Indie Hackers and mental health

Not to trivialize anxiety (I have it too, not a little either), but the best way to shed anxiety is by taking action and then actively changing your mindset.

Actually, clinical psychology agrees on this. One of the dominant ways to treat anxiety is exposure therapy. That means if someone is scared of spiders, expose them to a friendly spider, but slowly. Then get a bigger scarier spider. Etcetera. This helps decrease the fear because they adjust their expectation of what will happen when they face their fear by an actual real scenario: the spider was there and it didn't kill me.

My parents always say this old Dutch expression:

een mens lijdt het meest door het lijden dat hij vreest

wich means

men suffers most from the suffering that it fears (e.g. not the actual suffering)

Probably akin to English's "the greatest fear is fear itself". By exposing yourself to what you fear, it will decrease. In many cases, exposure equals taking action, instead of dwelling on being scared.

We can learn more from clinical psychology here: another way it treats anxiety is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). In short, CBT means analyzing your fears to see if they're actually realistic. It works because most fears simply are not. For example, if I'm scared of spiders, is that a realistic fear? Most spiders aren't venomous, so why am I scared? The worst is that they might crawl on me. But I'll live to tell.

Combine 1) exposure (which in startups means: ship!), and 2) actively changing your mindset by reality checking your thoughts, and you have a super power that most would want!

Anxiety is a muscle though, you can train it to go away by exposing yourself and taking action. But if you stop for a bit, it'll come back. So, keep taking action.

P.S. Fear, anxiety etc. never ends. Life itself is scary. Startups are just a part of that. It's normal to be scary or it wouldn't be worth anything. You're a bag of blood surrounded by flesh. It'd be odd if you weren't scared. I'm not so scared making internet apps anymore, but the stuff that I'm scared of in the rest of life is endless. It's normal!

I've been called "super-productive" a bunch of times but the secret is, I have a chronic illness and a body that is like a piece of shit car that I can't fix OR sell. And yet I get more done than most groups of 5 other people cuz I don't dick around. I know how precious 5 minutes of my time can be, and I make the most of it.

So here's my advice.

Sounds like you may have an actual anxiety disorder, which is hard. Anxiety disorders are not the same level as typical jitters or worries… good that you are taking it seriously and getting help, and that it's helping. I can't really comment on that since I haven't ever experienced that personally.

That said, there is a mindset at work.

"I'm struggling to find the confidence to launch" - this is a mistake.

There is no reason confidence should have anything to do with whether you launch your project. You don't only feed yourself or your pet or your kid when you feel confident, right? You don't only go to work when you feel confident, right? You are more than capable of acting, even doing things you don't like, when you don't feel confident.

But when it comes to this one thing, you are sabotaging yourself by deciding that you have to have some kind of internal bar crossed before you're allowed to do something that you clearly want to do to change your life.

It doesn't matter how you feel, only what you do.

Either you feed yourself/kid/pet, or you don't and they starve.

Either you go to work, or you get fired and end up destitute.

Those are fundamental rules of cause and effect and they don't care at all for your feelings, which is actually great because it means it doesn't matter at all if you're a giant steaming mess inside. You can still do the thing.

Either you launch, or you live with it inside you the rest of your life and go to your grave having never tried.

Sorry that it got so dark but that's the trade-off we're talking about, right? Other people have pointed out that it's good to ask, what can you REALLY lose if you try? But you can spin your wheels imagining horror scenarios.

It's way better to focus on what you will DEFINITELY lose if you NEVER try.

Obsessing about your internal feelings is blocking you from action. And then you are projecting and wondering about other people's internal feelings, instead of looking at their actions. Think about it: Does it actually matter to you how other people feel before they launch? Does that make you more or less likely to launch? How could it? It doesn't.

So my advice is to stop asking yourself how you feel and start asking yourself what you can do right now, in the next 5 minutes.

https://stackingthebricks.com/when-you-dont-feel-ready/

Hi, mere mortal here 🙋🏻. I launched my very first product just a couple of months ago and I was terrified. I was so afraid of launching something stupid/embarrassing/broken and the internet "never forgetting." Back then (aka a few months ago), I'd literally spend 20 minutes overthinking a tweet. 🙈

I'm not sure if this is your fear too, but if it is, let me tell you why it shouldn't be:

First, people won't remember your failures. Sadly, they won't really remember your successes either. My launch ended up going really well and as most indie hackers will tell you, the real challenge is driving traffic to your site (or growing your user base) post-launch. So don't worry about failing and people remembering it forever because they won't. (If only it were that easy!)

