
What I Learned by Going It Alone - iancackett
http://iancackett.wordpress.com/2013/08/17/10-things-i-learned-by-going-it-alone/
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karterk
_Be Persistent and Keep On Starting_

From personal experience, this is the most important thing. There will be days
you will keep asking yourself what significance a little thing that you're
doing that particular moment has on the grand scheme of things. The reality is
that such little things compound over time. The most important thing is to
keep persisting. Early on, you will feel like quitting and jumping onto the
next big idea/thing, but only with persistence _any_ of them will become
fruitful. After you work on a few projects you will be able to interpret the
early positive and negative signs better.

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speg
Here, here. Last night I checked my commit history for my side-project and
noticed I started it over six months ago. There were frequent gaps of up to
three weeks with no commits. It was my New Year's resolution to ship stuff,
instead of jumping into learning something new every two weeks. Each of those
long periods of time could've been a great time to start something new. I can
finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and I owe it to myself to keep
pushing.

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iancackett
I discovered my app involves 15,000 lines of JavaScript that I hand-wrote, and
another 15,000 generated from templates. The moment I saw that, I began to
realise just how much work I had done. It soon adds up. The light at the end
of the tunnel is certainly there, so keep pushing, don't let the fear of how
much work it seems daunt you... you'll get there :-)

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davyjones
Thank you. This prompted me to take a look at my codebase. About 20,000 lines
of code. I barely knew C++ before I started out. Very excited to note this and
a bit more confident now that I am planning on pricing my product.

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durkie
Yes, thanks so much for this post. The advice is good, but I feel like the
best part is just seeing that other people are going through the same things
you're going through. 2 months out of my full time job and definitely going it
alone off in to the wild unknown here...

If I may add something: don't let going it alone fuck up your relationships.
You're wearing all the hats all the time. Something will always be on your
mind with your project, and if it's bad or worrying it can really sour things.
Bring it up and say "this shitty thing happened today..." or "I'm worried
about this..." or whatever, but then be done with it. Air it out and move on.

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iancackett
I suspect it's the reason that I'm single at the moment - lol. Seriously, I
live and breathe work, and need to get the balance a bit more, err... balanced
:-)

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neltnerb
One of the posts I can relate to more than most. Can't disagree with a single
point, and particularly relate to the point about it getting better with each
revision.

It takes longer to go through iterations due to lack of resources, but you
have to seriously allocate your personal resources in such a way that you
spend more time thinking about what you're going to do before you commit to it
than most big companies.

I often will go through entire product designs without even making something
because I'll CAD it up on SolidWorks, show it to people, think about it, and
not actually invest the money and time in doing it for weeks. That cycle is
shorter now that I've gotten better at design and have a larger toolkit to
work with, but I'm on version 30+ of my LED lights despite having only
actually produced four things I've attempted to sell.

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RougeFemme
2 things have always worked for me - well almost: 1) listing out the tasks and
sub-tasks required for a particular project and crossing them out as I
complete them. Then, when I feeling particularly morose about accomplishing
"nothing", I check out my list with crossed-out tasks and realize I've
completed something after all. Timing/sprints don't work for me. I'll work on
a particular task/sub-task until I've reached a good stopping point or until
I'm feeling burnt out or I'm bored out of my skull. (Actually, as I'm writing
this, I realize Pomodor or something similar is something I should consider
for those boring, but necessary grunt tasks.) 2) When I realize I'm actually
at or close to completion (and sometimes adding more tasks), I think of the
80/20 rule and ask myself if I would be merely "polishing the apple" if I
continued on that project vs. the more substantive work I could do another.
Also, if I "complete" a project and it never really gets any traction, I try
to think of the lessons learned from it so that I won't feel like the entire
project was a waste of time. Admittedly, that last part can be pretty tough
sometimes. . .especially if you paid a price in lack of attention on your
"day" job, social interactions/occasions/relationships that got short shrift
while you worked on the project, etc.

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dominostars
Has anyone else had experience with the Pomodoro Technique? It feels like a
way for the website to just sell you books/timers/etc.

