Always a starter, never a finisher.

Thanks Pete, that's a great analogy. And your sentence "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" really hits home, you're absolutely right. Thank you.

The problem comes down to programming, I decided to leave it from the post as the post is more about the situation. I know I'm not alone with this problem, and any non-specific advise offered to me from writing this post may also help others.

One of the responses includes:

"There is always another part of the project you could be working on - even if it's mindnumbingly boring (like adding i18n)."

That, to me, sounds like a poor suggestion for this kind of problem. Anything that doesn't get you traction with your project, so that any users start yabbering for tweaks and progress to keep you motivated, are likely to be a mistake.

If the problem is that you're a front end developer running up against back end problems, then you need to be spotting this well in advance or else you're wasting time.

This post gives me an opportunity to highlight the major beef I have with the "ideas don't matter, execution is everything" crowd. It's simply false. The idea, and the vision of the world the idea leads to, are what can get you through these moments. If you are working on a project that you don't truly, deeply care about for some reason, you will throw in the towel early. This is part of the reason I'm skeptical the recent YC experiment to bring on idealess founders -- to me, if you're unable to show that you can be passionate about an idea (faking it doesn't count) you're unlikely to find one that will get you through these cloudy days.

The best idea is to build something you want yourself. The next best type of idea is something you know you will be unable to rest until what sits in your mind becomes reality.

i had a similar problem: I worked on several projects parallel, had sheet after sheet with notes of "awesome" ideas, was interested in everything, read photography-blogs to recipe-sites, listened to podcasts and so on.

I lacked focus and once I shut off everything I realized that I didn't really need to know all that stuff, it cluttered my mind. With my projects, once I hit the first wall I prefered to start a new project or do something different than spending some time on fixing my problem with the other project.

so what helped for me? I tried to create an environment at home where I could focus: there is only 1 book on the nightstand and I'd rather not read one night because I'm not in the mood for this particular book than starting a new one as I once did.

I plan my meals for 1 week with the supplies I have and I only go shopping once a week, this prevents me from coming home, not knowing what to eat, losing time and energy on something trivial because once I had a problem with one project I suddenly found myself shopping at the supermarket in order to try out a new recipe I just read about on some forum.

So I just sit there and do my stuff and it has worked wonders. I write down which parts I want to have finished by the end of the week and even if I don't meet my goals I'm still going to bed satisfied because I know I couldn't have done better that day and I'm eager to get out of bed on sunday because I know exactly the night before what I will be working on the next day. And interesting enough, once I finished some small projects I suddenly was able to dismiss 90% of my ideas as not worth doing

The only book I've read on this subject is "self discipline in 10 days" and it helped me with getting back my focus. Once I snap out of my workflow and my mind starts wandering I use my "inner voice" to remind me that I have to focus and it works :)