

Why getting personal projects done is hard - dcheong
http://www.davecheong.com/2009/04/24/why-getting-personal-stuff-done-is-hard/
Some of us are bootstrapping our startups (no investors, no customers yet), while trying to maintain a full time day job. We work hard at your normal job, meeting deadlines and getting things done, but our personal projects fall behind.<p>One remedy is:
Create Self-Imposed Deadlines. With Punishment for Failure.
======
DannoHung
I disagree with this. I think the most important thing is to just work on your
project consistently. Whether that means working on it 20 minutes a day, an
hour a week, or one day a month for you, just make sure you don't put it
aside. If you have to skip one time, don't worry about it, but make DAMN sure
you work on it next cycle.

Even if what you end up doing when you spend your piece of time is just some
silly project maintenance, that's okay; you're coming back to it consistently
and you're making some small progress.

~~~
dreish
That's been my experience, and in hindsight I realize it's not because the
little 20 minutes spurts add up to much, but because they tend to prevent the
long, dark stretches of angst and doubt that come from not coding anything at
all and having to work up the willpower to start up again. Most work (for me
at least) gets done in intermittent bursts of productivity, but by doing
something every day I don't have to climb a huge hill just to get to the point
where I _could_ have one of those bursts.

------
triplefox
For me the most important thing has been stability of time. If I can plan that
on any given day, my "usual thing" will be to code a bit in the evening,
that's exactly what I'll do - even if I miss a few times. But if I'm getting
jerked around by external forces, be they errands, phone calls, travel, etc.
then it won't happen.

------
ii
Motivation can be positive and negative. This article suggests that the only
motivation that works is negative.

That's terrible advice -- only mediocre things can be created that way. I
believe that we should just have extremely big unstoppable desire to build
great things, and only this desire should be a motivation for our work if we
are going to create something better.

~~~
dcheong
Hi there,

Thanks for commenting and you make an excellent point. In fact I wrote a
little piece awhile ago about how one can overcome distractions and in it I
describe there are essentially two motivating factors: one is pleasure and the
other is pain.

[http://www.davecheong.com/2006/09/13/how-to-overcome-
distrac...](http://www.davecheong.com/2006/09/13/how-to-overcome-distractions-
anytime/)

The same analogy can be used here. In order to accomplish something important
to you (say your startup), you can either increase the pleasure or
satisfaction you get when you achieve it, and/or increase the pain associated
with failure.

So I take your point about focusing on the negative, but I never claim that
"the only motivation that works is negative". In fact I believe both
positive/negative and pleasure/pain play important roles as motivators.

Having said all that, don't underestimate the power of the fear of
failure/pain/punishment, as it is a major component of the human condition. I
disagree that only "mediocre" things can be created out of fear and punishment
for failure.

In fact, experienced entrepreneurs will tell you that a "big unstoppable
desire to build things" is a terrible thing to build a sustainable business
on. Sure, it's great to kick start things, but building a business is 99% hard
work. Can you truly build a business on sheer desire alone? What if that
desire went away? Ask yourself that question the next time you are up at 3am
trying to fix an obscure bug in someone else's code.

Thanks for the great comment! I would love to hear what everyone else thinks
also given the diverse background of people here on HN.

~~~
ii
Hi,

Thanks for the great reply!

The problem is that when you increase the pain, it also limits your
possibilities. I do believe in building a business on desire alone and I
believe that all great businesses were built this way.

~~~
dcheong
Agreed to a certain extent. Yes, blindly increasing the pain will limit your
possibilities, but appropriate application of it is a good move.

If you're in the planning phase or design phase, you don't want to needlessly
time box it and/or punish yourself for failing to meet a deadline, because it
will limit what you come up with.

However if you're in the building phase, say all the broad stroke type of
decisions have been made and the main task is plain old coding / grunt work,
you can use the pain to motivate you from distractions and procrastination.

dave

~~~
ii
Yes, here I agree 100%. For grunt work fear and punishment are the best
motivators. But not everything is a grunt work!

------
mojuba
Just tell me the article doesn't consist of some ridiculously obvious blah-
blah on self-discipline before I click on the link.

And then tell me if any one of the famous genius people was not utterly
undisciplined. Paradoxically, it is the lack of discipline that helps you
think different and create great things, or maybe just interesting things.

------
ahoyhere
Punishment is an awful way to motivate anyone, yourself included. The reason
we think it works is because that's how everybody else in our lives treat us:
parents, the school system, employers, financial institutions, etc. We get to
the point where we think we have to be abused in order to perform, like
whipping a dancing bear.

Trying to motivate with punishment leads to value judgment, leads to guilt,
leads to mental avoidance.

Avoidance involves much less effort than actually doing the work.

Which is the real reason that it's hard to get personal projects done.

One other reason is that people talk themselves into doing personal projects
because they "should," not because they're fired up. And lastly, burn-out from
the should-punishment-guilt-avoidance cycle makes it hard to get motivated.

When you get out of this cycle, when you cut yourself a break, when you stop
"shoulding all over yourself," magical things can happen... and you can devote
regular time to things because you love them, without breaking out the stick
_or_ the carrot.