Second, the best success stories we hear from entrepreneurs always include failures. I was just listening to Segment's IH podcast episode. So many things went wrong before they went right. It helps me to imagine being a successful entrepreneur some day and having stories to share about my failures. I'll look back on everything I did wrong and see them as rites of passage. Think about it like that 😉

Lastly, if being an entrepreneur is your dream like it is mine, then it'll likely overpower your fear of failure. It just needs a little momentum. I felt so much friction before launching, I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to pull the trigger and do it. My advice is to stop thinking about "one big launch" and do a series of mini-launches instead. The thrill of mini-launching and getting feedback from people (even the haters!) will fill you with adrenaline and breathe life into that entrepreneurial side of you. When it does, run w/ it.

Not sure if any of this will help, but know that I'm rooting for you!!! #lurkertolauncher

I've met very very few successful people who don't share these feelings, so the first thing to understand is that everyone puts on a brave face - but you're definitely not alone.

Unfortunately the job of a founder in many ways is to outwardly appear to absorb pressure and deal with it. Very few people are comfortable with publicly sharing "I have no idea what I'm doing" or "I feel totally swamped and I don't know what to do about it" - because that might be damaging to the morale and momentum of the team, the customers, the brand, or all 3.

I have times where I feel like I can take on the whole world and I don't care what anyone says, and times where I literally go and sit in a corner on the floor and stare at a non-descript patch of ceiling trying to figure out what to do next. Often these times are merely a few hours apart.

The best thing you can possibly do is to talk to other indiehackers and founders. What you'll find (and, I hope are already finding from this thread) is that everyone feels anxious and afraid to some extent about just about everything.

Knowing that other people struggle too may not fix your immediate problem - but once you internalise that everyone else faces this same challenge, and is working on it - the solidarity that comes from it is empowering.

What I will say is that - while it doesn't really get easier over time - you do get used to it. It becomes normal. In some ways, it can even become a good litmus test a little further down the line. Whenever I feel totally comfortable, it's usually a sign that I'm not pushing myself and it's time to go and do something that scares me.

If this is your first attempt to launch a product, treat it as a life tutorial rather than a make or break moment.

I am assuming that you are in regular employment at present. If so, then launching a product represents almost zero risk. The worst case scenario is that no-one will care; no-one will buy. Second worst case, people will buy but not be impressed.

Best case, of course, is that you begin to grow a viable side business.

In the worst case scenario, your losses will amount to your time and effort plus some server costs plus whatever marketing costs you incur.

HOWEVER, the time and effort "loss" isn't really a loss at all. Rather, it is an "investment in learning". Think of yourself as a would-be commercial pilot. You have to learn the rules and regs; you have to learn how to fly the aeroplane (programming in your case) and then you get into the simulator and crash the damned virtual aeroplane anyway!

Was that a "loss" of the would-be pilot's time? Of course not! It was a necessary - indeed vital - part of the process of developing from a novice into a fully fledged pilot who can be entrusted with millions of dollars' worth of aeroplane and hundreds of thousands of lives a year.

So with you and your project. If it fails to set the world alight, be alert to the reasons why and do better next time. Then launch again. And again. And again.

What actually differentiates the entrepreneur from other sorts of people is not that he develops a product or service straight off the bat and retires with his millions but that he meets failure head on. Then he gets up and does it again. And does it again as often as necessary until he finds his mark.

You cannot meet failure head on until you fail. If you do not launch, you will never "fail" in public terms but you know yourself that your fear of failure will gnaw at your very soul. So launch. Be prepared for failure. Meet it head-on. Analyse what went wrong. Improve or change direction or something. Try again. Repeat for as long as it takes.

An old showbiz aphorism for you: "It took me ten years to become an overnight success!" It's as true of what we do as it is of any stage entertainer.

I think the switch flipped for me when I stopped thinking about launching a new project as the finish line.

You never finish working on these projects. You're always tweaking, add features, removing features, redesigning and on and on. You're never finished!

As I started to see the launch of my projects as just another step in achieving my goals, I felt much easier about launching.

The purpose of launching is to get feedback from actual users, yes you might not like to hear all of it, but that's the best way to get better. Get better personally at doing this making thing, and get a better product.

It's not easy, but it gets easier the more you do it.

If you go the Indie route, you are going to experience severe mood swings. You are going to go from 10/10 to 3/10 in the course of a day.. maybe even within the same hour.

