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Finish your projects

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Re: Finish your projects

#51

Post by aarondf »

xwowsersx wrote: post #49
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 painf…

Author here: you are reading it as I intended! Not "you have to finish everything" but rather "you want to finish something but it's hard, now what"

Re: Finish your projects

#52

Post by OJFord »

BeetleB wrote: post #29
aarondf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuanced and valuable feedback, that I receive. Thank you! I think your edit was basically going to be my reply, haha. It is hard to address every side of every potential topic in an article. I actually needed help softening the tone to end up with the final version you're reading today. I'm empathetic by nature so it's easy for me to write with empathy, but I'm still prone to generalizing my personal experiences!

> You have a duty to your past self to release the project. It’s a way to honor your work and sacrifice. All the time spent on the project is time you could have spent on something else. That time was not without cost. Ouch! I strongly encourage you to read up and understand the sunk cost fallacy. In general, do not let past efforts be the guide for future decisions. I've quit a lot of projects in my life. And it was…

I think an easy to grasp version of sunk cost is 'buying is the same as holding' (modulo fees and taxes) from investing. In other words: you can spend today working on the existing project that's going nowhere, or on the newer idea that has potential. You allocate the day either way - it's not somehow less because it was left on the default option of what you were already working on.

Re: Finish your projects

#53

Post by xwowsersx »

aarondf wrote: post #51
xwowsersx wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 painf…

Author here: you are reading it as I intended! Not "you have to finish everything" but rather "you want to finish something but it's hard, now what"

Glad I read it as intended. I enjoyed your writing!

Re: Finish your projects

#55

Post by eternityforest »

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-exploring is the main motive, and generally seems pretty tied to profit.

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, maybe I'd have free time, but I'm not sure it would be leisure time, I might be hand-washing laundry instead.

We definitely need changes, and there are some amazing side projects out there.... but also, I want to eradicate the last few guinea worms, have every roof covered in solar panels that can last 70 years, and have my Google Keep notes keep working or be replaced with an even more advanced and feature rich version.

To do that, I think we would either need to start doing really big polished side projects, or we'd need to manage and reform, but not eliminate the deadlines and meetings kind of stuff.

I'm not sure we know how to run a chip fab with any other social structure. Maybe a co-op with elected leaders, or unionization, or better inspectors to be sure there's no child labor sourced parts... but we would have a lot of learning to do to make Intel open source, half the people would just say "We should ditch out of order execution, it's a security risk" and the other half would say "This defect tolerance routing that improves yield 20% is really complicated, stuff is getting too hard to understand, we can toss a few wafers if it means the tech stays human-level, and in 5 years we can probably just get rid of the defects".....

Re: Finish your projects

#58

Post by BeetleB »

Eisenstein wrote: post #34
BeetleB wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have a duty to your past self to release the project. It’s a way to honor your work and sacrifice. All the time spent on the project is time you could have spent on something else. That time was not without cost. Ouch! I strongly encourage you to read up and understand the sunk cost fallacy. In general, do not let past efforts be the guide for future decisions. I've quit a lot of projects in my life. And it was…

> Despite the strong complaints, the article isn't that bad and does have some merits. I will likewise critique your critique: Instead of creating a new thread you post directly to the author who responded to an unrelated message. Since the author is obviously responding to criticisms, why did you feel the need to expand a thread with a non-related article quotation you took issue with rather than start your own? It…

> Instead of creating a new thread you post directly to the author who responded to an unrelated message. Since the author is obviously responding to criticisms, why did you feel the need to expand a thread with a non-related article quotation you took issue with rather than start your own? It seems to me you wanted to ensure that the author read what you wrote because you felt it was particularly important for him to see it. I don't agree.

I have no idea what you are talking about. My comment is on the same topic as the head of the thread, and provides more details on that original critique.

Re: Finish your projects

#59

Post by waboremo »

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.

What happened as a result of finishing those projects?

Re: Finish your projects

#60

Post by BeetleB »

aarondf wrote: post #33
BeetleB wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have a duty to your past self to release the project. It’s a way to honor your work and sacrifice. All the time spent on the project is time you could have spent on something else. That time was not without cost. Ouch! I strongly encourage you to read up and understand the sunk cost fallacy. In general, do not let past efforts be the guide for future decisions. I've quit a lot of projects in my life. And it was…

Glad you still liked it, despite the strong complaints! I hear your feedback, but I don't fully agree with all of it. I do understand the sunk cost fallacy quite well, but thinking about the time committed can be a useful framing to help push past the fear of releasing or drudgery of the last 10%. > If you tell yourself that every time you don't release a project, the fix is not to release the project, but to stop te…

> I mean, if you never ship you're literally the kind of person who doesn't ship though

This is a bit of an "argument from extremes" fallacy. If you don't ship 90% of what you work on, but do ship the remaining 10%, then that may well not only be fine, but optimal.

My point is that saying to yourself "Every time you don't release a project, you're telling yourself that you’re the kind of person who doesn't ship." is a faulty belief. There's a whole spectrum between releasing everything and releasing nothing. Some people like myself start a lot of things (big and small), and there is no practical way to finish all of them - life is simply not long enough. For such people, not finishing 80-90% of those projects and focusing on a few that seem to have higher value is the way to go. Such a person should not (and hopefully does not) tell themselves that "they're the kind of person that doesn't ship." If they do tell themselves that, the solution isn't to start shipping everything they start, but to change their internal monologue.

I strongly recommend you get to know intricately the lives of successful creators. The majority have more projects unfinished than finished.

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