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Ask HN: Doing things which don't scale and it's taking forever

by tarunkotia on 11/6/20, 7:29 PM with 9 comments

• by Jtsummers on 11/6/20, 9:26 PM

  Without more information, it sounds like you may be having some issues with anxiety (perhaps just me projecting). Perhaps not in the clinical sense, but hear me out. When people become anxious, they start to have difficulty breaking complex/large tasks into simple/small tasks. Even when they try to, they're still taking on too much work (or it still feels like too much work) to be able to complete in a reasonable (again, in their perception) time. This happens to me often, and this year has definitely been worse than most.

  Here's what I do: Take a step back, write down what needs to be done. Break those things down into achievable chunks. Repeat. Then focus on one part at a time, don't scattershot it. Don't take a small bit of work from here and there. Take the small pieces that sum up to a completed larger piece, and get it done. Repeat.

  One of the benefits of this is an emotional one. You'll start to see small wins, which feels good. Then you get bigger wins.

  By way of analogy, trying to get fit is similar. I wanted to run a 5k, I just couldn't (I was 40 pounds overweight and had barely exercised in years). I went out and walked it, that worked but took me way too long (50 minutes the first time). I increased my walking pace, I started jogging short segments, eventually I could do a full 5k run. If I had just gone out initially and tried to run it, I'd have failed. And gone out two days later, and failed. Eventually I'd have given up (I know, I did that before). By making small achievable goals that also built up towards my ultimate goal, I gave myself both the emotional framework to maintain motivation and the structural framework to actually achieve it.

• by Jugurtha on 11/6/20, 9:31 PM

  As I say: doing things that don't scale is like children wetting the bed when they're asleep. It feels great and warm, but the desired course is to wake up, clean up, and grow.

  Jesting aside, can you share more about your project and give more context?

  >I feel like I am trying to boil the ocean and it has been overwhelming with the amount of data I need to sift through.

  Which data are you sifting through to do what?

  >Quantitative framework for app research and discovery for your business

  This seems interesting, but what does this mean? Could you explain this to someone like me?

  Does it mean that, as a business looking for an app, I type in some search terms and you'll return a comparative report with treemaps for features or something similar to what the Observatory of Economic Complexity does[0]?

  - [0]: https://oec.world/