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Finish your projects

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121–130 of 241 posts

Re: Finish your projects

#121
post #30

To take the contrary position: give up. Your project will take far longer than you think, and you will get much less from it than you hope (at least in terms of external validation and rewards). You may feel a horrible pressure to finish it, but you are a free person and can simply choose not to. You can free yourself from this pain without lifting a finger. Go take a walk or bake some cookies instead. If you have th…

Look , 90% of good work / product won’t exist if people all give up because they don’t want to grind and only work if they feel like it . You cannot get rid of grinding in any projects even if you are passionate about it . There are gonna be times or parts of it that you need to grind. No excuse if you choose to be a grown up

Yes, but it's okay to refuse to grind. Sometimes the juice is not worth the squeeze, and it's equally grown up to give up.

Re: Finish your projects

#123
post #12
post #6

The main problem with finishing projects is that the fun 90% of the project takes 90% of the time spent on it, and the un-fun 10% required to actually polish and release it takes at least the other 90% of the time spent on it. And then come the issues and PRs and people requesting your attention and time that they're entitled to because they found a project on GitHub that seems to fulfill 90% of their needs, and they…

Eh. The vast majority of the time that you ship something, the end result is that literally nothing happens.

I can relate to this. I actually finish a lot of stuff. I mean, it’s not all polished, it’s just simple, documented, and released. Then, crickets. I either suck at marketing my stuff or I’m scratching itches that only I care about.

Examples:

https://ponder.joeldare.com/

https://www.nolific.com/

https://github.com/codazoda/https-basic-auth-go

https://calories.joeldare.com/

https://neat.joeldare.com

Okay, a few of them have some GitHub stars, and I slipped in my most popular project, but still. It’s not like my inbox is overflowing or anything. There are about a gazillion others too. ;)

Re: Finish your projects

#124

I read a very boring but useful paper on curiosity by Lowenstein. He frames curiosity as a drive (similar to eg hunger.) If you’re starting but not finishing projects, maybe it’s due to curiosity about a sub problem that you hack a solution for. But once your curiosity is satisfied and you have no other drive eg money, stars on Github, you finish without releasing it

That's an interesting take, and certainly one I empathize with. Did Lowenstein argue that not finishing projects is a negative trait as it's often portrayed as?

Re: Finish your projects

#125
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, the book was written in second person point of view (using you/your vs I/my or they/theirs). It sounded like the former emperor was talking directly to me, but later I found he was writing to himself. He never intended for his works to be published. With that in mind, it may be possible the blogger, Aaron Francis, in this case is also speaking to himself.

As an aside, when I see people beat themselves up for not being able to face their struggles with the stoic reflection of Marcus Aurelius, I want to remind them that unlike them, Mr Aurelius was extremely wealthy, one of the most powerful men in the world, and absolutely blasted on opium for most of his day.

[flagged]

Re: Finish your projects

#126
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh. The vast majority of the time that you ship something, the end result is that literally nothing happens.

I can relate to this. I actually finish a lot of stuff. I mean, it’s not all polished, it’s just simple, documented, and released. Then, crickets. I either suck at marketing my stuff or I’m scratching itches that only I care about. Examples: https://ponder.joeldare.com/ https://www.nolific.com/ https://github.com/codazoda/https-basic-auth-go https://calories.joeldare.com/ https://neat.joeldare.com Okay, a few of them…

I think Ponder is cool! I made something similar for myself, but never got around to supporting more than one text. https://blakewatson.com/scratchpad/

Re: Finish your projects

#128
post #109
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course I do not ship a lot of personal projects. That’s why they’re personal. I have enough to ship in my day job. Not shipping my personal projects is my prerogative.

Of course that's your prerogative, but their claim still holds true. If you never ship your own projects, you're still a person that never ships. What you do at your day job doesn't matter, (unless you work for yourself), if you ship while at work, your work is a place that ships. Not you.

> What you do at your day job doesn't matter, (unless you work for yourself), if you ship while at work, your work is a place that ships. Not you.

Naw, this is just a toxic take.

A project is a project, whether it's a solo one or collaborative. Whether it's "personal" or professional. 99.9999% of software that actually gets widely used (because it's useful to many people) has more than 1 coder, and arbitrarily deciding that the only "real" coding you can claim to is unpaid solo coding is a weird gate to keep.

Does the Sistine Chapel not make Michelangelo "someone who completes paintings" because he was doing paid work for the Vatican? Please.

Re: Finish your projects

#129
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh. The vast majority of the time that you ship something, the end result is that literally nothing happens.

I can relate to this. I actually finish a lot of stuff. I mean, it’s not all polished, it’s just simple, documented, and released. Then, crickets. I either suck at marketing my stuff or I’m scratching itches that only I care about. Examples: https://ponder.joeldare.com/ https://www.nolific.com/ https://github.com/codazoda/https-basic-auth-go https://calories.joeldare.com/ https://neat.joeldare.com Okay, a few of them…

Oh, you're the Neat CSS guy! One of these days I plan to use that for my blog- thank you for making it!

Re: Finish your projects

#130
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh. The vast majority of the time that you ship something, the end result is that literally nothing happens.

I can relate to this. I actually finish a lot of stuff. I mean, it’s not all polished, it’s just simple, documented, and released. Then, crickets. I either suck at marketing my stuff or I’m scratching itches that only I care about. Examples: https://ponder.joeldare.com/ https://www.nolific.com/ https://github.com/codazoda/https-basic-auth-go https://calories.joeldare.com/ https://neat.joeldare.com Okay, a few of them…

I knew I recognized your name. You created Neat!
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