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Ask HN: I am overflowing with ideas but never finish anything
197 points by annie_muss on May 14, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 166 comments
I am constantly coming up with new ideas. I read about a new language, a new framework, a new API and immediately I feel compelled to build something with it. I start planning the project, thinking up a design, a name. I set up the new codebase and feel completely consumed by this new project, even to the detriment of my day job.

After a few days or weeks I completely forget about it, having not really made any progress on the project and not having released anything.

Looking through my github I've done this nearly 100 times. Each time I feel like I'm really gonna finish and release something. I intentionally plan to have extremely minimal features, cut corners because this is just a first attempt and yet still it fizzles out.

How did you go from a chronic project starter to actually finishing and releasing projects? What can you do to keep your focus on one thing long enough to bring it to fruition?




That is a trait of ADHD. Hyperfocus until you find the next thing to hyperfocus on and then completely forget about the previous one.

The best way to deal with it* IMHO is to have a long term goal - and a reason why you want to achieve it. The reason should be chosen so that it motivates you to continue with the project. If you cannot think of a good one that will meet that requirement, then consider switching to a project that you can think of a good reason to keep you motivated. Set targets and then break it down into small tasks that are easy to track and achieve (the same as you probably do professionally). Ideally this task list should be somewhere visible, to remind you of it - along with your long term goal/reason.

edit: *it referring to the original complaint. I'm not a Psychiatrist.


That's a very rash assumption. I'd go easy on diagnosing people with ADHD based on 4 paragraphs when it can be explained with either unrealistic expectations or lack of discipline.

I'm not saying it's not ADHD, I'm saying it's a risky thing to imply it.


As someone with ADHD, the author’s issues sound very much like ADHD. I have yet to hear of someone who has a “lack of discipline” to this degree who does not have ADHD. I used quotes because the concept of discipline is also very relative.

I have yet to hear of anyone being told by a medical professional that they don’t have ADHD but instead simply lack self-discipline. Yet probably many people become depressed or feel hopeless because of comments like this.


>I have yet to hear of anyone being told by a medical professional that they don’t have ADHD but instead simply lack self-discipline.

So you're saying that everyone who feels like this who goes to a medical professional, 100% of the people, will get told they have ADHD?


Well obviously not, since ADHD is not the only mental health disorder that could cause the symptoms being discussed here.


Also sounds like anxiety. One could lead to the other. This is why you should not self-diagnose


except OP and everyone else that didn’t get an ADHD diagnosis right

Paradoxical standard


The OP is clearly dealing with the symptoms commonly associated with ADHD. Whether or not they would be formally diagnosed by a psychiatrist is actually irrelevant. People with ADHD have coping strategies for these symptoms. It is wise to share in and learn from those strategies. Note that GP did not recommend a pharmaceutical treatment. But, when we notice that somebody has the symptoms of ADHD, it's common to recommend they see a doctor to have it checked out.


I think you're overreacting. I didn't read that comment as "you definitely have ADHD." More like "this behavior is a trait many with ADHD have, so it is worth considering seeing a psychologist."


I agree, but I don't think I diagnosed anybody, or at least that was not my intention. I simply stated that it's a trait and gave advice that I consider to be valid regardless.


I agree. He could have just cut out the first paragraph and it would have been decent advice. Some people have health anxiety and suggesting something like this can trigger them to obsessively worry about whether this have this or not.


I do not think this is that risky, it sounds quite clear from the parent's description of their life.


Does it matter if it is or isn't ADHD if the suggestion works?


Speaking as someone whose partner is a psychiatrist, popping in to echo that 1) it may or may not be ADHD, 2) only a doctor 1:1 can diagnose you, and 3) if it is, medication works wonders for many people.


It may be good to know that depending on the country where one lives getting a diagnostic can be a very long and laborious process. Online comments make it sound as something simple, it really depends on circumstances. But it’s definitely worth trying. Finding the correct medication is also not always simple, that takes some attempts, not everybody reacts the same way to a given molecule, and local scheduling laws can make it difficult to get access to the most effective ones.


Oh absolutely agreed. It's a process to work with a psychiatrist, and if it is ADHD, medication isn't right for everyone.


If this behavior is due to ADHD, then the best way to deal with it is to get diagnosed and then medicated, as medication is a really effective treatment.