If you stick with the 9-5, you are going to have a lot less variance.

BUT...

Imho, if you go with the 9-5, you will never truly be able to experience 10/10. You will be stuck at 6.5/10.

I hate the mood swings, the emotional rollercoaster. Forget about the zen approach and "the power of now". I HATE it. But I put up with it because I want to get to the 10/10. I have to follow my truth.

When I feel anxious for any reason about something I'm doing, I ask myself:

"What's the worst case scenario if I do this?"

Reflecting on the worst outcomes, and knowing they are not that bad, usually calms me down.

A small cognitive reframing that has helped me put things out into the world amidst FUD: Identify less with your current project and more with your lifelong portfolio of projects. This particular project will probably fail, but one (or more) will probably succeed.

That first one sure is hard and I'm not sure there is a whole lot of advice past 'just do it'. Get it out the door. It sure is scary, but things get much much easier once you have that first one out there :D

You sound a lot like me 😳. I have been "making" for the better part of 15 years - never actually being able to push something out the door (please don't ask me why, if I knew I would have overcome it already I guess).

But it changed now - at least a little bit. The community around WIP.chat was a significant change for me. Seeing other projects in the making (instead of just the success stories with survivorship bias). It's about getting feedback on your thing (even if it's still half broken). And then you fix it. Eventually, I feel, I will have an idea that others find so attractive they scream at me to make it happen.

It's a struggle. It's hard. But with every small step, it's getting a little more comfortable for me.

Also: it helped me a lot to share a little more on a blog that I didn't link to much.

I hope you will get your stuff going. Make it happen. And share it with this community (and maybe the WIP.chat). I'd love to see what you are working on.

Cheers,

Chris

What worked for me - which I'd recommend to others - was to start a blog.

Why? Because it will force you to start putting yourself out there in a public way, but you can do in small bite-sized chunks of time that won't require too much effort. It's the same exercise as launching a product but the barrier to doing it is way lower.

Once you start blogging, you'll get used to being ignored. This is really tough at first but quickly becomes a perfectly normal baseline to work from. And once you have that baseline, your mental model shifts such that the default expectation whenever you launch something is that it is completely ignored, and then whenever anything actually gets noticed it's a huge win/success that you can celebrate.

Now I blog and launch stuff with some regularity. Most of it still doesn't get much traction, and it's still hard, but I no longer fear the act of trying.

There's a lot of encouragement here, and I think that's really beautiful to see. I'm going to offer you something specifically actionable.

One of my biggest sources of anxiety is not really my work, my work is.... at this point just a job. It's not about me any more. It gets that way after long enough.

But on the weekends, I go and play guitar in a band. I've been doing it a long time, but the performing arts are real high anxiety. You really put your heart on your sleeve and there's not a lot of positive feedback. It's..... pretty ugly.

To get gigs though, you gotta put a lot of shoe leather down and do a lot of cold calling for a lot of people who just straight up don't give a fuck about you or this project you've poured your heart into. I've always been bad at it, I'm still bad at it, it still hurts, and I believe that it will never stop sucking for me.

But I still have to do the work, or we don't get gigs and the band breaks up and I don't get to play in a band any more.

So what I do is, I just spend five minutes booking. Every day. And not a second more (unless I feel like it, haha, which I do not). And I can carry that every day. I really can. Some days I gotta set a timer on my watch and watch it tick down, but I fucking do it and it works.

So to your problem, my general rule of thumb would be to shrink the problem of putting your problem out in public down to a manageable enough size that you can start moving, and do some small thing on it every day. It. Will. Make. A. Difference.

Your principal problem is your anxiety and it's fueling your procrastination. And it's probably not that rational. People are real weird about stuff like that-- I know I am. So you need (MUST) focus on knocking that wall of irrational fear down one brick at a time. No amount of effort is too small AS LONG AS IT'S CONSISTENT EFFORT. The fear is your true enemy. And the only way to attack it is to push it back a step at a time.

So many amazing personal stories here!

As someone in a VERY similar position, struggling to build and launch my first thing, constantly fighting analysis paralysis, I want to mention something that's been a tremendous help for me:

Peers

I asked two friends, who I trust and respect, if they would be willing to meet for an hour each week to discuss my project. Of course they were willing.

I asked them to give me honest and critical feedback. Each week we review progress from the past week and decide what next week's priorities should be. That's it.

