
The Important Habit of Just Starting - walterbell
http://lifehacker.com/the-important-habit-of-just-starting-1771016698
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glaberficken
Well, I tend to shrug at the "Just Starting" philosophy. In building software
there may not be much cost to having a ton of half finished projects (you
always learn something, even if you didn't finish it).

But for more general things in life, "Just Starting" can just add anxiety and
clutter to your life.

My wife is the chronic example of this. She is a "chronic hyperactive
starter", she starts multiple house chores and tasks and leaves them all half
done. Over her life she has started multiple courses she didn't finish. Our
house is packed with little half finished handy-craft projects tucked inside
bag after bag. In the kitchen there are often half washed dishes, in the
bathroom half washed clothes lying around. She is not untidy at all, she
prizes cleanliness and method like a lot other people do, but she just cannot
manage the anxiety of a "to-do" list.

In order to feel active she must start all that is not done yet, but somehow
then abandons the task to start another.

Mainly my house work is going around the house picking up her half finished
tasks and finishing them.

Just to give an alternative view... the habit of just starting is only at best
50% of getting things done, and many times it's not even the hardest part, the
hardest is finishing things.

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jsprogrammer
Why would your wife need to finish projects if you do that part?

Isn't she just preventing a pipeline stall?

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glaberficken
Well, the part where I step in to finish something isn't exactly peaceful.
Whenever she catches me doing it she has this self obligation feeling that she
should finish it. And then she feels I'm trying to force her to finish it when
I want her too, or she lets me finish it but criticizes the execution details
(which obviously are going to be different from what she would have done).

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endisukaj
Interesting article and makes some good points. But I don't think I'm the only
one who has a problem with _finishing_ projects instead of starting them. For
me at least, the process of starting a new project is fun and rewarding. But
as time goes on I just lose faith in it and just drop what I'm working for
some new idea.

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theprotocol
Can confirm. I'm sitting on dozens of near-complete projects that I just
cannot bring myself to finish.

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ctrlrsf
Finish the easiest one first to get you started. Rememeber it doesn't have to
be perfect.

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Bjartr
One of the most damaging pieces of "advice" I ever received was that not
finishing side projects is a bad thing. The result of internalizing that? I
stopped starting side projects. By time I realized the negative impact (harder
to learn when you don't do new things) it had already changed my habits, and
to this day (years later) I struggle to get back to where I was with being
able to dive in and explore random ideas I get.

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jimmydddd
This reminded me of great advice I heard from Naval Ravikant regarding
reading. Previously, when he got bored reading a book, he wouldn't start a new
one until he finished the current one. The result was that he would stall out
and stop reading books. Now he gives himself permission to stop reading a book
at any time and start a new one. Result -- way more books read.

~~~
walterbell
In one school of non-fiction speed reading, you are advised to reverse-
engineer the "schema" (book proposal that was funded by the editor) of a book,
without reading the book. This can be done by reading the conclusions of each
chapter in the book, starting at the end and working backwards. There are also
commercial services which offer book summaries.

Once you have the book schema in hand, you then diff against your prior
knowledge to determine a topology of value relative to your goals (which of
course vary with time). Then you perform a non-linear reading of the parts of
the book which are sufficiently new/relevant for your goals. You can always
return to a different part of the book later, if your goals change and you
recall the schema.

This also applies to other media, e.g. video, which can be accessed via non-
linear hypertext index. What we are missing is a commercial market for
metadata to faciliate non-linear learning, dynamically mapped to ever-changing
user goals by navigational interfaces.

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supersan
My problem is more about bikeshedding than anything else. Every morning I
start my work enthusiastically but then obsess over stupid things like the
variable names, optimization, too much refactoring, indentation even sometime
(like it would be so good to see all these = signs to align.. aaargh) and then
just mentally exhaust myself with these trivialities and then it's back to
reddit or hn. Worst part is that I'm aware how useless it is to obsess over
such things yet I still catch myself doing it way too often these days.

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CJefferson
I've just spent a day looking at HTML5 gaming engines, when I should probably
have just picked the most popular one.

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callumlocke
Not a waste of time imo. Engine choice is not bikeshedding

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tluyben2
It is if you just want to build some game for fun in a few hours/days/weeks.
It really does not matter that much then usually. And if you think you made
the wrong choice, at least you have some working prototyping done which helps
you with the rewrite.

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pwinnski
This article is focused on beating procrastination. For those who've struggled
with procrastination, it's fantastic advice: just start, as the anxiety of
something half-done beats the anxiety of something not done at all.

Once you've kicked that, then you need advice on how to finish projects you've
started. In that, the anxiety of something completed is near-zero, while the
anxiety of something half-done is clearly higher. Additionally, the sense of
satisfaction of something completed is amazing, to the point that it often
inspires people to do even more.

There seems to be many, many points along the way someone can get stuck, but
by far the biggest one is the first one: so just start. Then deal with
overcoming obstacles along the way. Then deal with finishing what you started.
Then deal with accepting "good enough," rather than perfection, and put it out
there. And then don't rest on your laurels, but start either something new, or
the next iteration of what you just put out there. Repeat as needed.

