly relevant to the same field, so I can apply what I've learnt previously onto new things. This has also resulted in being able to make things faster due to familiarity and having dealt with the friction points before. I put 'hack' in quotes because it was about a decade(and a lot of money in domain renewals) until things started coming together regularly for me.

Sorry if my answer overlaps a lot with others, I didn't bother reading all of them.

I have a similar personality trait. I have grown up observing this trait around me, and I think I manage it pretty well.

The best way to control an attention that gets caught from one thing to another is to try to build some habits that may give the necessary structure.

If I were to give a few advises:

* Recognize that you are already starting some things and cut yourself some slack. A lot of people do not start things on their own, and even an unfinished project taught you things, the younger you are the more relevant this is. * Understand how hard it is to finish thing. Having a clear idea about an article for my blog takes me five minutes, finishing it ranges from three hours to two days of work: redaction, proof reading, picking an illustration and all... And this is just an article, if you plan to release anything open source. Adding a decent documentation, packaging it, making sure that the architecture does not only fit a personal need, it's nothing fractional. * When you have an interesting idea you often feel compelled to "serve it". In order to not have this frustrating feeling to let it down I have a simple wiki page where I add all my ideas, one after another, with a date. I know it's there and I can come back to it one day. * Have a very high respect of yourself. Whatever you are showing online should have some degree of completion. I am strongly against "oh this was a quick idea I had" public github repositories. Whatever it is I put online, I am thinking that some people are going to judge me viewing only this side of what I did. I impose myself some level of standards. * Pick your battles. Know that you will be able to commit to two or three ideas a year, maybe keep a list of what you have achieved what idea was on your top list and what ideas you actually went through. I try to do a monthly follow up on those. * Follow up. Linked with the above but probably the hardest to put in place. Take the time to have regular meetings with yourself, this enables two things: realizing that you have actually done things (see first point), and review your idea to kind of revive the almost dead one that you find interesting.

I think that you're on to something.

Sometimes you've just gotta let your food touch.

I think you're overreacting. I didn't read that comment as "you definitely have ADHD." More like "this behavior is a trait many with ADHD have, so it is worth considering seeing a psychologist."

It sure sounds like we have the same problem. For me however there are a few things I have learnt:

1. There is nothing (medically) wrong with you. Although I should own a t-shirt saying *) may contain nuts.

2. No you don't procastinate or are lazy for that matter. You probably already moved on to the next 10 things before people can come up with that diagnosis.

3. Yes you are the librarian of the infinite library of unfinished projects. In that you do have the tendency to keep track of all the projects you have not finished and feel inadequate (that moment between projects)

But the honest problem is that projects fizzle when you solve your erebra problem. And that is usually way before anything got made. Let alone finished. Quick win is to ask yourself: What have I learned from this project? And make that the result of the project. But after doing that a couple of thousand times you start to realise: Why am I learning all this stuff if I never use it to create something.

And that is the biggest problem. All your insights never lead to anything being created and that sucks.

Possible solutions ( and I personally do all of them ):

1. Find a job/role/gig where you think of the solutions and let other people implement them. Just always remember that it is no longer your project. You might have thought of something, but without the efforts of others it will never amount to anything, ever. So as long as you can respect the work of others and your own limitations in doing what they do you will do fine. But is harder than you might expect: My rule of thumb is that the moment I think they should be able to solve something on their own I failed.

2. Find more challenging problems. I usually do this by trying to expand something that spiked my interest to make it more generically applicable or asking myself if the problem is actually worth a solution ('faster horses') and if the underlying problem is not more interesting (mobility). This has two advantages: It will keep itching longer and takes you longer to scratch. Less projects to add to your library. You might create, solving your original itch, products that are basically byproducts of the solution you are looking for. Such a product is basically what pays my bills at the moment.

3. For those smaller itchy patches it helps to promise other people something: Present your findings, write a paper, make a POC by an agreed upon deadline. Now you have to be empatic enough to want to meet their deadline and thus create what you promised with all the works that comes with it. That is your result. You also have to be selfish enough to tell people that is where you end your involvement, because it no longer interests you, regardless of the plans they have pursuing this further. That is a tricky balance to strike and I struggle at times and do it wrong.

What ever you do and maybe you have better ideas than the above make sure you get to the point were your projects lead to something being created, because that really makes the difference.