Ask HN: Finishing Projects

3 pointsiroddis2y ago2 comments

How do you cope with what sometimes feels like violent creativity? I have many, many projects that I'd love to work on, but they all seem to get to about 50% completion before I hit a road block and get distracted with some other problem / solution.

The constant flood of deeply interesting topics from HN doesn't help, and has turned into a kind of anxious search for "the tool" that will make the path from idea to solution easier.

I'm very good at completing projects for others, but left to my own devices I tend to engage in a sort of technical Brownian motion.

Would you partner with someone who's more methodical? Outsource the ideas to others? Meditation? Bullet Journals? Life coaches? I've love to hear what's worked for you.

2 comments

2 comments · 2 top-level

h2odragon2y ago

Job aint done 'til the tools are put away.

"left to my own devices" ... be your own boss. When you're working for others you're thinking of their judgment of your efforts, when you're working without that prompt you wander and forget why you wanted the thing.

So take the approach of assigning tasks to you as a job; and think "would I be satisfied with an employee who delivered this?"

Perhaps "partnering" would help; I find the coordination overhead to be more cost than benefit but I'm weird. But having a source of external judgment, for both of you, might well be a motivation worth experimenting with.

bencelaszlo2y ago

Two things:

1. Ideas are cheap: not every one of them worth your time, or not that much time. Use your creative energy spikes to list and elaborate ideas. Estimation is a great weapon against scope creep, as you probably don't want to work on nice to haves for months. 2. Run to completion: if you decided to start a project, focus on it and continue until it is "done". Now, "done" is rare when we are talking about software, so the definition of "done" should include it is usable for someone for some purpose, have an executable binary, a build, a website, something.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse