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Finish your projects

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Re: Finish your projects

#151

Post by benatkin »

rocho wrote: post #120

I found this paragraph so relatable: > Personally, I like to put a single song on repeat for hours and hours, days even. It helps me zone in. Why does this admittedly strange behavior help me? I'm not sure exactly, but I've known it to be helpful for more than half my life. I like to get up early before the family is awake, close Slack, put my phone in Do Not Disturb mode, and work. I even put a Post-it note on my mo…

Hmm who told him that was a good idea? I get talking proudly about it but unless there's a good reason it feels like a bad feedback loop.

I am a little obsessed with songs at times and even I can't stand listen to the same song more than 10 times in a day unless I was trying to memorize it or something.

Re: Finish your projects

#152

Post by Zanfa »

rocho wrote: post #120

I found this paragraph so relatable: > Personally, I like to put a single song on repeat for hours and hours, days even. It helps me zone in. Why does this admittedly strange behavior help me? I'm not sure exactly, but I've known it to be helpful for more than half my life. I like to get up early before the family is awake, close Slack, put my phone in Do Not Disturb mode, and work. I even put a Post-it note on my mo…

Sometimes I put on a TV show I’ve already seen playing in the background to help me focus. Something easy like Scrubs or How I Met Your Mother, where you really don’t need effort to keep track. It can play in the background for the whole day and it somehow helps me get in the zone, but not always.

Re: Finish your projects

#153

Post by rmuratov »

mach1ne wrote: post #140
rocho wrote: post #120

I found this paragraph so relatable: > Personally, I like to put a single song on repeat for hours and hours, days even. It helps me zone in. Why does this admittedly strange behavior help me? I'm not sure exactly, but I've known it to be helpful for more than half my life. I like to get up early before the family is awake, close Slack, put my phone in Do Not Disturb mode, and work. I even put a Post-it note on my mo…

Interesting that music works for you. I’ve noticed that besides just white noise, music significantly degrades my work results. I might produce similar amounts of content line-wise, but the solutions are of much lower quality when I listen to music. As a result, I only listen when work feels too painful and I’m okay with decreasing my output.

For me it is listening music without any words. I have one special track that enables "productivity mode" for me. If there any lyrics I can't concentrate and listen to words instead,

Re: Finish your projects

#154

Post by marc »

I still struggle with this, but I’ve become better at it.

What I learned is that “the last 10%” really is about half of the work. The solution is to reduce the scope. A lot.

Not only will it make it easier to finish the project. It also allows you to get real-world feedback a lot earlier. Which is both rewarding and informing. Two things that will help you push your project forward if you choose to do so.

Re: Finish your projects

#155

Post by emodendroket »

anoy8888 wrote: post #81
jhp123 wrote: 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

I apply that mentality to my job. If I’m just goofing around at home I don’t “have to” do anything.

Re: Finish your projects

#156

Post by emodendroket »

interroboink wrote: post #96
aarondf wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lashed myself to the mast (so to speak) and forced myself to finish projects that I would've otherwise walked away from, and I'm so so glad I did. > You can free yourself from this pain without lifting a finger. Sometimes the cost of doing things is pain. I was going to say the cost of doing _great_ things is pain, but honestly, the cost of doing anything is usually some level of pain.

It's fascinating seeing the varied (and sometimes quite opposite) replies. I think a good chunk of this comes down to one's personality. I've had an internal notion of "healthy masochism" for a while — much like what you're saying, where pain is part of the process. And if you go through it enough, and taste the final reward enough times, you almost start to feel the pain as a good thing, or a reward on its own. On t…

I mean don’t most of us fall on either side of the divide at different times? Pushing myself through weight lifting to resolve knee pain feels worth it. Finishing a goofy side project I’ve lost interest in doesn’t.

Re: Finish your projects

#157

Post by belugacat »

eternityforest wrote: post #55
doingmaths wrote: post #50

I'm an anarchist --- wait hold on! --- not like "The Purge" kind, but the "mutual aid and share what you can" kind. I genuinely believe that if we operated more on a "people will produce the tools, food, and art they want to produce, and will improve their working conditions if given the opportunity" mindset, and less on a "hit this deadline so your boss makes a buck" mindset we'd be able to finish more of our 'side…

I'm all for mutual aid and sharing, and I am definitely not an endless growth capitalist, I want people to have time and resources to make art and tend their gardens. But I sure couldn't produce the tools I want without making use of the work of profit driven people, simply because advanced tech is a lot of work, takes hundreds of people, is too big for anyone to understand and thus is almost never made if idea-explo…

> Lots of places in Europe seem to have mostly figured the balance out [...]

> [...] I don't think I'd prefer to live in a world without Intel and Microsoft

Now guess why Intel and Microsoft aren't European companies :)

Re: Finish your projects

#158

Post by drawkbox »

Finishing is hard so it needs to be the strongest point of the project.

When you got started you were in the open mode, playing, prototyping, dreaming and iterating.

When you finish you have to move to the closed mode and have an internal editor that says "ship" and "cut that" or "move to an update" and that is a difficult ride. Sometimes people don't finish simply because it is too painful for a labor of love to be trimmed, but it is the skill you need to ship. It sucks but is.

What you have to do there is revisit the love/play that initially got you to the idea and project.

See your project in the world/market and feel the original feelings of when you started it. Don't focus on what you had to cut or didn't meet your expectations, focus on what did and head to post-production and ship.

Ultimately we are only what we ship to the world, no matter how much you have in development or your adventures. If it isn't where you want to be improve it, but also learn to love each ship as that is a major step. It is a joy when what you envisioned comes out as you wanted or better, when it isn't, make changes and updates.

Both "work with a high degree of quality" and "finish strong" are good areas to strive for, but "finish strong" is where it is at.

Re: Finish your projects

#159

Post by outsomnia »

"Finish your projects", finger wags cheerful guy full of certainties, paid by large American corporation that makes money from your finished projects and doesn't care what happens to you before, during or afterwards.

Re: Finish your projects

#160

Post by richardw »

interroboink wrote: post #82
richardw wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren’t you kinda telling someone how they should write a post? Even though you start writing most sentences with I, it comes off as what they should rather do. Which, you know, is fine. I would maybe have {insert similar advice here} :) Actually I do have a contribution, inspired I think by _why. Rather than telling them how to write, just write. I don’t do that enough myself. On writing, I think strong points often…

> Aren’t you kinda telling someone how they should write a post? Well, it is not my intent, but I take your meaning (: I suppose I do draw some fuzzy line between presenting someone with information or perspective, which they may or may not choose to internalize, and telling someone what to do. It's a struggle: I want to share and try to be helpful, but I don't want to be evangelical about it. Likewise, there's chall…

With you on finding balance and considered points. That’s my instinct in general. However (and feel free to see if this lands with you) I think I’ve found that the ones that work are super direct. For example, Joel Spolsky had absolutely confident articles that might or might not be perfectly correct for all situations (eg “Things you should never do, part 1”), but the confidence means there is one message in one article. I consider that article a principle to balance against other principles. But it’s not written as if it should be balanced and that probably made it more successful.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

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