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Okay, I am going to share my secret for finishing. I discovered this late, but am glad I did. Are you ready for it? The secret is this: don't start something

Okay, I am going to share my secret for finishing. I discovered this late, but am glad I did. Are you ready for it? The secret is this: don't start something till you finish the last thing, no matter how poorly. This goes even at a "micro" level, so don't start distributing the load on servers till you finish the last thing (interface), no matter how poorly you finish the last thing. Now you have the secret. Go forth and complete.

kris-s 10y ago
Totally agree, my mantra is "The enemy of my main project is all the other projects." Starting is fun and seductive, finishing is a grind, but boy does it feel good when you do. It's how I finished a novel, a massive YouTube project, an iPhone game, etc.
- startupdiscuss 10y ago
  Well put. I first "discovered" this trick with writing myself.
stewbrew 10y ago
I beg to differ. Sometimes things need to settle down or you have to gain some distance. This can take months or even years. If you don't have an external deadline, you can afford finishing things when you are actually ready for it.
- startupdiscuss 10y ago
  This is actually a good insight and I agree with it. However, I don't think it contradicts the essential statement. The wiggle room is in "however poorly." So you might want to edit it, but finish the first draft. You might need to tweak it, but finish the first version that actually works.
- freehunter 10y ago
  My wife gets frustrated when I set aside a side project or a hobby for a while and pick up a new one or return to an old one. She says she finds it difficult to support my new hobby knowing that my old one is languishing. But the way I see it, the day I have to work on a hobby, the day I need to put hours into a side project, that's the day it stops being a hobby. That's the day it stops being a side project. On that day, it officially becomes a second job, one that likely isn't paying me anything. I have two half-finished Rails projects, a half-finished Arduino robot, and a guitar that hasn't been played in a couple of weeks. And you know what? They've all given me some joy, and have been set aside temporarily when that joy started to feel like work. That's the reason I switched majors away from computer science. I like programming. I don't like being forced to program. I don't like making software for someone else. It's a hobby for me. Not a job.

kris-s 10y ago

Totally agree, my mantra is "The enemy of my main project is all the other projects." Starting is fun and seductive, finishing is a grind, but boy does it feel good when you do. It's how I finished a novel, a massive YouTube project, an iPhone game, etc.

startupdiscuss 10y ago
Well put. I first "discovered" this trick with writing myself.

stewbrew 10y ago

I beg to differ. Sometimes things need to settle down or you have to gain some distance. This can take months or even years. If you don't have an external deadline, you can afford finishing things when you are actually ready for it.

startupdiscuss 10y ago
This is actually a good insight and I agree with it. However, I don't think it contradicts the essential statement. The wiggle room is in "however poorly." So you might want to edit it, but finish the first draft. You might need to tweak it, but finish the first version that actually works.
freehunter 10y ago
My wife gets frustrated when I set aside a side project or a hobby for a while and pick up a new one or return to an old one. She says she finds it difficult to support my new hobby knowing that my old one is languishing. But the way I see it, the day I have to work on a hobby, the day I need to put hours into a side project, that's the day it stops being a hobby. That's the day it stops being a side project. On that day, it officially becomes a second job, one that likely isn't paying me anything. I have two half-finished Rails projects, a half-finished Arduino robot, and a guitar that hasn't been played in a couple of weeks. And you know what? They've all given me some joy, and have been set aside temporarily when that joy started to feel like work. That's the reason I switched majors away from computer science. I like programming. I don't like being forced to program. I don't like making software for someone else. It's a hobby for me. Not a job.