9 ms·

I conditioned myself to fail

162 points by brainbun 2y ago

tolerance 2y ago
I’m starting to feel like yeah, dopamine and information overload have their effects, but I also feel like there is a certain point in life where people age out of “the extrinsic motivation force field” that insulates and propels young people toward adulthood and then leaves them once resources are reallocated to the next crop of kids who are primed to enter the labor market.
- dboreham 2y ago
  Fortunately software people will constantly keep inventing new things, new names for old things, things that don't do anything useful but nobody realizes, and on and on. It's hard to get to the end of the knowledge curve because it's not a bounded space.
mlloyd 2y ago
This hits home. I love the thrill of the build and I immediately stop caring once it's done. I love the 'rewire for action' perspective because I've conditioned myself that seeking information IS action. But it's not really, it's decision avoidance via constructive procrastination. And that feels amazing because it makes me more knowledgeable while also ensuring that I avoid any anxiety associated with execution. Gotta fix this.
CharlieDigital 2y ago
> But then when I launch, I either don’t get much feedback at all, or I get a lot of feedback for a day, which then dies down completely after the launch. The harsh reality is that most products fail and due to so many failed attempts, I kind of internalised that I’m doing effort for nothing. But then whenever there’s a sale or a positive comment, I get another small jolt of motivation and I can build a bit again. I'm the same way as OP, but I think this is easier to overcome if you build things that are useful for you or someone you know. Unless you're going to slog through tons of user interviews to properly validate your ideas, then just build it for yourself; build for fun and curiosity. There's nothing wrong with that. Despite Garry Tan's advice, I ended up building a travel planning app (initially just for personal use). I shared it with Reddit and ended up with a few thousand users. It had a big peak of active users that's settled down into a small community of very sticky users; never a commercial success. What keeps me coming back to it time and again is that I use it myself to plan my trips and every time I take it on a trip, I learn something new and spend a bit more time tidying it up or adding some missing feature.
- JusticeJuice 2y ago
  I just looked up your app out of curiosity, and realized I had just watched your video about react's inverted-reactivity model just a few hours ago! Small world!
  - CharlieDigital 2y ago
    Small world, indeed! Hope that video was useful/interesting!
MisterTea 2y ago
I have ADHD and have this very problem. I barely get to the build it phase. Mostly I get a high from just the sketch it out, type up ideas, attempt some actual build time, then think it's stupid/too niche/no one will use it/etc and move on to the next addictive idea. Still trying to figure out a way to get dopamine from doing the work and accomplishing stuff. Even if I do discipline myself and get something working, it has almost no effect on me emotionally leaving me wondering why I even bothered and it seems like a waste of time making me feel guilty. When I was younger I had so much more motivation and energy while getting more done.
golol 2y ago
I found the image at the bottom very surprising and enlightening. I wonder where it is from. It's really a new thought for me.
- carlosdp 2y ago
  It says at the bottom it's from Sahil Bloom (@SahilBloom)
  - golol 2y ago
    oh thanks I think Im blind :)
  - tchock23 2y ago
    For anyone avoiding X these days, sahilbloom.com is the most direct resource for more content like this (no affiliation, just pointing this out).
otikik 2y ago
I'm not a mental health professional, and I don't know the author. Please be assured that I don't mean any disrespect whatsoever: consider getting tested for ADHD by a mental health professional. I was diagnosed very late, since my ADHD was of the "inattentive" kind. I would not be troublesome at home or at school, like an hyperactive child would. A lot of people like this go undiagnosed. One of the traits of ADHD is that our brains crave novelty, and that is definitely one of my struggles. Having professional help makes a difference. > When I’m building something, that information is the thing coming to life in front of my eyes, every new button etc is awesome. The neurotypical version of this is called "being in the zone", which just means "enjoying what you are doing, so holding concentration for long periods of time takes very little effort". The ADHD version of this is more intense, it's called hyperfocus. The activity absorbs all of your attention. You barely feel hunger or sleepiness, you can literally go a it for days, you keep thinking about it while you are not doing it. It's useful if you happen to hyperfocus on something that is helpful to you.
- atlintots 2y ago