~~~
dcheong
Hi ahoyhere,

Thanks for the comment and excellent advice. I like what you said and where
you're headed and would love to hear from you or anyone out there on what they
are doing to motivate themselves to finish their product/service and get to
the launch pad.

All I'm after at the end of the day (I assume others are the same), is to find
tools we can use to help improve the chances of our startups succeeding.

Loved to hear from the more experienced folks out there on what keeps them
going. My article was only intended to help others by sharing what my present
thinking is, but if I'm wrong, I'll be the first to admit it and reshape my
mental picture.

thanks, dave

~~~
ahoyhere
Yay, thank you for the rational discussion :)

The question I would ask you, dave, is why _aren't_ you motivated? Why is
motivation something that has to be done _to_ you? Why don't you wake up
jazzed to do your startup thing, at least a couple days a week?

I had a real awakening when I started to take the guilt load off myself, and
started viewing all my actions (or inaction) not as indicative of my worth as
a person, but simply choices, which had logical consequences, which I had to
either accept or change. Consequences doesn't seem like a neutral term, but I
do look at them fairly neutrally, not as punishments for being dillatory.

Not judging yourself is really hard -- from childhood on up we are told "No!"
all the time, guided mainly by negative feedback or the carrot (which is
attached to the stick), and it is insinuated that our being "lazy" or
"unproductive" or "not fulfilling our promise" or "not being where we ought to
be by now" is not just a choice, but a sin.

But boy does it feel better when you can achieve a more objective look at the
situation.

I surely don't hyperventilate (literally, or psychically) over decisions or
screw-ups any more.

When the mood strikes, I blog about these topics here:

[http://www.justfuckingship.com/2008/08/letting-go-of-
unfinis...](http://www.justfuckingship.com/2008/08/letting-go-of-unfinished-
business.html)

[http://www.justfuckingship.com/2008/11/youre-a-terrible-
mana...](http://www.justfuckingship.com/2008/11/youre-a-terrible-manager.html)

~~~
dcheong
Hi ahoyhere,

Thanks for the great feedback - and great blog entries. I see where you're
coming from especially if the guilt makes you avoid working on your startup.

For me, it's not so much as guilt. It's more about a question of focus. How
does one consider an open-ended task done? Is it when it is at a quality we
are satisfied with?

If my startup has 100 bugs, can I say it is finished? I guess it'll depend on
the bugs, priority, importance of these bugs and what type of product it is.
Early adopters are probably also more forgiving of using a buggy system, so
it's probably ok to ship with known bugs.

The problem with time boxing is we allocate fixed amount of time to work on
something, but if the time elapses and the task isn't finished, we're likely
to schedule more time at it. The problem is without proper focus (maybe being
conscious of some reward or penalty) if we're late, we might continue the blow
out.

You're right though, as everyone around us is on our back, we don't need us to
get on our own backs too! So perhaps, it isn't a black/white situation, but
case-by-case instead.

Thoughts?

dave

~~~
ahoyhere
dave, I think you "just" need to look at the consequences of being late, and
what those mean to you, and make the decision on a case-by-case basis. That's
more realistic than the punishment anyway. All of life is a trade-off, if you
think about it. "If I do it with x bugs, then..." "If we ship before y is
done, then..." Then you are prepared for those consequences (or not). That
tells you whether to keep going.

But I'm in the corner for shipping earlier. For our app, Freckle Time
Tracking, we got the time entry interactions really, really done well, but the
rest was very beta/alpha. We decided that we wanted to focus on the single
biggest, most important interaction. We're still polishing the rest.

It is, of course, an unending task, but you have to use logic & foresight to
decide where the intermittent goal posts are.

Creating a punishment for yourself for going over a timebox is not gonna do
that hard, human thinking for you :)

~~~
dcheong
Hi ahoyhere,

Thanks for the advice. I'll digest your comments and see what bits I can
tweak. Hopefully, the end result is I get to ship soon!

BTW, freckle is a nice app. It helps to have have legendary Thomas Fuchs et
all on your team.

Love it if you and team can evaluate my app for me?

dave