It's become clear that I absolutely need this external feedback and accountability or I will get wrapped up in my own thoughts and unrealistic expectations.

In a 9-5 job the expectations come from your company. In a freelancing role they come from your clients. When you're doing the indie thing, the expectations come from yourself. For those of us prone to having unrealistically high expectations, that can be crippling.

I hear you on this. A lot of people I speak to, founders in particular, experience varying levels of anxiety about one thing or another, and as you can see from responses here, you’re not alone in this.

I’m no different - I have days of crippling self doubt, sleepless nights with a tight chest, wondering if this founder thing is the right decision for my family, the list goes on.

Everybody’s situation is different, but what helps me is a few things:

• having an understanding and supporting circle of people around me

• imagining the worst case scenario (like, fully fleshing it out in my mind). Internalise it and accept the steps I’d take in that case. You’ll find that once you’re experiencing the thing you feared, everything before, felt worse than the now.

• doing unrelated things that push you out of your comfort zone, no matter how seemingly big or small, like having cold showers (check out cold shower therapy), or jumping off the high diving board at a swimming pool, speaking in public. The internal thing you have to push past to do this, is closely related to pushing away anxiety. It gets better with practice.

By the way, everybody is making this shit up as they go, nobody has superpowers.

Start talking about your ideas in public, put yourself out there. The fact that you wrote this post is a good start. Build on that. One encouraging comment can boost you to continue, but also accept that you may face criticism (remember worst case scenario). Celebrate silly, small wins and accept setbacks as much as you can. This thing is a journey..

You’ll find that for the people are very supportive here on IH.

Best advice I ever got before going indie and made me take the leap was from my now-cofounder @plehoux (https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/033-philippe-lehoux-of-missive).

Paraphrasing with my own words: Be aware of what your Plan B is, it’ll upgrade on its own over time.

What’s the worst case scenario right now? For me when I started was going back to a “regular 9 to 5” job with probably even better conditions than the one I had. So… I win at not winning? Sign me up! When comfortable with the Plan B, fears of going forward suddenly becomes quite trivial. 9 to 5 job becomes doing consulting on your own and that eventually becomes launching another project.

Don’t see Plan Bs as failures or even step backs, but as an alternate way forward. ✌🏼

Hi there,

I've a little mental hack for that, it's a question.

Do you think Mozart played the piano like a genius the first time he touched one?

No he didn't. He did the exact same thing as anyone playing the piano for the first time: he played like a piece of sh**. The difference between him and another pianist, is like he continued playing no matter what.

No matter what you try to do the first time, it will go wrong (remember the first time you made love!).

The only difference between a successful entrepreneur and anyone else is that they accept being not good at the beginning. Nothing beats experience. If you want to be successful you must lose first to learn how to win the next time, it's as simple as that.

What you lose right now is much precious than your worries: indeed, you lose your time. My biggest regret is to not having started my entrepreneurial journey earlier. So don't make this mistake, and launch your product right now. It's the only way to get experience and move forward.

Everybody had this feeling! Good luck :).

They're "mere mortals" too.

Doing something big always seems scary (even if just a little), especially launching an indie project. You've started it and thought about it for a reason whether it's for your future self, your future family, or to make a meaningful impact on others -- don't psyche yourself out and let it be for naught.

You've come this far, you just gotta take the next step. Keep going little by little. Just progress. Don't let fear take you and any potential future down with it. That's what fear does in these situations.

Worst case scenario -- it fails. Then what? Analyze. Reassess. Adapt. Keep going. If you're still breathing, you can keep trying.

A lot of people talk about failing a lot before making anything worthwhile. If this fails for you, then this is just a stepping stone to something greater.

We're all "mere mortals." Success comes when you realize that you can keep control and tell fear to back off.

You started a beautiful thread! It's always good to remind each other that we're all nervous about failing.

What helps me is to view any venture like a tunnel. A dark one with a light at the end.

I may be stressed out, tired, upset or feeling weak, but when I look at this light, the desire to get there overcomes the negative feelings.

Small step after small step, I try to get closer to the light. Whenever the next step becomes difficult, I look at all the previous ones to remind myself of the path I walked, and it gives me the strength to do another.

And sometimes you meet people going in the same direction. They may even become friends. Maybe for just a small section of the journey, but it was great regardless, as you wouldn't have met them had you not started walking.

Or other times, I even learn and appreciate that tunnel. I realise I only see it as intimidating because it is dark, but it still has a great quality; I can't get lost in it, I just need to keep going.