  how has a diagnosis helped you?
  - otikik 2y ago
    I did get depressed for a while, which is a common comorbidity. Drugs helped somewhat. Ultimately sleep, diet, family, friends and sport helped more. I am less hard on myself. My therapist helped me realize that some of the things I was blaming myself for were actually not my fault. I have some techniques to help me with some of my everyday struggles. I sometimes are able to aim my hyperfocus instead of just letting it point to whatever random thing crosses my mind - the trick there is realizing that almost anything worth knowing has some interesting nuggets, you just have to dig for them sometimes. My son was diagnosed at an appropriate age (he has hyperactivity so it has been visible for a while).
  - pithanyChan 2y ago
    Druhgs. Dropped his dealer and got the Gustav. I'm kidding. Once you know what, you can check your patterns against the standard and the deviations. Then you can approach the circuits that are fucked and identify triggers. Best to get to the roots of the reinforcement in childhood, though. Behaviors and preferences surpressed, people you didn't beat up for reasons and so on, behavioral triggers, when you held back and why. What distracted you when you did a specific thing or the other. And, of course, the standard stuff, what were you rewarded for and did you really care about that thing yourself? Might take a while but it'll be worth it.
pithanyChan 2y ago
> But then whenever there’s a sale or a positive comment, I get another small jolt of motivation and I can build a bit again. There's your solution. Positivity regarding your productivity, which is imperfectly normal, fuck your mental health. No sale, no comment, no problem. Find something that rewards your productivity or tech savvy. Put your projects on git, you'll get forks and stars (maybe). Maybe pieces will get adopted elsewhere. Talk about how you did what. Grow, help others. Do the opposite, hack something, for example, or reverse engineer something that'll be rewarding by itself: "holy shit, thatt's how they did it?". If you don't have "it" internally, get it from elsewhere.
inSenCite 2y ago
Well, zero criticism IS a form of criticism so I don't blame the author for not being motivated after the fact. I'd even say its the worst kind of criticism because it leaves you with nothing to build next. But I think they are highlighting an important thing here that most of us struggle with...building is fun, progress is discrete and clear, the feedback loop is very tight. Selling and marketing to people sucks, its clunky, the feedback loops are variable, and if you're inclined more to being an introvert it is very exhausting. I'm not sure the author is conditioned to fail as much as they are just more inclined to build.
- tithe 2y ago
  Agreed, building something is just the first step. One of the marketing struggles I've had is just getting people to care. I did have a bit of an "If you build it, they will come" attitude because I had confidence in the quality of the work...but even that seems to be irrelevant if you can't get people interested. As an introvert by nature (extrovert by necessity), I wonder what I'm missing that others seems to grasp innately, because the consequences are fatal for an entrepreneur if you can't convince others to at least try the thing you're offering.
  - inSenCite 2y ago
    I think it just boils down to that most of the time we are just plain wrong about what people want badly enough to change what they are doing already. Our other fallacy is that quality of work matters - like yes, kind of, but it matters far less than finding and fixing an "important" problem. How many times have you encountered a piece of software that is utter garbage from a ui/ux/engg. perspective but gets used ALL THE TIME? plenty of b2b examples of this including back ends of banks. They are awful, but they work. The business solves a very real customer problem and the tech is just a supporting (although still critical) act. As long as the problem gets solved, the tech. does not really matter. There is obviously more nuance to this vis a vis software maintenance etc. but when starting up, the tech should matter to you less than finding a valid problem.
ph4evers 2y ago
Very much relatable. I have dozens of high effort GitHub repos that I didn’t touch after launching it. For me it works by sparring with friends to really grasp if something is a viable long term idea or not and then stick to it.
scarface_74 2y ago
I’ve found that I like the thrill of designing a project as I get older. But not building. By design I don’t mean UI - which I suck at. I have experience up and down the stack from requirements analysis and pre-sales, enough project management to get by, back end development, database, cloud architecture and “DevOps” [sic] and creating deployment pipelines. I’m not bragging, I’m just old (50). I would have to hire someone to do any front end work except ironically hosted call centers. I can do all that myself for a large project and for smaller projects I could simplify the “DevOps” portion. But knowing the work involved, I would rather lead a team at this point in my life and work with the “business”, project managers and people who want to be heads down. Honestly though, the one thing I wouldn’t be good at anyway is marketing and sales and that’s the most important part of getting a project off the ground.
