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Finish your projects

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Re: Finish your projects

#41

Post by pengaru »

Commercial software vendors don't even finish their products before shipping what's often aspirational vaporware in the form of a skinned update mechanism.

Don't get me wrong; I'm totally in favor of finishing things in the sense of doing the un-fun work of finishing instead of distracting yourself with a fresh set of problems every time you reach the un-fun finishing phase of resolving existing messes.

But it's worth noting that what qualifies as "finished" seems vastly different from what it was back in the days of shipping software on CDs and floppy disks.

You don't even get a finished automobile anymore in some cases, and we're not talking kit car prices. Tesla, I'm looking at you.

Re: Finish your projects

#42

Post by aarondf »

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…

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.

Re: Finish your projects

#43

Post by gmiller123456 »

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…

Reminds me of The Onion skit where a guy spent 15 years writing a book on ant eaters only to realize it was a horrible waste of time.

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv...

Sometimes it best to trust your personal prioritization of when and when not to work on a project.

Re: Finish your projects

#44

Post by c7DJTLrn »

I tried forcing myself to finish a personal project before moving on to the next one. I've just ended up procrastinating and getting nothing done for the past 6 months. In turn, that has created a cycle of guilt and anxiety making me not want to touch any of my projects at all.

Re: Finish your projects

#45

Post by bob1029 »

aarondf wrote: post #42
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…

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 isn't always the case, but I have found that pain is the #1 litmus test for "is what you are doing valuable". Some times this turns out to be a "you worked hard instead of smart" problem, but game theory wise one can assume that painful things are generally avoided or not fully explored.

There is a really good reason you are spammed to death with GPT chat bot clones, but have to go around like a beggar to find things that actually matter.

Re: Finish your projects

#47

Post by seabass-labrax »

I tend to have the opposite experience from the author's: I know enough about the domain to know that choices I make at the beginning could cause massive problems later on (in performance-critical software, for instance), yet not enough to know exactly where the traps are. Once the project is underway and empirical data can be collected, it's much easier to direct attention to known issues and opportunities.

By nature I enjoy the 'boring' stuff, to use the author's term, and often find a clean code-to-package CI pipeline and an up-to-date wiki more satisfying than the software itself!

I wonder what the ratio of 'non-finishers' to 'non-starters' is. I suspect I'm in the minority, but maybe someone here knows of a reliable study of this.

Re: Finish your projects

#48

Post by doingmaths »

I'm definitely guilty of not finishing projects, but I don't know that the "Just do the thing and don't NOT do the thing" is a particularly useful piece of advice. I know I should "fight for the time on the project" but willpower to do so isn't always something that's available.

And that's not a personal failing -- I might decide that tonight I want to work on my game, but then have a long day at work that leaves me emotionally and physically exhausted. It's important not to burn out on your projects too, and forcing labor on them when you do not have the spare capacity can lead to long term failure to complete the projects as well.

I think the much more valuable lens is to consider -- "Why do I work on this project? Is the joy of finishing it important to me?" If you want to finish it, and cannot, then start looking into pushing yourself to finish. If the joy is in just tinkering because tinkering is fun, then allow yourself that pleasure and don't beat yourself up for finding something you enjoy and partaking in it.

Re: Finish your projects

#49

Post by xwowsersx »

turnsout wrote: post #39

Counterpoint: do what actually matters to you. You may constantly start projects and never finish them, but that may actually be serving your need for experimentation and learning. For someone else, that same behavior might be unhealthy avoidance. If "finishing" a project (software is never done) is something that matters to you, find ways to work towards that goal. I've shipped plenty of things, but also walked away…

I agree with your idea, but I don't see at as a counterpoint. I don't read this post as making an axiological statement about the would-be reader's work (I may have read it wrong though!). To me, the article assumes that "finishing" the thing is something the reader already values, or at least does in many cases. And the author is offering some advice for how to stick to it and power through even when there are painful stages along the route to what the reader already wants. I see this as trivially or obviously true too, namely the idea that not every moment or every ounce of work on the way to something you yourself really deeply desire will feel like elation and fun.

Re: Finish your projects

#50

Post by doingmaths »

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 projects'.

I think we all naturally have these projects in mind, things we would pursue if we had the time. And I think we could move towards a world where we optimize a little less for maximizing profit, and a little more for maximizing our leisure time. It will take some structural reforms, some trust, and a whole lot of learning by doing, but I'd much rather live in a world when I had less stuff but more freedom to pursue things I enjoyed.

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