All in all, it can look gloomy, but there are so many rewarding moments along the way.

At first I was the same way, and I still am to some extent, anxious about putting stuff out there.

What's funny in my situation is the very first time I wrote a post on medium and hit publish, which I count as the start of my IH journey, there were crickets, literally because it was night time but also zero views. To this day I still get crickets. That helped me get over my anxiety real quick. For me, my work can't be judged because no one cares enough to judge it anyway! Once that happened and I kept getting zeros, I just kept hitting publish because who cares.

Of course now I sometimes get the odd 1-2k views which kind of scares me but even then 1-2k? I mean... louder crickets.

I wonder if you're looking too much at the "rockstars" that people want to worship (the GaryVees of the world) who have found some level of success. I'd say that you should connect with people in person or via video calls, many of the great ones are here, and see that even when someone has achieved some level of success they always have things they worry about, don't know, won't let them sleep, stress them out, etc.

As others have said, second guessing yourself is totally natural. I do it all the time and it can paralyze me to a point. I'll go weeks without shipping something new because it's not perfect, or I'm not quite clear on how it'll work, or whatever.

The challenge then is to ship it anyways and over time build trust that nothing can't be undone, especially in the bootstrapper world. Almost nothing you do is going to kill your company over night, so why not make changes and take chances, measure it, and continue to get better over time? I've come to view it as a sport and something fun to do instead of stressful.

There are so many "mere mortals" out there, and what you'll find is that those who seem to have superpowers often don't. Maybe they do smart things with automation or they have a team behind the scenes that makes them look superhuman. It's funny to me how when you meet your heroes, you quickly realize just how real they actually are.

I wish you the best of luck, man, and I'm always happy to chat.

I would recommend checking out Albert Ellis. He is a psychologist and has lots of videos on YouTube etc. If you tell yourself "omg, my startup has to do amazing or im a loser" you are bound to feel anxious. If on the other hand you say "gee, I hope my startup goes well but if it doesn't it's not the end of the world" then you will feel better:)

I used to feel this. Before I started my biz I used to read Wired (it was a long time ago) and read about a load of super successful people that looked like they were superheros. I mentioned this to a friend and he said I should find it inspiring but I didn't, it brought me down. So I stopped reading it.

I found the key is to do the thing that motivates you and stop doing the things that don't. For me that was building my product. I didn't care that I wasn't 100% sure on demand, or strategy or how I was going to market it, I enjoyed the making and so I focussed on that and worried about the other things later. (Note: if there are particular parts of running your own biz that really scare you then try to mitigate for that at the start. e.g. if it's the marketing, then build a product where the audience is already there (e.g. Shopify app).)

No two people are going to have the same experience and everyone has a different definition of success. Because of this, it can be hard to learn from others because something they did may not be right for the definition of success that you want.

Follow your instinct. It can feel like there are millions of things you need to do to launch a business but really all you need is something that adds value to some people and a way to show to those people. All the theory and experience from others is designed to be helpful but again, as everyone is different, it may not be helpful for you.

I hope to see your future biz on here one day.

Its a nightmare.

Your not alone.

I too have the same issue. I have started many business's some overnight and driven them quickly to profitability and success. But when it comes to the one thing I do the best and love, building app's and coded projects i have a complete fear of launching. I set very hard standards and constantly push myself night and day to reach them, constantly feeling what i have is not good enough. It's so stressful.

I had the fear at 12 and i have it at 50. I have lived with it all my life it brings me to tears.

We are who we are is the first thing you have to remember. It's no good trying to make a monkey swim, he does not. He hangs from tress and he's bloody good at it, better than a fish!

The issue here is the web and IH have become very good at pouring out advice and how-to's, we all think we are useless or doing it wrong.

The funny thing is when you see great stories about great success's they generally don't follow any of the advice your read.

They tend to just be people like you and me who did something without thinking there way and made it work, that's what makes it a great story. Often its laden with tears, pain, stress self doubt and failure.

Sounds like you are in good company.

The most important thing is to do it your way. That is what makes you an "entrepreneur".

Take this negative energy, be you and do this your way. Just be good to yourself and see it through to the end.

Two weeks ago a company contacted me about my product. I replied and they wanted a log-in.

For me this is dam right scary. They want to log-in try it and see if it's any good.

"what if they don't get it?"

"what if they thing its crap?"

"what will i do if i don't hear back from them?"