- dboreham 2y ago
  > wouldn’t be good at anyway is marketing and sales Shift perspective: Consider these things to be an optimization problem. People buying your thing is the output from some undefined function. You get to supply inputs to that function. Now sales and marketing is revealed as being about modeling that undefined function such that you can pick more optimal inputs thereby improving the output. Now traverse the gradient.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    While I’m not interested in marketing, my focus over the next year will be to get better at sales. One of my best friends is in technical sales and he gave me a few books to read. I consider marketing, broad based brand awareness and “sales” to be more one on one. Of course I’m talking B2B. Context: I’m a “staff” cloud consultant at a 3rd party consulting firm and was previously a mid level cloud consultant (L5) working directly ar AWS (ProServe). I just got into consulting four years ago from hands on keyboard development + cloud architecture at smallish product companies. I’m really new to this. Currently, when I come into a project, I already know from a thousand foot view what the customer wants - the business problem they are trying to solve or the opportunity they are going after since sales has already spoken to them and I’ve spoken to sales. My job is to get them there (well now to lead a team) and to convince them that the solution I present to them is the right one. But my job is still just to convince the decision makers. Sales handles talking to the people who control the purse strings. My next goal is to convince clients they need something that they didn’t know they needed instead of convincing them that we are the people that can help them execute on an initiative they already know they want. Hopefully moving closer to the customer will provide some protection against software development getting commoditized to cheaper places (more likely) or AI (less likely)
HPsquared 2y ago
This resonates hard with me. A huge list of partially-completed projects, work stopping right around the "boring but easy finishing off work". Incredible waste. Edit: this is why we have teamwork and division of labour, btw.
ajkjk 2y ago
I tend to believe that whatever a person ends up doing is what they actually "want" to do at some inner emotional level (which they may not consciously be aware of). So this person wants to build, but after releasing things to lukewarm feedback, wants to not work on them anymore. Why would they want that? Well, that is a pretty normal behavior I think. But I would speculate... I wonder if this person is like me? Because they sound kinda like it. If so, I'd guess that they know that they're capable of a lot, so they're inspired to work really hard at goals, but that they're also mortified at presenting themselves to the world as confident and capable publicly. So they can work really hard when it's private and based on their internal self-image, but when it becomes public they have to reconcile it with their public embarrassment at who they are, and so they choose (in the sense of: their fear chooses for them) instead to hide and go back to working in private where it is safe. They are hoping for something else to happen: probably, they release one of their projects and it is so well-received, and garners so much respect, that they find a new public identity which they can step into and inhabit, allowing them to be proud of themselves and solving their inner problem. I wonder (more analogy to myself): was this person bullied or ostracized as a child, and made to feel like being confident and proud in public was shameful? If I've guessed right I hope you figure it out (and then please tell me what you find cause I could use some tips...). I wonder what they want to have happen when they release a project? What, if they had to admit to it, would their most happy outcome upon releasing a product look like? Probably it will be sort of embarrassing to even describe, but the details are probably telling: they will point straight at the core anxiety. It will be a fantasy about the anxiety being cured. Just speculating. But I would imagine that the explanation here isn't the real one, because the actual explanation will cause their behavior to completely change, instead of just building an intellectual edifice around it. (Personally I am very skeptical of any explanation that goes "because ADHD", because, what causes the ADHD? In some people it seems to be intrinsic but in lots of others it's clearly induced by something social. So is it fixable? Are there stories of it being "fixed" by solving the social issue? I dunno. But surely the goal is to somehow not live in this tension anymore: either fix the thing or let it go, and not be stuck in a loop of trying to get it fixed by some external blessing.)
- dboreham 2y ago
  Ultimately it's all a product of training data, mixed in with a few chemical global variables and some gate-level performance variation. The human brain is literally a thing that craves the input of new information, so feeling bad because that's what your brain is doing is a bit strange imho.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
thesurlydev 2y ago
First, thanks for sharing. Second, as I read this and other similar posts over the years I understand exactly what you mean. Although, in my case it's worse. I've built lots of things and left it in various degrees of completion before making it public. Sometimes, I go back and make improvements but still never launching.
hedayet 2y ago
I’m not a mental health professional, so I won’t comment on the ADHD side of things. But as a tech and business lead, I can say this trait is actually the norm; Zuckerberg-types are the exception. Most software engineers I’ve worked with love writing code. They’re good at it, they know what they’re doing, and they can make steady progress toward what they set out to build. But what comes after writing code—the rejection, the silence, the outages, the bug reports—isn’t as fun. Shipping software is easy for us (engineers) because, as engineers, we’re in total control. But landing it in the market? That’s a different challenge—one that requires skills we often don’t have. But the good news is - like any other skills, we can develop this one too. I have observed significant improvement in myself over last few years in "Landing vs shipping" as I have been working on this trait deliberately. Still a long way to go...
huqedato 2y ago
The sadest thing in this world for me is not receiving feedback on my work. Any feedback, not necessarily positive. This breaks me down every time, even now, after 25 years of experience.
- skeaker 2y ago
  I get around it by working on things for me and me alone and publishing them as an afterthought for anyone that would seek them out. I make the tool that I want to use and make the game that I want to play. This has had way better reception than I expected (but not monetarily since I usually end up publishing this sort of thing with a non-license that says something like "feel free to steal this code in its entirety if you wish") and it works out great since when things get no reception I don't care and when they do it's always exceeding my own expectations, plus I'll always walk away from it with something for me that I wanted out of it regardless of reception.
htk 2y ago
Love to read posts like this one. Honest, straight to the point, relatable, and as a bonus makes me want to do something about it as well. I hope the author keeps on writing.
jarebear6expepj 2y ago
This entire domain is bot, btw. Yes. It learned how to express in thought what a psilocybin trip was... decided to learn how to register a domain, and has established a character with which to interact with the network. TLDR; AI-cosplay is hawt. ... It's also using twitter.com links. A little outdated for 2025 models apparently.
- achierius 2y ago
  What makes you say that?
kirsebaer 2y ago
Collaborate with other people on your projects. You could do some of the initial work, and then hand it off to others to do the marketing and follow-up. You don’t have to do everything yourself.
paulpauper 2y ago
The trend towards the glorification of failure is annoying. Failure sucks for many reasons: wasted time and other resources, disappointment, worsening mental health, and so on.
yobbo 2y ago
How is "I condition myself to fail" the conclusion from the description of what happened? If there is little or no interest from the audience, then there is no action available other than changing the project and trying again.
slicktux 2y ago
That comic at the end with the dominos…I really like that! Anyone know the source?
- Brajeshwar 2y ago
  Sahil Bloom[1] frequently posts this type of picture on this Twitter feed.[2] I'm going to assume it's from his new book, “The Five Types of Wealth.” 1. https://www.sahilbloom.com/ https://www.sahilbloom.com/ 2. https://x.com/SahilBloom/status/1884670271845548171 https://x.com/SahilBloom/status/1884670271845548171
TwoNineFive 2y ago
[flagged]
humility 2y ago
going through similar emotions while building, I wonder if the author’s attitude is aligned to the ‘fail rapidly’ adage. I go through the same, although I gave my landing pages a couple of weeks at least to garner feedback (no success so far). But whether it should be 2 weeks to give up on the project or 2 days is anybody’s guess imo.
s1110 2y ago
Tangential but count how many times author used "I" in this article.
demircancelebi 2y ago
Just think that you have delivered the project and lose interest before building. <insert you can't if you don't meme>

