from Hacker News

On finishing projects

by reichertjalex on 8/19/24, 6:03 PM with 100 comments

  • by haswell on 8/20/24, 8:17 PM

    Over 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.

  • by cloverich on 8/20/24, 8:07 PM

    I 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.

  • by munificent on 8/20/24, 10:23 PM

    Reposting an old Reddit comment of mine that I think agrees with much of this article:

    I'm in my 40s and for most of my life I had an unending series of unfinished projects that I felt guilty about. Today, I am able to finish some stuff, including some pretty large, hard projects. Better, I don't feel guilty about the stuff I don't finish.

    The trick for me is to be deliberate and mindful about why I'm embarking on a particular project.

    If it's because I want to feel good by:

    * Sharing something with others.

    * Accomplishing a difficult, challenging task.

    * Proving to myself that I can do something.

    * Getting the social cachet of being a creative, productive person. (Maybe this is shallow, but who doesn't like to feel impressive in the eyes of their peers?)

    Then the goal of the project is the product it and I focus my attention and discipline on it. I try to have as few of these as possible—like only one at a time—so that my willpower is not diluted.

    If it's because I want to feel good by:

    * Improving a skill.

    * Exploring an unfamiliar domain or learning something new.

    * Relaxing by tinkering on something I like.

    Then the goal of the project is the process and I don't feel bad about not finishing. The real treasure is all the stuff I learned and did along the way and there is no real destination. I can have as many of these as I want because there's no real failure mode here. They're all recreation.

    Once I got more honest and clear with myself about my goals for each project, I started to be able to finish the ones where that mattered and stopped feeling bad about the ones where it doesn't.

  • by g4zj on 8/20/24, 10:17 PM

    I genuinely consider two of my greatest accomplishments to be building a game and composing a song.

    Neither are very impressive, but in both cases, I ended up having to simply decide I was done and stop working on them. I could continue making changes indefinitely, adding little improvements and such every day, but they were also complete as they were. Once I learned to be okay with that and move on, I learned what finishing a project really meant (or at least one form of it).

  • by ChrisMarshallNY on 8/20/24, 8:04 PM

    I 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).

  • by turtledragonfly on 8/20/24, 9:00 PM

    Always glad to see articles discussing an emotional side of software development (:

    I do disagree with this claim (though later points temper it a bit):

      Why is it important to share your work with the world? First, because
  there's practically no downside, and very, very high potential upside.
    There is a big downside: as the author states, finishing/releasing is hard and time-consuming. You only get one life. Every hour spent doing that stuff you won't get back. So, not a direct cost, but an opportunity cost. Personally, I find it important to acknowledge this and face it head-on, rather than waving one's hands and saying "oh, there's basically no downside." Though I admit that the latter can be a useful self-mind-hack to get the ball rolling. But first you decide what you want to do, and why you want to do it, and then you tell yourself whatever lies you need to help it get done (:

    The "why is it important..." question is really critical to motivation, at least for me. A person should give that question honest thought and an answer that rings true to them.

    I agree about the therapeutic aspect of putting things out into the public.

      Though I don't plan to publicly share all of these proactively, just
  knowing that they're publicly viewable helps give me a stronger sense
  of accountability. I'm curious if it will make a difference.
    Just getting things out of one's mind, and into the world (even if nobody sees them), can be important (helps my sanity, at least). Even just the "rubber duck" sense of imagining someone might see it, can catalyze thoughts in a way that wouldn't otherwise happen, too. Then, having people actually see them is another layer, and can be humbling and educational.

    Also, apropos of nothing, this article made me think of the (mis-)quote:

      We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they would be easy!
    Good article (:

  • by nilirl on 8/21/24, 6:01 AM

    My biggest tip: Have a system you can rely on even when you're struggling. Take the magic out of progress.

    Use curiosity and excitement when you can but don't let them be the only way you can work on something.

    Some practical strategies I've written about:

    - How to prevent stagnation while building products alone [0]

    - Multi-Perspective Note-Taking: Mastering focus as a solo-developer [1]

    [0] https://www.idiotlamborghini.com/articles/how_to_prevent_sta...

    [1] https://www.idiotlamborghini.com/articles/mastering_focus_as...