"what will my closest confidants think when they ask what happens and I say nothing!"

All that time i have spent (agggh MVP model I'm useless!)

Lets just think about all that self doubt for a second.

I have another business we get 750 qualified inquiries a month. All good to go all need our product, service.

We don't close 750 sales, we close a small percentage. Some go elsewhere, location, price time-frame, some are just not ready. Some choose a different solution.

My point;

the first lead does not need to be the start and end of my project.

So what did i do...

I delayed the phone call 2 times and the 3rd time it was about 5am I had been up all night, the call was due in 3 hours I just said "cmon you can do this, if it falls face down so what - I know what I'm doing this is there loss.."

I made the call. They loved it.

95% of the questions were answered by my feature set. My pitch was a tad lame at first, my live demo even worse - but the product spoke for itself, they loved it. And I got a huge amount of feedback on where i did It wrong.

Next week they go live my first real customer and if I can keep things on track they should be paying a handsome fee. and the first of many. one step at a time.

You need to finish the product and let us all see it one by one.

Take a deep breath, shake your self and go for it. Your way when your ready.

This could be something amazing.

I would say, golden rule is : think less work more !

I am.experienving some for of anxiety my self. Probably because I live in backward country where nothing is valuated.

But I have idea of.project.

And I am developer so I will make.it

But only need someone to talk and share my ideas

Build a system around it, plan ahead, and be consistent working on your project.

Those are what I say have helped me the most.

By system I mean approach a project from the perspective that you will gain skills from doing it regardless of the outcome.

Plan ahead by planning out your tasks for tomorrow the night before. This helps you hit the ground running and stay focused. It also helps you stay productive if your time constrained dues to a day job or other obligations.

Be consistent and work on your project every day, even if its only for 15 minutes. You will develop a great habit and build momentum.

Finally, launch the simplest version of your idea first. Do not worry about every feature. Wait for users to ask for it, don’t assume they want all the bells and whistles. If you delay launching, it sets you back and slows down your momentum.

I think the switch flipped for me when I stopped thinking about launching a new project as the finish line.

You never finish working on these projects. You're always tweaking, add features, removing features, redesigning and on and on. You're never finished!

As I started to see the launch of my projects as just another step in achieving my goals, I felt much easier about launching.

The purpose of launching is to get feedback from actual users, yes you might not like to hear all of it, but that's the best way to get better. Get better personally at doing this making thing, and get a better product.

It's not easy, but it gets easier the more you do it.

Going Indie is for sure is stressful there is a lot of Anxiety in launching products. One of the things that I found useful was the practice of this breathing technique called the Sudarshan Kriya and also some Meditation every day. I personally vouch for it because has been immensely helpful to me as a founder.

With daily practice of Sudarshan Kriya, I have learnt that there is a direct connection between our emotions and the breath. For example: When we are angry - if you notice - our breath is really fast and shallow and on the days that we're are happy - if you notice - our incoming and outgoing breath is both long and deep. So, if our emotions can control our breath, it should work the other way around as well, right? And this is how Sudarshan Kriya helps - with the help of our breathe we manage our emotions better.

We all practice dental hygiene every day by brushing our teeth, but now it's time we start practicing mental hygiene by practicing some breathing techniques and meditating every day. It helps!

Here is the link to the Pubmed Abstract on Sudarshan Kriya yogic breathing in the treatment of stress, anxiety, and depression: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15750381

I would suggest launching first only to people you know and trust. Onboard them personally, ask & collect their feedback, iterate. They will most likely like what you've built and your confidence will grow. Fix bugs, improve / add suggested features and onboard more people. Before you know it, you'll be in a rhythm of user support, collecting feedback, improving your product and if users will like your product, business will start to grow. See... I only mentioned the business side of things in the end. You don't need to overthink it in advance.

Well, I think you've taken a good step here which is recognizing that it is holding you back. I think some of the approaches that we recognize as problematic (e.g. coding for 12 months with no feedback, switching projects frequently) can be traced to a fear of criticism or failure. I know in my case they certainly can. Now that you are aware of it, you can deal with it directly.

Hey, thanks for making this thread. I've been having some similar thoughts with launching so it's nice to see I'm not alone. Hope everything works out for you. Feel free to reach out... rpsutton2@gmail.com

I have a product that's found some small success, and I still have moments where I'm thinking to myself "what the heck am I doing?". I do my best to push the thoughts away but sometimes the only real antidote is time.

Just jump into it. Whats the worst that could happen?