162 points by brainbun 2y ago

I’m starting to feel like yeah, dopamine and information overload have their effects, but I also feel like there is a certain point in life where people age out of “the extrinsic motivation force field” that insulates and propels young people toward adulthood and then leaves them once resources are reallocated to the next crop of kids who are primed to enter the labor market.

dboreham 2y ago
Fortunately software people will constantly keep inventing new things, new names for old things, things that don't do anything useful but nobody realizes, and on and on. It's hard to get to the end of the knowledge curve because it's not a bounded space.

mlloyd 2y ago

This hits home. I love the thrill of the build and I immediately stop caring once it's done. I love the 'rewire for action' perspective because I've conditioned myself that seeking information IS action. But it's not really, it's decision avoidance via constructive procrastination. And that feels amazing because it makes me more knowledgeable while also ensuring that I avoid any anxiety associated with execution. Gotta fix this.

CharlieDigital 2y ago

> But then when I launch, I either don’t get much feedback at all, or I get a lot of feedback for a day, which then dies down completely after the launch. The harsh reality is that most products fail and due to so many failed attempts, I kind of internalised that I’m doing effort for nothing. But then whenever there’s a sale or a positive comment, I get another small jolt of motivation and I can build a bit again. I'm the same way as OP, but I think this is easier to overcome if you build things that are useful for you or someone you know. Unless you're going to slog through tons of user interviews to properly validate your ideas, then just build it for yourself; build for fun and curiosity. There's nothing wrong with that. Despite Garry Tan's advice, I ended up building a travel planning app (initially just for personal use). I shared it with Reddit and ended up with a few thousand users. It had a big peak of active users that's settled down into a small community of very sticky users; never a commercial success. What keeps me coming back to it time and again is that I use it myself to plan my trips and every time I take it on a trip, I learn something new and spend a bit more time tidying it up or adding some missing feature.

JusticeJuice 2y ago
I just looked up your app out of curiosity, and realized I had just watched your video about react's inverted-reactivity model just a few hours ago! Small world!
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  Small world, indeed! Hope that video was useful/interesting!

MisterTea 2y ago

I have ADHD and have this very problem. I barely get to the build it phase. Mostly I get a high from just the sketch it out, type up ideas, attempt some actual build time, then think it's stupid/too niche/no one will use it/etc and move on to the next addictive idea. Still trying to figure out a way to get dopamine from doing the work and accomplishing stuff. Even if I do discipline myself and get something working, it has almost no effect on me emotionally leaving me wondering why I even bothered and it seems like a waste of time making me feel guilty. When I was younger I had so much more motivation and energy while getting more done.

golol 2y ago

I found the image at the bottom very surprising and enlightening. I wonder where it is from. It's really a new thought for me.

carlosdp 2y ago
It says at the bottom it's from Sahil Bloom (@SahilBloom)
- golol 2y ago
  oh thanks I think Im blind :)
- tchock23 2y ago
  For anyone avoiding X these days, sahilbloom.com is the most direct resource for more content like this (no affiliation, just pointing this out).

otikik 2y ago

I'm not a mental health professional, and I don't know the author. Please be assured that I don't mean any disrespect whatsoever: consider getting tested for ADHD by a mental health professional. I was diagnosed very late, since my ADHD was of the "inattentive" kind. I would not be troublesome at home or at school, like an hyperactive child would. A lot of people like this go undiagnosed. One of the traits of ADHD is that our brains crave novelty, and that is definitely one of my struggles. Having professional help makes a difference. > When I’m building something, that information is the thing coming to life in front of my eyes, every new button etc is awesome. The neurotypical version of this is called "being in the zone", which just means "enjoying what you are doing, so holding concentration for long periods of time takes very little effort". The ADHD version of this is more intense, it's called hyperfocus. The activity absorbs all of your attention. You barely feel hunger or sleepiness, you can literally go a it for days, you keep thinking about it while you are not doing it. It's useful if you happen to hyperfocus on something that is helpful to you.