"ADD" is so prevalent that it's basically part of normal human variation, and has enormous advantages. The name ought to be changed. I find the knee-jerk suggestion of medication offensive tbh. It's like medicating introversion.

The trick is to learn how to use these personality traits to succeed, not to use a chemical cosh to beat yourself into being just like everybody else.


I don't want to stigmatize ADHD in any way, but the executive dysfunction of this disorder is debilitating and it is definitely not a "normal variation". Neurodiverse people are forced to lean into and develop their other talents to be able to cope with adult life, which gives an impression that neurodiversity has certain advantages, but the negative symptoms of ADHD and ASD outweigh the benefits. I'd rather have a prefrontal cortex that actually works.


“Cancer” is so prevalent that it’s basically part of normal human variation and has enormous advantages.

I find the knee-jerk suggestion of medication offensive tbh. The trick is to learn how to use your tumors to succeed.


Prevalence in adults is 0.5% to 1%. Around a half of the population is introverted. OP, please see a doctor.


Depends which country you're in. Predicted prevalence is 2-3% (you'll see higher quoted) diagnosis rate in the US is higher, of course, and lower elsewhere. 2.5% is higher than a lot of popular modern identities. By all means see a therapist, but you don't need to assume that medicalising normal variation is the right thing to do.


I agree. I added a note to my comment for clarity - I did not want to discuss medication as I'm in no way qualified, but nevertheless agree with this sentiment.


After reading 4 paragraphs of text, your first suggestion to OP is to acquire dangerous drugs? This mentality defies common sense, medication should be a last resort.


Medication in psychiatry is not the last resort but the first line of treatment, because it drags people out of bad mental states and allows them the mental space to adjust their life to better cope with their condition.


Dangerous? Give me a break. You're clearly unaware of the medications given for ADHD, or how they work, how they're dosed, etc.


this is me, gpt has sort of fixed me by making it easier and faster to churn out an app before I get bored, but I'm also working on an ai app that's sort of become a passion. I just wish I had another dev to team up with, one with better nextjs/UI skills than me would be nice.

I think finding a real passion to go after can help stay focused, but I've started my app over life 4 times, modeling bits off many open source GitHub repos. im finally close to launching something.


> I just wish I had another dev to team up with, one with better nextjs/UI skills than me would be nice.

Maybe I should drop you an email


What is a really good reason that has motivated you? Can you give some examples? This is the place where I get stuck.


I'm in the same boat and also find that having a good goal can alleviate some of the pains of ADHD. In my case I like to set goals that I can easily visualize and associate with a tangible outcome. That way when I get off track, I can nudge myself in the right direction with reminders of what having the end product would be like.

An example is "implement XYZ paper" -> when you get off track, think about the algorithm running on your computer, how much faster it would be than the previous one, etc.


Hacker News has an obsession with ADHD. Why do you need to tell yourself you have a "mental illness"? Can't we be honest with ourselves and admit that amphetamines make programming easier?


It’s an ADA-recognized disability that affects many aspects of life, not just programming.


Here‘s my hack: Surround yourself with equally capable finishers. Once I figured out that there were lots of people out there who had great finishing, endurance and project management skills, but lacking the knowledge and the creativity in how to build them, I just started to put both of them together.

Granted, it often doesn‘t feel good being pushed into finishing your own things, but the joy of having delivered something tangible makes up for it. And as a bonus, even in something as big as building a company, I got to start hundreds of sub-projects and seeing most of them grow to fruitition!


This is a great strategy, I think. I am very similar to the OP, and this is how I have accomplished anything.


> I am sad.

> Here's my hack: Don't be sad.


But where do you find such community? twitter? indiehackers?


Another hack that doesnt have a high bar: find a friend who is preferably technical and say you want to show them a demo of something you are making. Invite them to your “demo” 6 or 8 weeks out. Now start building. If you hold yourself to sharing that demo with a friend you will be amazed at what steps you can take to get there. If not, debug why? Try to understanding why showing that demo is not inspiring? Does it really excite you? What would it mean for it to work? What possibility does it create next?


You usually won't. It is not a realistic advice, or "hack" as the wise HN member likes to call it.


college friends worked for me


Here is the problem.