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adhipg
I use Pomodoro quite regularly. It works really well in most use cases for me
- except when I'm deep into writing some code. I can't get myself to stop
after 25 minutes - and then I'm suddenly thrown off my schedule and not
managing time anymore.

I haven't really experimented with getting my work pomodoro for more than 25
minutes yet - I think that something like a 45 minute pomodoro may help me for
the coding sprints.

You can get a lot done in 25 minutes if you turn off all other distractions
and also you _know_ that you will be back with them (email, phone, HN, Twitter
etc) after a few minutes.

As far as books/timers etc go, I just use a kitchen timer or my phone or a
webapp like Tomatoes[1] and I haven't read any books on it other than the
wikipedia article.

[1] - [http://tomato.es/](http://tomato.es/)

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basicallydan
Thanks Ian - this is a very useful post.

I find Pomodoro to be particularly useful, too. Especially when you're on your
own. It's hard to tell people to leave you alone because you're pomodoroing in
an office where you may be needed for others things, but at home it's just a
matter of making yourself work for just another 20, 15, 10 minutes...

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rokhayakebe
_Starting, every day, is a skill worth mastering._... And when you start
everyday you will eventually become a master: "Quality is a Habit not an Act."

The best sentence in this post happens to also be the last one.

~~~
iancackett
Thanks... I think it has also been the most important point for me: Just
remembering to sit down, and start. And to repeat that whenever the fear of
the amount of work becomes too much.

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jackschultz
I like it when some of my own thoughts are validated by others. I've been
working on a few projects now for the last few months and it amazes me how
much better the next on is than the first, like he mentioned in the first
point.

The other thing I'll add is that you shouldn't get caught up on having your
favorite idea be "the one" and waiting until you're better. Odds are it won't
be, and even if it is, you're not going to wreck it if you're a little
inexperienced. Just keep plugging away.

~~~
iancackett
Great point, Jack. I suspect my current app isn't "the one", and yet I felt I
had learned enough from my time building it that I wanted to share. I'm at the
"what next?" stage now, whilst still having one foot in the old project,
keeping it going, exploring the possibility that it might still be a good bet,
etc. But getting rid of the massive expectation that this will be "the one"
certainly helps.

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sturadnidge
Really useful post, thankyou.

Specifically for me, the part about wrestling with focus... I tried Pomodoro a
while back but assumed it was something you just either 'got' or didn't - it
didn't seem like something anyone without ADD would have to work for. So when
it didn't quickly work for me, i just threw in the towel. Maybe I'll give it
another shot.

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msrpotus
If only it was something you either "got" or "didn't". I think it really
depends on your personality and what you're working on. I find that it works
best for long, drawn-out projects where each single task can take hours (so I
used it a lot during school). Now, sometimes a task will take 10 minutes,
others 45 minutes, others 3 hours, and so I find that it's much more difficult
to break down work into Pomodoros.

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jlees
One of the valuable things about Pomodoro is just the forcing factor. You
might have a bunch of random tasks with varying lengths, but getting into the
habit of "I will work on X until this signal" forces you to actually start and
get into the swing of work, rather than procrastinate.

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asenna
Great post Ian. I can totally relate to it and there are some fantastic tips
that I need to apply to my work. I hope I can fix my procrastination and focus
on one thing at a time.

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ulisesrmzroche
Great stuff, Ian. Im going it alone too, and you actually reminded me that I
have to go update blossom and try to use it before writing any line of code.

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ulisesrmzroche
Are any of ya'll enjoying this more now than when you worked as a team? I've
found the whole process of programming far more fun now.

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ronilan
OP didn't do it alone. He did it by himself.

A person can do almost everything by himself, but almost nothing alone.

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SEMW
I've read your comment a few times, but I'm still failing to extract anything
semantically meaningful from it. Could you clarify?

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sthatipamala
"By himself" = physical isolation

"alone" = societal, emotional, or other abstract isolation

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graeme
You could interchange these definitions, and they would be correct.

English has a lot of word pairs where you can say "This is not X, it is Y",
where the statement would work in reverse.

Both alone and 'by himself' have both physical and moral meanings.

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sthatipamala
Possibly. I'm just inferring the GP's distinction of the terms from context.

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ankit_oberoi
@iancackett Awesome first post!