atlintots 2y ago
how has a diagnosis helped you?
- otikik 2y ago
  I did get depressed for a while, which is a common comorbidity. Drugs helped somewhat. Ultimately sleep, diet, family, friends and sport helped more. I am less hard on myself. My therapist helped me realize that some of the things I was blaming myself for were actually not my fault. I have some techniques to help me with some of my everyday struggles. I sometimes are able to aim my hyperfocus instead of just letting it point to whatever random thing crosses my mind - the trick there is realizing that almost anything worth knowing has some interesting nuggets, you just have to dig for them sometimes. My son was diagnosed at an appropriate age (he has hyperactivity so it has been visible for a while).
- pithanyChan 2y ago
  Druhgs. Dropped his dealer and got the Gustav. I'm kidding. Once you know what, you can check your patterns against the standard and the deviations. Then you can approach the circuits that are fucked and identify triggers. Best to get to the roots of the reinforcement in childhood, though. Behaviors and preferences surpressed, people you didn't beat up for reasons and so on, behavioral triggers, when you held back and why. What distracted you when you did a specific thing or the other. And, of course, the standard stuff, what were you rewarded for and did you really care about that thing yourself? Might take a while but it'll be worth it.

pithanyChan 2y ago

> But then whenever there’s a sale or a positive comment, I get another small jolt of motivation and I can build a bit again. There's your solution. Positivity regarding your productivity, which is imperfectly normal, fuck your mental health. No sale, no comment, no problem. Find something that rewards your productivity or tech savvy. Put your projects on git, you'll get forks and stars (maybe). Maybe pieces will get adopted elsewhere. Talk about how you did what. Grow, help others. Do the opposite, hack something, for example, or reverse engineer something that'll be rewarding by itself: "holy shit, thatt's how they did it?". If you don't have "it" internally, get it from elsewhere.

inSenCite 2y ago

Well, zero criticism IS a form of criticism so I don't blame the author for not being motivated after the fact. I'd even say its the worst kind of criticism because it leaves you with nothing to build next. But I think they are highlighting an important thing here that most of us struggle with...building is fun, progress is discrete and clear, the feedback loop is very tight. Selling and marketing to people sucks, its clunky, the feedback loops are variable, and if you're inclined more to being an introvert it is very exhausting. I'm not sure the author is conditioned to fail as much as they are just more inclined to build.

tithe 2y ago
Agreed, building something is just the first step. One of the marketing struggles I've had is just getting people to care. I did have a bit of an "If you build it, they will come" attitude because I had confidence in the quality of the work...but even that seems to be irrelevant if you can't get people interested. As an introvert by nature (extrovert by necessity), I wonder what I'm missing that others seems to grasp innately, because the consequences are fatal for an entrepreneur if you can't convince others to at least try the thing you're offering.
- inSenCite 2y ago
  I think it just boils down to that most of the time we are just plain wrong about what people want badly enough to change what they are doing already. Our other fallacy is that quality of work matters - like yes, kind of, but it matters far less than finding and fixing an "important" problem. How many times have you encountered a piece of software that is utter garbage from a ui/ux/engg. perspective but gets used ALL THE TIME? plenty of b2b examples of this including back ends of banks. They are awful, but they work. The business solves a very real customer problem and the tech is just a supporting (although still critical) act. As long as the problem gets solved, the tech. does not really matter. There is obviously more nuance to this vis a vis software maintenance etc. but when starting up, the tech should matter to you less than finding a valid problem.

ph4evers 2y ago

Very much relatable. I have dozens of high effort GitHub repos that I didn’t touch after launching it. For me it works by sparring with friends to really grasp if something is a viable long term idea or not and then stick to it.

