How to survive these "I'm giving up" moments? MY TIP!
Every founder has experienced that moment, building its product, when he felt like it doesn't make sense anymore.
"It takes so much time and I'm not even sure if anyone will going to use it."
Well, this is my tip on how to survive this moment:
- Switch from writing the code, designing the UI to creating accounts for SaaSes or other digital products that you're going to use anyway (e.g. Stripe, Revolut Business, Mailchimp, etc.) and spend some time configuring it.
It may not seem like a good idea but it helped me because my product started to feel more real. Configuring some of those tools might also help you to understand some parts of your project that you didn't have thought about yet!
- If you like writing, write posts about your product or about what you already made. This will help you to understand how far you already are and maybe will give you some words of encouragement for readers' comments.
Not sure if this will work for you - it worked for me when I was building speakersbench.com so I decided to share ;)
Sometimes if it's really severe "I'm giving up" moment, I just cut working on it for the rest of day. Next day when you wake up with a fresh mind it might be easier to continue working on your project.
However, what I noticed that if you are working on a project for a longer time with no feedback - you will burn out eventually. So another good thing could be posting about your project around the internet and collecting some feedback from other people. This could potentially inspire you and diminish your "I'm giving up" moment.
Hell, sometimes even with feedback, and positive feedback might I add, you'll burn out.
Sometimes you've just been going too far, too hard, too long.
It really depends on the reason of the burnout.
Motivation is just part of it.
That reads a lot like motivational problems. I give very often the tip, look for a hobby which has nothing absolutely nothing to do with your self-employment (company, job, indiehacker life ... whatever).
Music is not for everyone, but for most. So, learn an instrument, if music is not for you, do sport. It'll help you clear your head. If neither is for you, play tabletop games or smth else. Important for indie hackers is to use smth with no screens.
When your head is free, hear or read from people who are where you want to. Read from people you see as inspiration or idols.
What helped me a lot are audiobooks like:
Biographies and learning
Fiction
:-)
This is a great tip, I probably did it myself unconsciously, so I can only kind of agree with it! Making what you create more "real" helps you out! :)
Thank you for sharing Rafal!
Cheers,
David from The Other WorkSpace
I would suggest having customers already looking for what you're building before you start building it. It focuses you and makes you customer centric from the beginning. Make sure that if you don't have Stripe setup at the beginning you aren't:
Do you have customers or any validation?
Those are both great pieces of advice. I've used them (unknowingly) for years.
Changing up the environment or direction of what you're working on helps shake off some of what I call "silo vision." It's not tunnel vision, because with tunnel vision you can see forward or backward. With Silo vision, you're stuck in a hole and seems like there's no way out. You start to think "why am I even here? How did I get here? I can't get anywhere."
It happens to me when I've spent too much time in one area of the business/product, and have lost sight of all the other important areas--or important reasons why I'm making the product to begin with.
So changing the focus or the environment can help get you out of the silo and recalibrate your thinking.
Nice tip!
In that moments i go for a walk, do sports, go fishing, or talk with friends. I think sometimes i just have to see something different than my project. Thats enough. But sometimes i quit my project. I think it's also a good mindset if you're able to kill your project.
But in most hard cases i just pause my projects and do some other stuff for days, weeks, or sometimes month. Than i come back and do the next steps. :)
I like this take @rafalswietek. It is important to switch things up from time to time, take a break and come back with fresh eyes on your challenge.
With regard to your founders dilemma "It takes so much time and I'm not even sure if anyone will going to use it." - I think it is important to strike the balance between building community and building a product first. @8bit talks about always building community before product. Garnering feedback from customer interviews and community can help one to iterate quickly as a founder as well as hopefully getting a product-market fit sooner. If you find yourself in those "I'm giving up" moments, it is always a good idea to reach out to potential customers and seek out what is the actual problem they need a solution for.
+1 to this! a community can help you work through the tough times... super important to have one (or a few!)!
Winners never quit and quitters never win.
Hey Rafal, nice tips, here are my two cents: