How do you flex that Finishing Muscle?
I find myself in a very familiar place: A couple months into a resurrected project only to find I am still not finished and not launching. I never seem to actually finish or launch. I have lots of half completed or just started small projects but never get them over the finish line. I try to whittle them down to a bare MVP but while I'm building I find myself getting into the weeds and off track either by coding myself into a corner that I can't get out of, or taking too long to get that MVP out the door and getting frustrated or losing focus on the thing I'm desperately trying to build.
It's very frustrating and is causing serious self doubt and what I can only describe as deep depression and sense of hopeless failure.
At this moment I'm actually considering shelving a the project I've been working on for 4 months (should have been completed in 8 weeks ago or more) and just starting something even smaller from scratch just to complete SOMETHING.
I wouldn't call myself a good developer, so i do run into a lot of code problems that take me time to sort out. And the 'small' features i want to build, though simple on the surface for others take me a lot more time. This makes me take more time obviously, but I should be able to finish SOMETHING, shouldn't I?
Looking for any advice on actually improving my habit of actually launching so i can finish these side projects I'm trying to build and monetize.
A few of things come to mind
Building things is hard. If you get bogged down in the weeds, it might just be that you don’t know the tools as well as you thought
Smaller milestones might help. Instead of building and launching the entire thing, build a feature and share it with people. I know, sharing with people is easier said than done.
Put up a landing page and start driving traffic to it as you continue to build your product. This will also help create a sense of urgency.
Share milestones about your journey publicly.
The launch doesn’t need to be a very big thing. Once you get into the habit of sharing, you’ll be shipping or “launching” something every week. Even if it is not ready to be used by people.
Agree with @kaltenbrunner and @saq7 small milestones are what generally keep me going until the finish line. Even just reframing them as "small wins" goes a long way with your mindset when building a larger project.
One resource I might recommend is the book Finish by Jon Acuff. I read it about once a year to remind myself of a few of the tactics laid out in the book. One of the biggest takeaways that has helped me is that it's generally not laziness that keeps people from finishing, rather perfectionism.
Anyways, hope this helps.
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