  • by ryandrake on 8/20/24, 10:21 PM

    I really disagree that releasing a project publicly is a necessary step to deem something done. I have so many projects in my src/ directory that are (in my mind) finished, but that I will never release to the public. I wrote them for my own education and entertainment, not as things that I think the rest of the world would benefit from. And certainly not as a way to build some kind of (ick) -personal brand- among the open source community, or to give me some sense of accountability (to whom?). I don't need GitHub stars or social media thumbs up or hacker news upvotes to measure the worth of something I made.

  • by galleywest200 on 8/20/24, 7:54 PM

    >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.

  • by jschulenklopper on 8/21/24, 7:20 PM

    My approach for finishing projects: team up with a Finisher. I found one at work, and we became good friends along the way.

    I'm a typical Starter, and all of the side projects we've been working on together were my idea. All of the projects that we completed and released were solely because of his endurance, discipline and focus. And his constant reminders to not start a new project before the current one was done.

  • by pablomendes on 8/21/24, 6:26 PM

    One thing that works well for me is going working-to-working. Get a simple, de-scoped, incomplete, probably crappy version done end-to-end. Now it's not about finishing, it's about improving. And if it was worth building in the first place, it will beg for improvement. And then it's easier to just keep turning the crank, working-to-working.

  • by jmbwell on 8/20/24, 8:50 PM

    I sometimes battle perfectionism for various reasons. Someone pointed out that it can’t be perfect if it isn’t even finished, so why not add “done” to what it means to be “perfect.” Somehow that tweaked my perspective in a helpful way. Edit: on reflection, possibly because it doesn’t imply a compromise of my standards, but actually strengthens them, so I don’t have the feeling of giving up or giving less.

    Also very much believe in doing some kind of planning, any kind being better than none at all. Otherwise you put yourself in a tunnel but you don’t give yourself a light at the end. The plan can change and it will, but if you have none, you might end up digging forever

  • by daliusd on 8/20/24, 8:49 PM

    I don’t remember which book I got idea from but idea is to work in different modes. When you work as programmer then there are no deadlines and etc. So sometimes you have to put different hat, e.g. CEO hat. It took several months to work out but overall result is reasonably good.

  • by j7ake on 8/21/24, 1:16 AM

    I found it takes the same amount of time to go from 0 to 50% completion as it is to go from 50% to 80%, and similarly from 80 to 90%.

    This means when you are at 50% completion, you need to spend more than two times more effort to hit >90% completion.

    99 to 100% takes an infinite amount of time.

  • by brainzap on 8/21/24, 9:10 AM

    I wonder how many people are missing out because there is no friend or SO that really push and supports.

    In the comment section we probably have a lot of “me” stories, but should we not think “we”?

  • by bitbasher on 8/23/24, 11:16 AM

    This is something I struggled with personally for a long time. I had a list of projects I wanted to complete ranging from SaaS products to video games.

    I tried working on multiple projects but my mind always focused on one at the detriment of the others (before ultimately working on something else).

    After some time and deep introspecting, I realized working on multiple projects was some complex form of procrastination (avoiding doing hard or boring things on other projects). I also realized working on other projects may have been some sorta coping mechanism to avoid possible failure (if I never finish projects I can never fail).

    After the introspection I hit a turning point with two words, "what if".

    Instead of bouncing around, trying and learning new things, what if I focused all of my attention on one stack/product/project/industry/thing?

    I haven't solved what "done" means yet, but I have come to terms with the shortness of life and my own capabilities. I know who I am and what I can do. It's a start.

  • by andrewstuart on 8/20/24, 9:57 PM

    There was a post on HN recently about building software for yourself - forget the possible audience of millions. If you focus on yourself as the end user then the whole thing becomes easier.

    I couldn't find it after a brief search. Maybe someone else remembers it.

  • by codr7 on 8/20/24, 10:19 PM

    I already have a job, my side projects are all about having fun and learning new tricks.

  • by kazinator on 8/22/24, 3:37 AM

    This is more about launching. Launching is not finishing. We are using recent versions of things that launched decades ago.

    When you're working on software that has no obvious finish (development could go on indefinitely) you have to set up small milestones. Okay, in this release we're going to get this and that and other thing working, with documentation and test cases. That is in a concrete target. When we have those three things with documentation and test cases we've hit the target and nothing blocks that release anymore.

  • by Aleksdev on 8/21/24, 6:51 AM

    I don’t want to come off as mean and spoil the article but the author writes he can’t get anything done and the strategies that might help him with finishing things is..

    “1) writing a spec (i.e. a plan) upfront, and 2) timeboxing the project by giving myself a deadline.”

