How many of you find it hard to separate coding from producing value? How did you break that association?
tl;dr - Having/had a hard time thinking of anything but hands-on-keyboard coding as productive. Did you have this problem? Do you have your story on this transition logged anywhere to read?
Hello. I just found IndieHackers the other day (thanks to a video from @aaronjack's Code Drip channel) and did a bit of a retro on where I am now with my product when filling in the "milestones".
Not sure if anyone can see it yet since it's not yet "approved", but my brain dump is at https://www.indiehackers.com/product/shoplystr
When looking at this, I just realized that 2 years have passed on something that's not really all that complicated. I spent a ton of time with my head in the "fun" part of the development. But here I am still with 0 customers since I've not correctly focused on things like marketing. I feel like I'm in the right mindset now to turn that around. Though it's rough thinking that I should have thought like this 2 years earlier, it's better than 5 years later!
Do you have similar stories? Do you have that journey logged either here or on your own blog somewhere? I'd really love to see what you all learned.
It's been said that "you ship your calendar." In other words, whatever you put on your calendar is more-or-less what you'll end up doing. So a big part of working on the right things is simply taking the time to sit down, plan, and rationally allocate time in your schedule for the right things. Whereas if you just figure it out every time you sit down, you'll end up working on whatever you're in the mood for, which will always be fun things like writing code.
I think it's analogous to eating. Do you plan your meals for the week, then go grocery shopping and buy them all in bulk? Or do you wait until you're hungry, then go out or order in? If you do the latter, you'll end up eating a lot of junk.
Great advice. I've actually had to sit and task out my work writing down all the vital steps of need to complete to get to market. Planning like that REALLY helped me prioritize the dev and not dev task and see the first for the trees.
David,
This is very common among developers :)
I am guilty myself of this and have to restrain all the time of not going too technical or fancy with implementation.
In my opinion, you have to ask yourself why you are doing this side projects. If the answer is to play around with technology, that's totally fine and a valid reason. You'll learn technologies that maybe you don't use at work, broaden your understanding and gain new skills. This is a valid reason and productive way of using your time.
However, if the answer is to generate passive income or start a company that could be your primary occupation eventually. Then you need to change the metrics by which you evaluate how things are going. Number of website visits, app downloads, paying customers, customer acquisition cost, etc. should be your metrics and you should not lie yourself with "but I had fun coding" :)
I personally struggle often with this. I have a pretty good life without needing to start my own business, this makes it even harder. However, this is something I want to do for a variety of reasons. What I try to do is talk with other people bootstrapping and remind myself why I'm doing this constantly.
Something that works for me is having some sentence that reminds you your goal in a prominent place close to your desk so you can read it often and get back in track :)
Hope this helps!
Reminding myself if the purpose is such an important...well...reminder😆.
Since time is limited, you always have to invest it wisely, and also hedge where needed. Early in my career, I had tons of time apps that were explicitly used as investments in my employability (which happened to also be tons of fun).
Now, I'm definitely aiming for something "real", but also with the slight hedge of "even if it fails, it will be a decent resume item".
That said, my success criteria is quite modest. My current app is but a "billion dollar, change the world" idea. I just want to take it a step at a time and get some experience making a few extra bucks on the side. Then, either expand it a bit to a "few dollars more" idea, or move on to the next thing. So I still need to keep that "portfolio sprucing" motivation in mind to some degree as well.
That said, I definitely need to formulate that sentence and put it at my desk. Great idea!
Coders 'gonna code. I usually try to keep a few code-only* projects alive to scratch the itch when the the other projects (indie or 9-5) aren't in an exciting development phase.
*code-only: not meant to make money, acquire users, gain exposure, or for any purpose than the joy of building