The human memory is limited. When you are first excited about something you get lots and lots of fleeting ideas. By the time you are working on the ideas, you have most likely forgotten most of them and then you are stuck. You no longer know what the next incremental step is, even though you feel it should be obvious.

My most successful project was organized via GitHub issues with a title and no content. To start to get into the mindset of shipping all you have to do is gather a bunch of these issues and assign them to a milestone, that is your product, your initial release. It doesn't matter if it is only 1% of the final vision, you will have many more milestones after this one. After your first milestone what you should do is get users. If you can't, then you should stop unless you need the software yourself. If a milestone is too big and you can't finish it in the deadline you gave yourself but you finished a significant amount of issues, then just take some of the issues out and shift them to the next milestone. Shipping will become a regular habit instead of some mysterious event in the far away future.


Solid advice. I also have seen companies not able to follow the simple rules you described, or getting lost in heavyweight frameworks (given that I understand being a single individual vs an entire companies have different problems, my complaint is about underestimating the overhead they create).

Shipping should be a priority, not an afterthought.


how do you get users? i have made apps but fail to get traction. it is after this i lose motivation & will to work on it. people just dont signup. even tho everyone says its good project.


Journey before destination. Schedule and build in bulk.

Learning Japanese? Take the train/bus/bike and listen to lessons via audiobook, listen to Japanese music, etc

Working on hygiene? Add your habits together in bulk. Do your face care, teeth, etc all together. Position all the products in a line in your bathroom drawer or countertop in the order you expect to use them.

Need to exercise more? Schedule your exercise with something you already have to do (going to the grocery store, walk or bike) or are highly motivated to do (go play DDR, hit the climbing gym, or listen to a video game podcast or 4 while running)

Remember that you are human and have a limited amount of willpower. So don't leave your goals to willpower, make them happen because they have to along the everyday journey.


> go play DDR

Can confirm, this is one of the only things ever to get me willingly doing cardio on a regular basis.

It also spawned several technical projects: I built a control interface for a Cobalt Flux from parts, finally learned to solder in order to fix a panel on it, and built a small workout tracker as a MERN stack demo and progress log (when I still had a place I could play DDR in...)

Which brings me to the piece I'd add to this:

Build the things you want to use.


Having gone through the same problem, I think it's important to develop a mental framework on how to evaluate ideas. I no longer feel excited by the prospect of a new language, or a framework, because it would be an uphill battle to drive up the adoption. Once you start thinking critically, you'd have fewer competing ideas, and hopefully, a longer lasting motivation.

Instead of acting upon the idea by coding it right away, write it down and evaluate it against a fixed set parameters. YC Application questions are a great starting point [1]. Few questions I routinely ask myself:

1. Will this make money? If yes, how soon?

2. If you've to tell people about it, where would you go?

3. Are there existing solutions that solve the same problem? How are you being different from them?

4. How long will it take to ship the first version?

5. Are you solving a problem that you've personally faced?

6. Does the solution save time/money?

Having said that, I think it's a okay to act on a burst on inspiration once in a while. The problem is that we have often direct our energy to inconsequential stuff—name, design, or dreaming how this could be next big thing. Just worry about shipping and everything will fall in place if the idea has legs.

[1]: https://technode.com/2011/03/18/y-combinator-application-que...


Been there, done that; +1 from me that this is the right answer.

Two thoughts:

1. Writing things down is critical for me.

You can use paper, Obsidian, Notion, AirTable, whatever works for you. But I must get every little thought around the idea on paper otherwise it swirls around my head and distracts me. Sometimes this can take hours.

At the end of this process I have comfort that I can always pick up the idea in the future, when my situation has changed, without having lost anything. This eliminates much of the anxiety that drives the "I need to work on this now!" behaviour.

2. Sometimes you need to allow yourself time to explore certain ideas to answer these questions better.

For example, I've had an idea for a game for twenty years that my brain still bugs me about from time to time.

Recently I decided to spend a few days watching solo game devblogs - that made it clear to me I'm not in a position to work on this game idea, or any game ideas, and now I can get back to focusing on the ideas that are better suited to my present circumstances.


This is a very good answer, and it can be summarized with the word “value.” I would just add that value is shared between the user and the maker: it needs to be a win for both sides. So that “maker value” has to be included in the evaluation. Cheers!


