On finishing projects
alexreichert.com
On finishing projects
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Re: On finishing projects
#2Re: On finishing projects
#3>I think there are two strategies that would help a lot: 1) writing a spec (i.e. a plan) upfront, and 2) timeboxing the project by giving myself a deadline.
I would like to add another possible strategy: watching a number go up.
Recently I have started tracking the books I am reading. I track the page number I am currently on via a dashboard I made in Obsidian, which displays a %-read for each book. I have found that "number goes up" gives me just enough of a dopeamine hit to encourage me to pick the books up more frequently than I had before.
Re: On finishing projects
#4I had a teacher once, at a training seminar, that kept repeating the phrase "We need to know what 'done' looks like."
"Done" is often a compromise. There's more that can be added, there's still burrs and "rough spots," but we need to declare it ready to go out the door, and be prepared to fully support our release.
I've been shipping software for my entire adult life, and have had to embrace this philosophy.
Just the other day, I stopped working on a "play" project that I was working on, because it was a rabbithole, and not worth the agita of fixing the fundamental design issues that I was encountering (an unfortunate by-product of my "Evolutionary Design" process, is that it's quite easy to fall into Wonderland, and I need to learn to understand that I should just let the rabbit go).
Re: On finishing projects
#5I resonate strongly with this. I found something pretty simple thats been helping me lately though. I uhh, i just force myself to keep working on it until its done. Grind it out. Work on it especially when i dont want to. Ditch those little relaxing moments for it. Wake up early to find time for it. Its torture.
And also therapeutic. I see the incompleteness of my original idea, or plan. I see that the things i declare important feel less so when i have to keep working on it. I start to permanently discard essays, apps, ideas, as i appreciate what it would really take to do them. I say no to myself far more often. I become more disciplined in my work. And more disciplined in my play. I start making more realistic plans and exit points because im not a masochist.
Ultimately i let it change me. I obviously wont grind like this forever. But the grind teaches me, and changes me, into the kind of person that finishes things. Which is mostly about learning to be more selective and less impulsive, and knowing when to play and when to put things down and truly let them go.
Re: On finishing projects
#6>I think there are two strategies that would help a lot: 1) writing a spec (i.e. a plan) upfront, and 2) timeboxing the project by giving myself a deadline. I would like to add another possible strategy: watching a number go up. Recently I have started tracking the books I am reading. I track the page number I am currently on via a dashboard I made in Obsidian, which displays a %-read for each book. I have found that…
Ooh I like that! I definitely feel that in some sense when I have a good streak of commits per day, where I don't want to break the streak. Or for workouts, it's suuuper motivating to see the number continue to go up.
But oftentimes when a project or essay is incomplete, it's hard for me to think of a good "number" to track that would be a good motivator (since i.e. lines of code, or the number of words in a draft, don't necessarily feel like a good proxy for progress all the time). I'm curious if there's a metric that would work better?
Re: On finishing projects
#7See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban
How does this help here?
Re: On finishing projects
#8I resonate strongly with this. I found something pretty simple thats been helping me lately though. I uhh, i just force myself to keep working on it until its done. Grind it out. Work on it especially when i dont want to. Ditch those little relaxing moments for it. Wake up early to find time for it. Its torture. And also therapeutic. I see the incompleteness of my original idea, or plan. I see that the things i decla…
Yeah, definitely. I know this is a somewhat controversial opinion, but I do think there's value in developing the muscle around "grinding it out". I think the tricky part (depending on your personality type) is knowing when it makes sense to give up and move on to something else.
Re: On finishing projects
#9Over the years I’ve noticed that I’m often operating in various “modes”. Some of this is related to depressive episodes, but often it’s just a more neutral ebb and flow. I’ll have a week where ideas are flowing and connections form easily. I’ll have a week where it feels like I can’t engage so deeply - like my system is cooling off after exertion.
And this is one of the reasons writing things down has been such a useful tool, and starting with a spec is something I now do religiously after spending the first half of my life just diving in haphazardly (and often not getting very far).
Those ultra productive days are often enough to get a pretty decent spec written; something I can flesh out in far greater detail than I could with a productive coding day. Those down days are now bolstered by the thinking of a version of myself that was firing on all cylinders, and solved many of the problems I probably don’t have the brain power to tackle on the fly when I’m tired and stressed for life reasons.
I feel like I’ve squandered really good trains of thought by telling myself “I’ll remember this and write it down later”. So I always start with writing. Future me always appreciates it.
Re: On finishing projects
#10I had a teacher once, at a training seminar, that kept repeating the phrase "We need to know what 'done' looks like." "Done" is often a compromise. There's more that can be added, there's still burrs and "rough spots," but we need to declare it ready to go out the door, and be prepared to fully support our release. I've been shipping software for my entire adult life, and have had to embrace this philosophy. Just the…
> "We need to know what 'done' looks like."
Ugh, yes... I wish I had internalized this sooner!