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Finish your projects

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Re: Finish your projects

#81

Post by anoy8888 »

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

Re: Finish your projects

#82

Post by interroboink »

richardw wrote: post #68
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…

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 challenging people, and there's used-car-salesman-ing them (or so).

Certainly, there are lots of different personalities banging around in the world, and anyone trying to learn has to develop some resilience to the various ways people communicate. But I guess for my part, I do gently advocate for a more gentle approach. I respect if you find "strong" (forceful?) points to be better, though. In my mind, not everyone I talk to is fully an adult (hell, myself included).

I'm reminded a little bit of some East/West cultural differences that come up, sometimes. In the West, we say "the squeaky wheel gets the oil" (i.e. being loud/pushy is rewarded) and in the East it's "the tallest blade of grass gets cut down first." In the West, argumentation follows a "I'm right, you're wrong; here's why..." adversarial approach, while in the East, it's "You're right, but I am right in an even broader sense..." Obviously I'm grossly generalizing, but you get the idea.

But anyway, thank you for your counterpoints. It's a topic that interests me.

(Aside: I don't mean to imply that you or the OP are being used-car-salesman-y; just staking out some points of reference in this many-dimensional space we're discussing :)

Re: Finish your projects

#83

Post by aarondf »

Aeolun wrote: post #76
aarondf wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing: internal satisfaction. External success, too! The biggest one recently was releasing a course on MySQL at https://planetscale.com/mysql-for-developers . It was painful to push that over the finish line, but giving up on it would have been a huge disservice.

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 ended up with the perfect shedquarters!

I also did a podcast many years ago that was hard for me to produce, but I powered through until I felt like it had reached its natural conclusion: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI72dgeNJtzr2Hd6Uscin....

I created a course teaching college students financial accounting that's made over 100k in the 5 or 6 years it's been live (http://acct229.com). That was a freakin grind that I thought about quitting a lot.

I also started doing tech YouTube videos recently and each one is a tiny exercise in finishing (and it feels great to ship!): https://www.youtube.com/@aarondfrancis/videos?view=0&sort=p&...

I wrote and released an open source package called Sidecar (https://github.com/hammerstonedev/sidecar) for managing Lambda functions from Laravel. That led to me speaking at Laracon Online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rq-yHAwYjQ) and also to being asked to produce a course for Laracasts (https://youtu.be/0Rq-yHAwYjQ?t=11759). Speaking at the first Laracon led to speaking at the second Laracon Online (https://youtu.be/f4QShF42c6E?t=21744). Both of these led to me being profiled by GitHub's ReadME project at https://github.com/readme/stories/aaron-francis. (The shedquarters is featured here!)

That interview led to another piece called "Publishing your work increases your luck" at https://github.com/readme/guides/publishing-your-work. I gave a talk on that article at GitHub Universe. That article led to... this article. And here we are!

Each of these things have 1) felt awesome to release and 2) directly increased my luck, my bank account, or led to the next thing.

Hope those examples hit home a little harder!

Re: Finish your projects

#85

Post by gAI »

anoy8888 wrote: post #80
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…

Are young people these days mentally so weak and fragile, and everyone has to be politically correct all the time so that we don’t break their fragile hearts? If you intent to finish and released the product and you fail to do so, is there a need to sugar coat it so that you feel better . You shouldn’t feel better by lying to yourself. This is how you learn and improve as a person . Accept pain .

I think you misunderstand. Unconditional self-love isn't about pain avoidance. It's about accepting the pain as a function of ego and learning from it without turning it into self-flagellation or internalizing it as a function of identity.

Re: Finish your projects

#86

Post by johnwheeler »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #79
johnwheeler wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, your post is spot on. Grinding out the last 10% of the boring details while fear starts creeping in and new ideas surface to distract you is exactly what I’ve felt. You’ve codified this in a way that I feel like I can begin to manage it better. Really great post. I’ll incorporate this one into my life going forward.

I don’t know. In video games which I personally know, “make games that are fun to make not to play.” The polish and marketing of a thing is always done better by bigger budgets which you don’t have. The math the article is missing is that shipping something polished and boring is only possible because you valued your time at zero. So even if you find success, an honest accounting could wind up making your ROI negativ…

To me, this sounds like you’re deluding yourself. You’re convinced that each time you’ve given up was a good idea in hindsight? Is this the case sir?

Re: Finish your projects

#87

Post by aarondf »

shit_game wrote: post #77
aarondf wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub did publish it, but they didn't write it! I (the author) don't work at GitHub, and they don't tell me what to write. The brief they give me is basically "write something a developer would like" and off I go. Not sure if that changes your mind, but at least now you know how it worked behind the scenes!

I'd say it does influence my opinion to be more positive knowing that you're not necessarily in the palm of Githubs hands, though my underlying cynicism still remains - I think part of that is that I've grown significantly more cynical of written pieces over the years having watched online content succumb more and more fervently to the game of monetization and opinion influence. Additionally, I think this article str…

> Tangentially, I'm curious if you could speak to what it's like creating content as a third party author? Are you given prompts regarding the tone or content of your work?

Happy to share! The first piece I wrote for GitHub's ReadME Project was called "Publishing your work increases your luck" (https://github.com/readme/guides/publishing-your-work) and I was able to write it as a result of an interview I did with them previously.

Before I wrote that first piece, I reached out to the ReadME Project and told them that I had wanted to tell the story of my past year of overcoming fear and embracing putting myself out there. They agreed that that fit in their "developer stories" section and did an interview of me, which they published here: https://github.com/readme/stories/aaron-francis.

After that they reached out and said "sometimes we have our developer stories have a corresponding guide, do you want to write one" and so that's where the Publishing guide came from. I wrote it all for them and then they have a full on team of editors, proofreaders, illustrators, etc to help push it over the finish line. Before I wrote it I gave them an idea / outline of what I was gonna say, to get the green light. Their editing has been very light, more flow than content. Like... move this sentence up; you repeated yourself there. That kinda thing.

The only time I had a piece really torn apart was this one https://handsontable.com/blog/modularizing-to-improve-the-de... and it was because my voice just didn't fit their blog at all. What you see on the site there is about 35% of what I originally wrote before it was completely toned down. It happens though! It's their blog, so it's gotta fit their voice. (Coincidentally that was the last piece I wrote for them. Ha!)

Re: Finish your projects

#89

Post by shit_game »

aarondf wrote: post #87
shit_game wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it does influence my opinion to be more positive knowing that you're not necessarily in the palm of Githubs hands, though my underlying cynicism still remains - I think part of that is that I've grown significantly more cynical of written pieces over the years having watched online content succumb more and more fervently to the game of monetization and opinion influence. Additionally, I think this article str…

> Tangentially, I'm curious if you could speak to what it's like creating content as a third party author? Are you given prompts regarding the tone or content of your work? Happy to share! The first piece I wrote for GitHub's ReadME Project was called "Publishing your work increases your luck" ( https://github.com/readme/guides/publishing-your-work ) and I was able to write it as a result of an interview I did with t…

Right on, that's pretty interesting. Thank you for sharing.

Re: Finish your projects

#90

Post by interroboink »

anoy8888 wrote: post #80
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…

Are young people these days mentally so weak and fragile, and everyone has to be politically correct all the time so that we don’t break their fragile hearts? If you intent to finish and released the product and you fail to do so, is there a need to sugar coat it so that you feel better . You shouldn’t feel better by lying to yourself. This is how you learn and improve as a person . Accept pain .

> Accept pain.

Now this is something I can get behind (:

But for the rest, I think we are not on the same page w/regard to most of what I was trying to say.

I guess you took my text to mean we should all tiptoe around everyone else's feelings all the time, to the point of absurdity ­— everyone gets a participation trophy, and nobody is allowed to acknowledge harsh reality, etc.

I actually come from the other direction: failure is real, pain is common, so why add more to that pile for others? Why give people more reasons to feel bad about themselves through some choice of words?

I suppose there's some aspect of "I waded through shit to get where I am, so you should too — it'll be good for you", and that seems ... off, to me. We are all wading through shit all the time already. Different kinds for different people. So maybe throw a rope from time to time, if you've got one.

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Aside: I don't think this is about young people these days, or political-correctness. This is about having empathy and broader perspective.

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