Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Finish your projects

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 241 posts

Re: Finish your projects

#171

Post by guzik »

About a decade ago, I was working on a mobile RPG game. I invested six industrious months, building it up to the brink of completion—just 3% short of its final version.

The unpredictability of life, however, has its own plans. An unforeseen circumstance led the company I was collaborating with to dissolve, and simultaneously, a tech startup I had founded began to show the sprouts of success. Faced with this duality, I found myself contemplating the choice between my creation and an entrepreneurial opportunity. With a heavy heart, I paused the game project to build my startup, which turned out to be an arduous, albeit rewarding journey. Yet, that unfinished 3% kept lingering on the edges of my consciousness. So, I set aside three months to complete the remaining portion of the game (1% takes the same amount of time as 99% of development?) and finally released it on Steam. The joy I felt was amazing, not because the game was extraordinary, but because I had finished what I started.

From this experience, I took away two key lessons:

- We only have the bandwidth to complete a few significant projects in our lives (2 or 3 on average). It's crucial to know when to say 'no' and choose our commitments wisely.

- Leaving a project incomplete can lead to long-term regret, more so than the effort it would take to finish it.

Re: Finish your projects

#172

Post by monissiddiqui »

joecot wrote: post #95
jmort253 wrote: post #93

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.

Sword of Damocles is a bitch and a half. Access to infinite pleasure is ineffective in the face of paranoia and misery since they don't cancel eachother out i.e they are not collinear vectors in mind-space.

Having access to Aurelius' cleaned up mind chatter is a blessing.

Re: Finish your projects

#173

Post by interroboink »

robertlagrant wrote: post #161
interroboink wrote: post #11

In general, I like the empathetic tone of the article, and I appreciate that it addresses an emotional facet of software development. But nevertheless it triggers some little part of me w/regard to telling people what they should or should not do, or what they may be proud of. I worry for someone who reads "You also have a duty to your future self to release the project" and "...you tell yourself that you are the kin…

> On an emotional level, I think it's better to start from a place of (unconditional!) self-love, and go from there, rather than beating yourself up because you're not meeting some blogger's expectations of how you should act. This will only cater for people who don't automatically apply that filter. I'd say for most people the article won't stream directly into their consciousness as fact, and they will be applying…

Agreed that most people have some thickness to their skin already, so to speak. And communication styles vary, of course.

But I do think there's something to be said for the sort of culture we want to foster. If one blogger writes something a bit one-sided or pushy, then no big deal. But if lots of them do, or most of them, then it starts to affect what we consider normal. Personally, I'd rather we don't normalize the self-flagellation approach to progress, or at least be pretty careful about it (see another comment about "healthy masochism").

If everybody is in on the game, then it can work (eg: I enjoy talking shit with friends, because we all know we're friends), but in a public forum that's harder to be sure of. I almost feel like being a giant asshole (Linus Torvalds?) is better in this space, since it's so over-the-top obvious and people can easily reject it if they don't like it. But when it's more subtle, the risk is that some small cumulative effect nudges people to actually feel bad about themselves, even if just a little bit, spread so thin it's hard to measure.

But anyway, it's a small point; I only wish the 1-ton weight were moved 1cm to the left, or so. Sometimes I write too much text about too small a topic, and it comes across overblown (:

Re: Finish your projects

#174

Post by plewd »

BeetleB wrote: post #131
Eisenstein wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand by my original assessment. I am not seeing a connection between 'the use of 'you' vs 'I' personalization and the effectiveness of the difference in using them' and 'a request to investigate a logical fallacy and the relevance of such fallacy to the article'.

And I stand by my original response: I have no idea what you're talking about.

I think their point makes a lot of sense, although they could have been less aggressive about it.

Your reply, while interesting, would work better as a standalone comment and doesn't really relate to the thread.

Re: Finish your projects

#175

Post by oreally »

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…

There are good pain points and there are bad pain points.

If you think you'll gain in other areas despite failing and it won't affect other aspects of your life (think health and mental), then by all means power through.

And keep in mind a track record of finished work is a degree of proof that no one can deny, so long as you're able to host it and let others see it.

Re: Finish your projects

#176

Post by plewd »

guzik wrote: post #171

About a decade ago, I was working on a mobile RPG game. I invested six industrious months, building it up to the brink of completion—just 3% short of its final version. The unpredictability of life, however, has its own plans. An unforeseen circumstance led the company I was collaborating with to dissolve, and simultaneously, a tech startup I had founded began to show the sprouts of success. Faced with this duality,…

I'm curious, does the 3% number for how (relatively) close you were to finishing the game come from hindsight, or did you know that number while in the process of making the game (and if so, how?)

Re: Finish your projects

#177

Post by smeagull »

kaba0 wrote: post #133
renewiltord wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Like how people are absolutely juiced to the gills on caffeine these days, riding a stimulant Shai Hulud across the sands of time.

Caffeine though really is a jackpot for humanity, it has realistically speaking no negative side effects. Even serious physical symptoms from withdrawal are basically just a week of headaches and other minor things.

It doesn't come with many positives. It steals energy from later in the day for now. Potentially leaving you an over stimulated wreck. And the level at which you notice is higher than it should be for you to dial in the optimum amount.

Much like nicotine, it fools the user into thinking the cessation of withdrawal is part of the positive effect, rather than just removing a negative you wouldn't have if not for caffeine dependence.

Re: Finish your projects

#178

Post by Claude_Shannon »

interroboink wrote: post #11

In general, I like the empathetic tone of the article, and I appreciate that it addresses an emotional facet of software development. But nevertheless it triggers some little part of me w/regard to telling people what they should or should not do, or what they may be proud of. I worry for someone who reads "You also have a duty to your future self to release the project" and "...you tell yourself that you are the kin…

In the end value of person is in what they do. If you can't constantly ship anything, you have a problem you need to solve. Painful, but you shouldn't sugarcoat it.

Re: Finish your projects

#179

Post by Aeolun »

aarondf wrote: post #83
Aeolun wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s really fair to count projects on your day job, unless you have the option of unilaterally cancelling those by yourself? And even then, you have a lot of extra external motivation (money, peer pressure, boss) to keep pushing when you’d otherwise give up. Not to say that the satisfaction is any less, but the environment seems different.

A lot of my day job work is self directed because our managers expect a lot out of us but also leave us alone to do the work (amazing right?) but message received. Let's take one not related to software at all! I turned a shed into an office over the course of many months: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/1333866090573811723 . I wanted to give up and burn it down at some points, but I powered through and ende…

> Hope those examples hit home a little harder!

They’re certainly done outside of work and make the point a lot better ;)

Shed looks fun! Now if only I had the space for it. Think 20x10 covers my entire garden.

Re: Finish your projects

#180

Post by Aeolun »

aerio wrote: post #109
Aeolun wrote: 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.

Don’t worry, there’s no conflict there. We don’t ship at my day job either ;)

But really my point was that you can still derive a lot of satisfaction from a project without shipping it.

Post reply on HN