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Finish your projects

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Re: Finish your projects

#2

Post by mijustin »

I often say this to my teenagers: "You don't get any credit for the homework you thought about handing in. Even if it's not perfect, the only way to get a mark is if you hand it in."

So true for work and side-projects as well.

(I needed this reminder myself as I have a blog post I've been noodling on for 12+ months. I just need to publish the damned thing!)

Re: Finish your projects

#3

Post by hacknewslogin »

mijustin wrote: post #2

I often say this to my teenagers: "You don't get any credit for the homework you thought about handing in. Even if it's not perfect, the only way to get a mark is if you hand it in." So true for work and side-projects as well. (I needed this reminder myself as I have a blog post I've been noodling on for 12+ months. I just need to publish the damned thing!)

This reminds me of two quotes that really helped me with perfection anxiety: "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly." "Within acceptable tolerances."

Re: Finish your projects

#4

Post by mjwhansen »

> Finishing requires courage

Oh man, I feel this. I’ve been doing a lot of furniture refinishing lately as a hobby. One piece is 90% done and another is 80% done. I was working on the 90% done one today, and was planning to lacquer it today so I can put the hardware on tomorrow and be done… but instead I found a few places where I should really touch up the paint. That pushes back completing it at least one more day as the lacquer needs to sit for a day and… I just need to “ship” the darn thing. I realized it’ll probably never be 100% perfect, and that’s okay - done is better than perfect, as they say. Having the courage to create something that isn’t perfect is a skill.

Re: Finish your projects

#5

Post by mkoubaa »

Except software is never finished. If you publish something, there's a tacit expectation that you'll return to it, and it'll never be truly behind you.

Rest assured, the only way that returning to a finished project takes more mental bandwidth than the guilt of never finishing it is if it's wildly successful. And that's a good problem to have

Re: Finish your projects

#6

Post by phoe-krk »

The main problem with finishing projects is that the fun 90% of the project takes 90% of the time spent on it, and the un-fun 10% required to actually polish and release it takes at least the other 90% of the time spent on it.

And then come the issues and PRs and people requesting your attention and time that they're entitled to because they found a project on GitHub that seems to fulfill 90% of their needs, and they only require you to implement or review the other 90%.

Keeping stuff unfinished is actually not a bad idea.

Re: Finish your projects

#7

Post by aarondf »

mkoubaa wrote: post #5

Except software is never finished. If you publish something, there's a tacit expectation that you'll return to it, and it'll never be truly behind you. Rest assured, the only way that returning to a finished project takes more mental bandwidth than the guilt of never finishing it is if it's wildly successful. And that's a good problem to have

Totally! I referenced that near the end:

> Sometimes finishing is just the beginning: You release the library, the package, the SaaS product, and your work is really just beginning. Users have issues, customers have feedback, and dependencies need upgrading. In some sense, there is no finished software; there is only released software.

Re: Finish your projects

#8

Post by SCUSKU »

I always remind myself that "Done Is Better Than Perfect" whenever I think I should add some new feature to a project rather than ship it.

I think the scariest thing is accepting that if you ship something people probably won't care. It's easier to continue working and not ship it under the assumption that just adding that one more thing will then make everyone love it.

I don't know how it happened, but at some point I stopped caring about outcomes and have accepted that most ideas I have are stupid, most projects bad, but the only way to find good ones is to just put it out in the world. Worst case scenario everyone ignores it.

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