    Isn’t this just agile? I’m pretty sure every developer already does this, it’s kind of the whole strategy for completing any project.

    Not sure what the point of this article was. He could have wrote “make a sprint and stick to it”

  • by bbor on 8/21/24, 3:15 AM

    Great stream-of-consciousness style article, I relate and appreciated the practical advice!

    This isn't enough on its own obviously, but just in case anyone's been noticing something of a trend: inability to finish projects is verbatim one of the DSM-V entries for Inattentive-presenting ADHD: https://www.cdc.gov/adhd/diagnosis/index.html

  • by vouaobrasil on 8/21/24, 7:53 AM

    I consider myself very productive. But I don't care about finished projects. The key is that some get finished. I naturally let projects languish as soon as they lose interest for me. If I lose interest I feel that it's not worth expending effort against the current to finish it. That's perhaps why I'm terrible in a corporate setting but great as an independent. I hate routine.

  • by anon291 on 8/21/24, 2:55 AM

    There's no such thing as finishing a project. My most successful open source projects requires ongoing maintenance work to this day and the various dependency updates require constant refactoring.

    To me something is done when it reaches a state where you don't feel you need to tend to it. But it's never actually done. The only things that are truly done are things that will never be used again.

  • by lurn_mor on 8/21/24, 7:02 PM

    Not to nitpick, but in this blog post, mostly every first sentence after a heading doesn't add anything, but simply repeats the heading in a longer, more rambling format. Are you bumping your word count to achieve some imagined length goal/page count?

    Brevity and Ruthless Editing should be incorporated into your final cycles of 'finishing' working on projects.

  • by ziofill on 8/21/24, 3:00 PM

    I have an endless streak of unfinished projects, at various stages of completion. All the ones that I finished had something in common: they served a purpose I cared about. If you don’t really care about what a project can do for you it’s nearly impossible to muster the mental energy to carry it out to completion. At least, I can’t.

  • by docandrew on 8/20/24, 8:57 PM

    I needed this. I have so many half-finished projects, it’s nice to think that there’s still a way to make them valuable in some way.

  • by maninblackv2 on 8/21/24, 4:58 AM

    Im on the same sitatuation, i had an idea month ago that i thought it might be useful,started building, but when i finished the main parts i gave up, i just had the "what if" question, what if nobody actually want this and i've never touched since then the code is still in github tho

  • by jschulenklopper on 8/21/24, 7:22 PM

    Here's another approach not mentioned: have an accountability partner. Promise that person something specific to be done, with a delivery date.

    My observation: a promise I made to someone else is harder to break than a promise I made to myself.

  • by mxstbr on 8/20/24, 11:39 PM

    I recently saw this related article[0] on the HN frontpage and I've already been applying it.

    TL;DR: To build more quickly, do "outline speedrunning": Recursively outline an MVP, speedrun filling it in, and only then go back and perfect.

    [0]: with me: https://learnhowtolearn.org/how-to-build-extremely-quickly/

  • by vborovikov on 8/21/24, 8:11 AM

    I keep reminding myself when working on my projects

    - don't wait until you feel like doing something

    and

    - half-ass it

  • by max_ on 8/21/24, 7:50 AM

    I heard that finnished software is dead software

  • by jaydeegee on 8/21/24, 1:19 AM

    I hadn't realised people finished projects.

  • by pcblues on 8/21/24, 7:00 AM

    Here's just a little silly story from my own life of unfinished projects. I wanted to make a sort of shazam where I could hum the tune of a classical piece of music and find out what it was. I hacked together an enormous midi database of classical music with a couple of libraries to take a hum and turn it into midi notes in order to find the pattern in the database based on the difference between each note in a melody of a classical piece as an identifying key (pun intended). As a really bad singer, I couldn't hold a note, but you can imagine the work required to get this to actually work.

    The amusing part was that I told a prospective software development employer about the project because it was consuming a fair part of my life at the time and showed an interest in software development in my spare time. They asked, "Did it work?" I said, "Nope"

    I didn't get the job but we both had a laugh about it during the interview.

  • by shreyshnaccount on 8/21/24, 4:53 PM

    making a (smol) platform to share and find incomplete projects (on github?) devs can pick up and contribute to in a short duration. any interest?

  • by seigel on 8/21/24, 4:00 PM

    Hey great to see another mud slinger! Share some pictures sometime!

  • by PaulHoule on 8/19/24, 6:13 PM