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Second Sock Syndrome

sheepamongwolves.net

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Re: Second Sock Syndrome

#11

Post by intrepidhero »

TruthSHIFT wrote: post #4

While this is definitely a problem developers face, many of the solutions in this article only apply to socks. HN, do you have any tips for completing personal projects when they stop being fun?

One of the mentioned approaches is "give up". For personal projects this is a totally valid approach. If you're doing it for fun and/or learning, finishing need not be a goal.

Re: Second Sock Syndrome

#12

Post by kugelblitz »

intrepidhero wrote: post #11
TruthSHIFT wrote: post #4

While this is definitely a problem developers face, many of the solutions in this article only apply to socks. HN, do you have any tips for completing personal projects when they stop being fun?

One of the mentioned approaches is "give up". For personal projects this is a totally valid approach. If you're doing it for fun and/or learning, finishing need not be a goal.

Sometimes this is true. I've started several side projects to learn a new programming language. So I created 2-3 projects with the different frameworks, never feeling guilty if I should give up or restart with a different approach. But the 4th time, though, it just "clicked", and I'm launching a new project with a new programming language + framework soon, and I intend to monetize it on day 1.

If I have very few customers, it's a portfolio project. If I have a bit more, it'll break even and I can dedicate some time to it. If it grows even more, I'll try to make a business out of it.

Re: Second Sock Syndrome

#13

Post by munificent »

intrepidhero wrote: post #11
TruthSHIFT wrote: post #4

While this is definitely a problem developers face, many of the solutions in this article only apply to socks. HN, do you have any tips for completing personal projects when they stop being fun?

One of the mentioned approaches is "give up". For personal projects this is a totally valid approach. If you're doing it for fun and/or learning, finishing need not be a goal.

This is valid when your only goal is to learn a thing.

But I think it's really important to remember that finishing is itself a skill that is worth learning and if you don't finish things, you gain no practice at that skill. Writing the first 80% of a hundred programs may give you a lot of skill in different domains, but it won't give you the ability to finish a program in any of them and get it to a point that it can benefit other humans.

Re: Second Sock Syndrome

#15

Post by turc1656 »

TruthSHIFT wrote: post #4

While this is definitely a problem developers face, many of the solutions in this article only apply to socks. HN, do you have any tips for completing personal projects when they stop being fun?

I struggle with this all the time. The only thing that I have found to mitigate it is contemplating the public embarrassment of the resulting failure or lack of completion. This mental anxiety usually gets me moving. Not the best solution, but for now it's about all I have.

You may want to check out a guy named Robin Sharma. You can find a bunch of his videos on YouTube. No need to pay for anything. The videos contain pretty much all you need. I'm trying to work on incorporating his ideas into my routines. What he talks about really is all about mentality and what sets apart superachievers from everyone else.

EDIT - just realized your question was specifically aimed at personal projects. The second paragraph still applies, in that case, but you can ignore the first as there won't be any embarrassment from personal projects not being completed. Oh, that just reminded me...for the personal stuff you can use one of those sites that is designed to hold you accountable by bringing in family/friends to monitor your progress and you set a clear goal with a clear penalty if you fail to deliver, and they are there to see if you follow through or not. The website I am familiar with is https://www.stickk.com/ but I'm sure there are others.

Re: Second Sock Syndrome

#16

Post by thrower123 »

I don't know specifically about socks, but with other things, I get through the repetitiveness by optimizing the process, and then each successive output gets quicker or easier. You never do it the best way the first time, and then the game becomes how can I do this with less steps or less effort, what are the tricks? Eventually you get up against the wall and there aren't anymore gains to be made, but at that point it's usually become mindless muscle-memory, and it isn't really much of a chore; it's actually usually quite enjoyable.

Re: Second Sock Syndrome

#17

Post by pjc50 »

mojuba wrote: post #9
d--b wrote: post #6

The thing about knitting is that you can't avoid knitting that second sock. In technology, we can just build a machine that copies the first sock. The problem we face is that it usually takes an order of magnitude more time to build that machine than to actually knit the second sock...

You build an abstraction layer, yes: knit.sock(.left) However, your next roadblock would be the framework itself: you throw new tasks at it that it can't handle, you start adding more states and conditionals, more lambdas and/or polymorphism until it gets so ugly you start hating the framework (and yourself) and realize you will never finish it. Time for a big rewrite. One of the essential skills in software engineer…

Knitting is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors. Once you realize that a sock is just a piece of yarn transformed through a series of knots, you can determine that it's topologically equivalent to where you started and you don't need to knit the other sock.

Re: Second Sock Syndrome

#18

Post by m_a_g »

3JPLW wrote: post #2

Cache/archive/mirror: https://archive.is/jrQ4n#selection-727.0-731.211 In short: > What is the Second Sock Syndrome? > SSS usually refers to the inability to produce complete pairs of socks. Knitting the first sock usually goes quickly. But the second one seems to drag on, never gets completed or even cast on in the first place. It's entirely a knitting blog, but surely this was posted here as it's a problem I know I…

Being creative and innovative have their downsides. Most of them find it impossible to do repetitive tasks.

Re: Second Sock Syndrome

#19

Post by kaveh_h »

The second sock syndrome is perhaps never an issue if you have a real environment of collaboration, comadrerie or even apprenticeship. Just more yarn and code by yourself is not going to cut it for long unless you have an external motivator.

The chemicals which activate our sense of happiness more than anything is the feeling when we see our friends and family have breakthroughs and achieving a goal. It’s probably a bigger factor for the one that is trying to reach that goal.

This is perhaps why twitch is so popular, even in an activity such as gaming which has been made to be fun by itself alone, socialization is a force multiplier.

I can have a sense of this at different work places, people are so focused on result and not on the process that people stop caring of craftmanship and disciplin. In the long term it makes the company rot from the inside with high turn over and lost knowledge and increase of technical debt and finally a losing business.

Re: Second Sock Syndrome

#20

Post by watwut »

TruthSHIFT wrote: post #4

While this is definitely a problem developers face, many of the solutions in this article only apply to socks. HN, do you have any tips for completing personal projects when they stop being fun?

My grandmother used to reward herself for completion. Basically, when you complete it, you buy yourself a treat or do something pleasant for yourself (get a cup of vine and bubble bath, whatever).
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