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Always a starter, never a finisher.

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Re: Always a starter, never a finisher.

#11
My 2c.

Unless you make this post disappear somehow it will hurt in the future. Or help if you learn from this - now.

Recognize that the way you finish matters more than its beginning. Spend time considering that.

Find someone much like you, but ready to change. It cancels the guilt, offers empathy.

Submit to regular, voluntary accountability. Be brutally honest.

Got new ideas? Write them down in the moment of inspiration. Writing it down cancels urge.

Once success is established with its reward, pattern is broken.

Always choose what is right at every step.

Re: Always a starter, never a finisher.

#12
I had this problem, and this aproach helped me:

First, indentify if you are stuck. Create metrics if needed ("if I don't advance this cuantitative variable in a week, then I'm officially stuck").

Second, when you are officially stuck, you need to make a formal and conscious decision to stop fully or keep going. Your current projects should have this 2 posible states: Stoped (with an optional of "until X happens") or Running.

PS: You also need to formally determine where the finishing line is. Otherwise, you'll never finish.

Re: Always a starter, never a finisher.

#13

Just like eating bad food and watching TV, being productive is a habit. Get in the habit and you'll find yourself up early on weekends working on your projects. The way to feed the habit is with success. To experience successes, I have found: - first minimize your goals. The less to do, the faster to succeed. The fastest way to finish a feature is by removing it from the plan. - work on one project, maximum two. Any…

I think this is the opposite of the solution, the problem isnt doesnt sound like motivation to work, as mentioned they are always working on and excited by 'the next big thing', Its certainly something I relate to.

The problem is 'feeling productive' and 'being productive' are different things, its very easy to be working weekends and nights on your project, its very hard to realise that the chances are the work you are doing wont make a difference to anyone, most importantly yourself.

The second part I agree with, when someone does give a shit what you are working on, 1. You will take the time to make it better, 2. You have already solved the problem of a busy but ineffectual work cycle, move your motivation from 'the next best thing that will be awesome' to 'something that someone other than me cares about right now'

The best way I could recommend to do this is to look at all your projects that are on your plate, pick the one that will take the shortest amount of time for other people to start using and caring, release it tomorrow even if it sucks, start pushing it out to everyone you know, get some feedback and get into a cycle of working off peoples feedback

Re: Always a starter, never a finisher.

#15
My father is an engineer, and he always taught me that there's no such thing as a good job half completed. The problem with his perspective is that it is uni-dimensional, and with good reason: if you half-build a bridge, people are going to be sad. He's an engineer and he's got to finish the bridge.

However, my father didn't decide that a bridge was required, nor did he choose the ideal location for the bridge based on urban planning and geographic surveys. And let's be clear — he's not going to be out in the rain, assembling raw materials into a structure either. His job would start with the design and continue with the project plan, and possibly end as a consultant or one of a team of over-seers. He's not finishing the bridge, but his role was necessary to get the project from where it was to where it needed to be when someone else would take over.

Technical projects are often the same. I'm generalizing, but you see a lot of supporting evidence which suggests that you have your visionary, your architect, your builder and your "last 10%"-ers. One person can be all of these things, but almost never all at once on the same project.

What I learned when I came of age was that I am a Starter. I have good ideas and the ability to rally others to a cause. I've evolved the ability to network and communicate. I've forgiven myself for not being a Finisher, because there are lots of people that hate starting and love to finish. There are loads of people who will never start and hate finishing, but they are the core team during the middle.

I suggest that you stop seeing your inclinations as a problem and start thanking your lucky stars that you have a regular flow of potentially great ideas. The main skill you need to develop is your ability to kill off the bad ones early so that you can focus your passion and evangelism on the winners.

Chances are, if you got bored it wasn't going to turn out well anyhow. Listen to what your subconscious is trying to tell you.

http://www.humblepied.com/jessica-hische/

Re: Always a starter, never a finisher.

#16
I think you're all missing the obvious solution. He should tell all of us what he is working on and where he is stuck.

Think of the collective brainpower on here, surely someone will be able to point him to a solution. Or the consensus should tell him that the problem he is facing has no known solution.

He wrote the entire post without even hinting at the idea. Is he afraid that we will find some flaw with it?

Re: Always a starter, never a finisher.

#17
post #16

I think you're all missing the obvious solution. He should tell all of us what he is working on and where he is stuck. Think of the collective brainpower on here, surely someone will be able to point him to a solution. Or the consensus should tell him that the problem he is facing has no known solution. He wrote the entire post without even hinting at the idea. Is he afraid that we will find some flaw with it?

It happens to all projects. Road blocks are within not without.

Re: Always a starter, never a finisher.

#19
post #11

My 2c. Unless you make this post disappear somehow it will hurt in the future. Or help if you learn from this - now. Recognize that the way you finish matters more than its beginning. Spend time considering that. Find someone much like you, but ready to change. It cancels the guilt, offers empathy. Submit to regular, voluntary accountability. Be brutally honest. Got new ideas? Write them down in the moment of inspira…

Thanks for your input here, your comment is actually very helpful. I realise that if I don't learn from it now, the post could come back to haunt me. But that's just it, it holds me accountable, which is the motivation I need to sort it out.

Re: Always a starter, never a finisher.

#20
post #4

Interesting comment, "start your day as a producer". I've seen this around before, but I'm not sure what it means. How would it work? Would you wake up, and have _one_ hour to produce something? Would it be related to your project? Writing a blog post about your project? Or is that beating around the bush, and actually not producing anything worthwhile? Does the thing that you produce, have to mean anything? Or does…

No, what you produce doesn't have to mean anything. I remember one week I decided I wanted to write real-time tic tac toe in using socket.io and node.js. I did it. It was those small projects that let me start tackling bigger and bigger projects.

After a while, when you can see that you're making clear progress towards a goal its easier to slip in to the producer mindset.

What's hard to get past in the beginning of learning to program is that you're going to spend 80% of your time googling, 15% debugging code, and 5% writing code. It can feel really unsatisfying to spend 2 hours googling a problem you're having and the solution taking 3 minutes to implement.

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