How do I stop being terrible at everything?

Thank you for the insights, everyone. Part of the reason I think I posted this - other than sheer frustration - is I feel like I'm a perfectionist in some weird way and I can't mentally get past that.

How do I explain this? I have a vision in my head of what my tool should be and do. This is the same type of vision that I have for all my projects. I just can never seem to realize the vision. I then take advice of people and "just release something" and it just seems like such utter shit.

Take the landing page I put up for my latest project. Not trying to spam just trying to give some context here. I was speaking with a friend of mine who happens to be in the SaaS space, and he just recommended I "put anything up and just start collecting e-mails" - so I did that (singularity.tools, in case you're wondering).

But I look at it and I know it's shit. It doesn't describe anything that I want it to, and it doesn't convey a single bit of information about what my vision actually is. It's just so damn frustrating to go from project to project and building what looks like a lazy templated piece of garbage but actually took a lot of time and effort to get to that point. There's so much work that we've already done on the back end, and so much personal drama that has happened during this time that the lazy templated POS is all I have to show for all the effort I've already put into things.

I just get really frustrated with myself and I don't really know how to address it. It's like I know deep down this can be a great thing, no matter how I have to steer the ship, but it just seems like no matter what I do I end up with something that looks junky and not worthy of what I want it to be.

I guess my question, while I'm self reflecting in public, is how do I turn this mentality around from a self-defeating "I suck at everything" attitude to one where I'm challenging myself instead of beating myself up?

Hey Jason,

My tip: have you tried writing lists that start with this heading?
"Before <some time in the future>, I’ll have..."

It's a bizarre tip, but it's been the most useful tool (I call them "have-done lists") for helping to overcome my perfectionism / challenges with attention / problems translating vision to execution.

To make sure I understand you correctly, do you relate with this article: "But I care about so many things..."?

If you don't mind giving me a list of things that's on your "to-do/eventually/I should" lists, I'll show you how I've used have-done lists to get unstuck. Here in the comments or DM me.

Hi Jason, well done on being so open and honest. I'm brand new to writing but I try to take the brutally honest approach, good to see you doing it too; we need more of that.

I'm a perfectionist like you. I've had projects on and off for years, and they've never seen the light of day because of that perfectionism. You have a landing page launched, that's one step further than I managed :) take each "delivery" of anything as a victory.

Does your landing page articulate the full purpose and mission you have in your head? No. Does your page tell me who your product is for? Not so much. But is it utter shit? Nope. Does it tell me the problem that your product will solve? absolutely, it does. And that's a start.

You've done the hard part. You've got something live. Now mark that down as a win and iterate on your page. Tweak the copy or add in some visual media to help tell the story of what your product is, what it means and who it's for.

The important thing is that we get over the perfect ideas we have in our heads, It's an abstract idea and in the end, after the initial excitement and burst of motivation, those "perfect" products in your head will only serve to hold you back from releasing stuff. We must keep moving forward, warts n all! The kinks can be fixed along the way :)

Best of luck. Keep moving forward!

I am a backend developer, so many of my projects are backend heavy while the part that faces the customer "used to" always look like empty shells, while a ton of my time was invested in the backend. So for a long time I would build/launch/abandon too early since it looked like the project was going nowhere, and felt like I suck at anything I touch. I started seeing success in my work in 2020 when I put myself in the user's perspective, and pictured myself using my products. So I invested in learning frontend development and design. Maybe this will help you.

Btw, I got ADHD. So focusing, and working on a single project is very challenging for me.

We don't know each other, I don't know your situation so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

I guess that you could perhaps start with a couple of things:

1. Accept that being terrible isn't a bad thing per se. We're all terrible at something and it's highly unlikely that you're terrible at everything.

2. Talk to someone who can help you go through this. Talking is a powerful tool.

3. Write down 3 things you're good at. It reminds you not to tie down your personal value to business outcomes. You're not your job. We all suck at some point.

It's all about taking care of yourself and remembering that you're human. Mistakes are normal.

What seems like an unmovable obstacle right now, might be a good lesson for tomorrow.

Why do you feel like you're terrible at everything? I don't think anyone is like that.

Just two weeks ago, I felt very stupid for not understanding an issue I was trying to solve and building something that didn't work. It was affecting production and I had to fix it quickly. What helped was to go back a few steps and tackle just one at a time, really focusing on getting it right without missing something. Frankly, it was a grind (I worked 12-14 hours a day to fix it), but the only way to make it work.

Whenever you feel like you don't get anything done, try to break it down, set small goals, and go through them one by one. Don't try to be perfect, iterate and you'll have a nice result in the end. Perfect is the enemy of good.