

HN, I need to learn how to ship - fooboy

(Using my favorite throwaway account.)<p>The title says it all, HN. I can't ship.<p>This isn't about shipping the first version of my nascent startup's web app, though. This is about completing <i>anything</i> in life, putting a big bow on it, and calling it done. I'm terrible about finishing things in all areas of my life, whether it's chores around the house, libraries I need to finish at work, or OSS bugs I've promised -- but failed -- to patch.<p>I hate it, too, because it is a particularly flaky behavior characteristic of people who are "big talkers" or commit to doing too much. I don't want to be unreliable, but I really just struggle to finish things up.<p>Has anyone solved this problem for themselves? Have you gone from someone who underproduces to one who knocks things out of the park? I'd love to hear your advice.
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patio11
Chores around the house: if this causes you more than five minutes of mental
stress, outsource it. Some people can program, some people can carry boring
tasks to completion, these people should trade to maximize their mutual
welfare.

Projects: Accept that "shipped" is less of a binary "Is it perfect and ready
to ship, if not it is still in development" decision and more of a totally
arbitrary point of technical/marketing readiness at which you call something
shipped. You'll continue improving it later, but that is no excuse for not
getting it in front of customers (be they paying customers, your boss, or the
other OSSers) _today_.

~~~
JoeCortopassi
If you, like me seem to learn a great deal from posts like this from Patio11,
I _highly_ recommend going over to his blog and, at the very least, check out
his 'Greatest Hits' section. Well worth the time spent:
<http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/>

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eddy_chan
Some general advice that's helped me improve productivity since I started
working for myself rather than for the man.

1) Don't "multi-task" ever. Make a plan and then do everything on the plan in
serial and make sure you focus 100% effort at the task/project at hand. My
immediate to-do list is only ever 2 items long. 2 items only because I am
working on #1 and when I finish #1 I need to know that #2 is the next thing
that needs to be done. When #2 becomes your focus you move it to #1 and add a
new item.

I do this at the macro level i.e my startup has 2 big projects to be shipped,
I'm not going to put any effort/thought into anything that comes after, only
what I need to finish right now. I also do it on the micro level, each feature
has X user stories, I only have have 2 of these on my daily to-do list at any
time.

2) Use timers like Pomodoro technique - I don't subscribe to the whole
philosophy, I just enjoy the fact that a physical 25min timer gets me over the
'procrastination hump' for getting started. Keep working in 25 min chunks till
said task at hand from (1) is done.

3) For pesky ongoing stuff add some rules to your life e.g I must publish a
blog post every Wednesday (and I'm not going home till I do)

4) Whenever you finish a large project that might've taken you a few weeks to
complete, give yourself some time to decompress and admire the work you've
done.

~~~
eddy_chan
I forgot to add - if you work with someone else or a couple of other people
(cofounders in a startup) rotate the role of 'motivational taskmaster'.

Basically it's this persons jobs to drive projects by saying to everyone else
- 'Where the F is this? you said you'd have it done last week, don't do
anything else until you've got this done. Oh you need help? let's jump in
together and do it together now!'.

Only works in small teams and everybody considers their peers to be equal. I
have an awesome cofounder who's a woman who nags me to do stuff sometimes. The
more she nags the more gets done so I don't mind :)

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HeyLaughingBoy
Shipping anything is a matter of knowing when it's good enough. Some people
are good at deciding on the fly; others need to know ahead of time and it
sounds like you need to know when to stop before you even start.

So before you begin something, decide what "done" looks like and learn to stop
when you are in the "done" state. Sometimes, "done" changes. Not a problem,
just understand what it means to be done and do that, no more.

~~~
fooboy
This is a great great point. "Done" changes sometimes, but it can also keep
getting pushed back in favor of "one more addition." That happens to me a lot.

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ludicast
The Seinfeld calendar has been pivotal to me. Look it up.

Basically you come up with a standard of behavior and check off every day if
you act in accordance to that. Helped him discipline himself to create a
comedy empire.

My slant to it is that I

1) constantly email rule adjustments if I want to have new rules (say I'm not
allowed to drink until a Wednesday demo).

2) have a sponsor, well my wife, who I run ambiguities by, in case I want to
have an exception to a rule. Example, if I commit to cleaning every day and I
get sick, that day is okay to mark off. But forcing me to verbalize my
exceptions means I'll only use them as needed.

3) I treat this calendar as holy, simply so I take deviations seriously.
Reason for this is that it is a bitch starting it again if I fall off.

4) I have prescheduled cheat days and stuff like that.

In short, this system works great for me. I might be bad at explaining the
complexities here, but feel free to contact me for more info. My best weapon.

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bawllz
Maybe you are trying to do to much? If you can find people that have similar
interest to yours, and have skills which are applicable to building your
ideas, I'd recommend teaming up with that person. It helps a lot having
someone to not only push you along to the finish line, but also to do some of
the running as well.

I had a similar issue where I would start projects, implement a bunch of it,
and seemingly never finish any of it. I got in touch with some friends who
enjoy design and from there I started doing back-end things and leaving the
design implementing to a friend. Not only did he push me to hit milestones but
I did the same for him.

Also make sure you are picking projects that the end result is something that
you yourself want to use. That way, you will have a little extra motivation
when it comes to finishing.

Good luck!

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ricolicous
What's worked for me is a two pronged approach:

1\. Eliminate from my life things which need my attention. I've found that I
can only focus on two things at a time: one work thing and one personal thing.
That's it.

2\. Relentlessly remove distractions and focus on the one or two tasks right
in front of me that need to get done. Only when those are done do I come up
for air and think about what I should be working on.

Basically I think of myself as a processor with a tiny pool of RAM. I can only
work on one thing at a time (my one work or one personal thing). I can keep
one other thing in RAM (the remainder of my one work and one personal things).
Trying to add another thing means that I need to start hitting disk and
performance gets exponentially worse.

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coderdude
Ship it half-working. Launch the user-facing things that have to work right
away and make as much as you can a manual process. Work out of PHPMyAdmin if
you can to save time on fleshing out that backend that will be super tedious
to build. Don't try to make the site look perfect. Just make it passable. Put
off as absolutely much as you can if you are the kind of person that "can't
ship." Once you've shipped then you've gotten past that hurdle. You can build
the features as they become more pressing.

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dabogy
My suggestion would be to break down whatever you are doing into smaller
tasks. Instead of thinking, I need to do this...and this...and this...and
this...and this...and this in order to complete...change your mindset to "I
just need to do this small task to complete". Once you complete the small
task, then move on to the next one. Each goal will be smaller, so you should
have more frequent completions. Start from there and work your way up

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tait
Have you looked at the Meyers-Briggs personality types? If not, you might read
that to get some insight into your personality and how it's different from
others around you.

~~~
fooboy
I've definitely looked before. How would being INTJ or INTP (somewhere between
the two) affect anything?

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otoburb
Over-rationalization. Analysis paralysis. Always thinking, never doing.

~~~
fooboy
Oh man, this hits close to home...thanks for the reminder.