scarface_74 2y ago

I’ve found that I like the thrill of designing a project as I get older. But not building. By design I don’t mean UI - which I suck at. I have experience up and down the stack from requirements analysis and pre-sales, enough project management to get by, back end development, database, cloud architecture and “DevOps” [sic] and creating deployment pipelines. I’m not bragging, I’m just old (50). I would have to hire someone to do any front end work except ironically hosted call centers. I can do all that myself for a large project and for smaller projects I could simplify the “DevOps” portion. But knowing the work involved, I would rather lead a team at this point in my life and work with the “business”, project managers and people who want to be heads down. Honestly though, the one thing I wouldn’t be good at anyway is marketing and sales and that’s the most important part of getting a project off the ground.

dboreham 2y ago
> wouldn’t be good at anyway is marketing and sales Shift perspective: Consider these things to be an optimization problem. People buying your thing is the output from some undefined function. You get to supply inputs to that function. Now sales and marketing is revealed as being about modeling that undefined function such that you can pick more optimal inputs thereby improving the output. Now traverse the gradient.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  While I’m not interested in marketing, my focus over the next year will be to get better at sales. One of my best friends is in technical sales and he gave me a few books to read. I consider marketing, broad based brand awareness and “sales” to be more one on one. Of course I’m talking B2B. Context: I’m a “staff” cloud consultant at a 3rd party consulting firm and was previously a mid level cloud consultant (L5) working directly ar AWS (ProServe). I just got into consulting four years ago from hands on keyboard development + cloud architecture at smallish product companies. I’m really new to this. Currently, when I come into a project, I already know from a thousand foot view what the customer wants - the business problem they are trying to solve or the opportunity they are going after since sales has already spoken to them and I’ve spoken to sales. My job is to get them there (well now to lead a team) and to convince them that the solution I present to them is the right one. But my job is still just to convince the decision makers. Sales handles talking to the people who control the purse strings. My next goal is to convince clients they need something that they didn’t know they needed instead of convincing them that we are the people that can help them execute on an initiative they already know they want. Hopefully moving closer to the customer will provide some protection against software development getting commoditized to cheaper places (more likely) or AI (less likely)

HPsquared 2y ago

This resonates hard with me. A huge list of partially-completed projects, work stopping right around the "boring but easy finishing off work". Incredible waste. Edit: this is why we have teamwork and division of labour, btw.

ajkjk 2y ago

I tend to believe that whatever a person ends up doing is what they actually "want" to do at some inner emotional level (which they may not consciously be aware of). So this person wants to build, but after releasing things to lukewarm feedback, wants to not work on them anymore. Why would they want that? Well, that is a pretty normal behavior I think. But I would speculate... I wonder if this person is like me? Because they sound kinda like it. If so, I'd guess that they know that they're capable of a lot, so they're inspired to work really hard at goals, but that they're also mortified at presenting themselves to the world as confident and capable publicly. So they can work really hard when it's private and based on their internal self-image, but when it becomes public they have to reconcile it with their public embarrassment at who they are, and so they choose (in the sense of: their fear chooses for them) instead to hide and go back to working in private where it is safe. They are hoping for something else to happen: probably, they release one of their projects and it is so well-received, and garners so much respect, that they find a new public identity which they can step into and inhabit, allowing them to be proud of themselves and solving their inner problem. I wonder (more analogy to myself): was this person bullied or ostracized as a child, and made to feel like being confident and proud in public was shameful? If I've guessed right I hope you figure it out (and then please tell me what you find cause I could use some tips...). I wonder what they want to have happen when they release a project? What, if they had to admit to it, would their most happy outcome upon releasing a product look like? Probably it will be sort of embarrassing to even describe, but the details are probably telling: they will point straight at the core anxiety. It will be a fantasy about the anxiety being cured. Just speculating. But I would imagine that the explanation here isn't the real one, because the actual explanation will cause their behavior to completely change, instead of just building an intellectual edifice around it. (Personally I am very skeptical of any explanation that goes "because ADHD", because, what causes the ADHD? In some people it seems to be intrinsic but in lots of others it's clearly induced by something social. So is it fixable? Are there stories of it being "fixed" by solving the social issue? I dunno. But surely the goal is to somehow not live in this tension anymore: either fix the thing or let it go, and not be stuck in a loop of trying to get it fixed by some external blessing.)

dboreham 2y ago
Ultimately it's all a product of training data, mixed in with a few chemical global variables and some gate-level performance variation. The human brain is literally a thing that craves the input of new information, so feeling bad because that's what your brain is doing is a bit strange imho.

deleted 2y ago

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thesurlydev 2y ago

First, thanks for sharing. Second, as I read this and other similar posts over the years I understand exactly what you mean. Although, in my case it's worse. I've built lots of things and left it in various degrees of completion before making it public. Sometimes, I go back and make improvements but still never launching.

hedayet 2y ago

I’m not a mental health professional, so I won’t comment on the ADHD side of things. But as a tech and business lead, I can say this trait is actually the norm; Zuckerberg-types are the exception. Most software engineers I’ve worked with love writing code. They’re good at it, they know what they’re doing, and they can make steady progress toward what they set out to build. But what comes after writing code—the rejection, the silence, the outages, the bug reports—isn’t as fun. Shipping software is easy for us (engineers) because, as engineers, we’re in total control. But landing it in the market? That’s a different challenge—one that requires skills we often don’t have. But the good news is - like any other skills, we can develop this one too. I have observed significant improvement in myself over last few years in "Landing vs shipping" as I have been working on this trait deliberately. Still a long way to go...

huqedato 2y ago

The sadest thing in this world for me is not receiving feedback on my work. Any feedback, not necessarily positive. This breaks me down every time, even now, after 25 years of experience.

skeaker 2y ago
I get around it by working on things for me and me alone and publishing them as an afterthought for anyone that would seek them out. I make the tool that I want to use and make the game that I want to play. This has had way better reception than I expected (but not monetarily since I usually end up publishing this sort of thing with a non-license that says something like "feel free to steal this code in its entirety if you wish") and it works out great since when things get no reception I don't care and when they do it's always exceeding my own expectations, plus I'll always walk away from it with something for me that I wanted out of it regardless of reception.

htk 2y ago

Love to read posts like this one. Honest, straight to the point, relatable, and as a bonus makes me want to do something about it as well. I hope the author keeps on writing.

jarebear6expepj 2y ago

This entire domain is bot, btw. Yes. It learned how to express in thought what a psilocybin trip was... decided to learn how to register a domain, and has established a character with which to interact with the network. TLDR; AI-cosplay is hawt. ... It's also using twitter.com links. A little outdated for 2025 models apparently.

achierius 2y ago
What makes you say that?

kirsebaer 2y ago

Collaborate with other people on your projects. You could do some of the initial work, and then hand it off to others to do the marketing and follow-up. You don’t have to do everything yourself.

paulpauper 2y ago

The trend towards the glorification of failure is annoying. Failure sucks for many reasons: wasted time and other resources, disappointment, worsening mental health, and so on.

yobbo 2y ago

How is "I condition myself to fail" the conclusion from the description of what happened? If there is little or no interest from the audience, then there is no action available other than changing the project and trying again.

slicktux 2y ago

That comic at the end with the dominos…I really like that! Anyone know the source?

Brajeshwar 2y ago
Sahil Bloom[1] frequently posts this type of picture on this Twitter feed.[2] I'm going to assume it's from his new book, “The Five Types of Wealth.” 1. https://www.sahilbloom.com/ https://www.sahilbloom.com/ 2. https://x.com/SahilBloom/status/1884670271845548171 https://x.com/SahilBloom/status/1884670271845548171

TwoNineFive 2y ago

[flagged]

humility 2y ago

going through similar emotions while building, I wonder if the author’s attitude is aligned to the ‘fail rapidly’ adage. I go through the same, although I gave my landing pages a couple of weeks at least to garner feedback (no success so far). But whether it should be 2 weeks to give up on the project or 2 days is anybody’s guess imo.

s1110 2y ago

Tangential but count how many times author used "I" in this article.

demircancelebi 2y ago

Just think that you have delivered the project and lose interest before building. <insert you can't if you don't meme>