Write down your ideas somewhere, but force yourself to not start them right away.

If after a week, two weeks, or a month, you still feel the itch / need to start them, then you can start.

This helps me.

A lot of time, having the idea sit on a list and simmer in your brain may make you decide it's not worth it to pursue.


I find "README Driven Development" helps with creating motivation for side projects. You create a nicely formatted README which describes how to use the end product, and then take it from there.

It also has the effect of keeping the design simple, since it has to be easy to explain in a README.


Never heard of this but I really like it.


Be patient... but not it the way you think of.

I started putting things on GitHub in 2012, and as of today, I have 55 repositories there. About 10 of them have releases. Exactly two of these releases are actually used by other people. The other 53 are experiments never has been or never meant to be finished.

However! This year I finished a book called Geometry for Programmers (and I'm proud of it so here's the link: https://www.manning.com/books/geometry-for-programmers). The game my brother and I started in 2009 was a failure sales-wise, but a pair of algorithms from it became a nice addition to chapter 8. The unfinished app that flattens curvy photos I made for my father back in 2013 became chapter 7. The thing that undoes projection I wrote for myself in 2012 - chapter 4.

Patience and persistence required to finish things come with age whether you want it or not. You're probably still at this magical phase of your life where you are allowed and expected to try new things with no tangible gain in sight, and that's great! Enjoy it! It's like planting lots of random seeds not expecting all of them to grow or bear fruit. Don't worry, the time to gather the harvest will come.


Hi,

I just ordered the book. I can't wait. I'm working on a group of ideas that relate to data engineering and math and computer languages. I am looking forward to sitting down with your book. I have been looking at design and also at how sympy connects numpy and numba and to the Spark ecosystem with sympytorch. This also means looking at performance issues and things like Rust and this new Modular AI Python derivative Mojo. Mojo is based on Python but introduces some new static memory objects into the infrastructure. But doing so boosts internal speed enormously. I have yet to see what PSF has to say about Mojo. But I have only asked around slightly so far. Thanks.


But if you don't have the interest to work on something (particular) any more, do you really want techniques or whatever to push through anyway?

I suppose it depends what the goal is - the question being asked suggests to me you want a successful side project (or even full time business?) no matter what it is, the tech it uses, etc. If that's the case, then I can't speak to motivation, but you need to pick a project based on identifying a niche, product market fit, etc., not experimenting with what's hot and sparking your interest this week.

If that's not right, then I think the question's wrong, and maybe you just need to come to terms with it being ok to experiment with things, prototype things; that they don't have to turn into an MVP that anyone else ever sees, you're just having fun/learning about things.

And even if it's a bit of both, you want the successful business, just only if you love the tech or idea, then you're still doing nothing wrong, because all these so far have not panned out in the loving it sense before they had a chance to pan out or not in the business success sense (so that's inconsequential).


I was about to say this. I can relate hundred percent to the modus operandi, and to be honest I just accepted that I tend to loose interest and that's fine.

Moreover, I came to analyse that what was really interesting to me was this initial dreaming and planning and obsessing phase rather than the long execution.

I tend to discover and learn what I was seeking in the early phase. After that the need is less pressing.

Accepting this I made my profession of being an architect, planner, discoverer, and not a regular maintainer of things.

Note that I also revisit often old stuff and the spark might reignite. I have completed projects in the span of years picking up after a long time.


External accountability can help with this. It's one reason why building something small helps - you can get it in the hands of users more quickly. Then they want this or that and it gets you motivated.

Of course, it's hard to build something at any scale that people WANT to use. So you might find accountability to start some other way. One thing to try is to solve a problem for ONE person and make it your mission to make them happy. Maybe your mom has a problem that you could fix, or a friend. Maybe it's simple, like needing a new way of listing to-dos or groceries. But find a problem for one person and tell them you're doing it. That can help you find the motivation to finish.


One thing to try: Pick one idea. Book recurring time (does not have to be that long time) to work on the project. During that booked time, do something that pushes the project forward. Draw concrete UI diagrams, write real code, design a few database tables. Do not spend that time on "research".

Start by keeping those timeslots so short you must get to work quickly to finish at least one thing (artificial deadline looming there).

Finish each slot by writing a note about where to continue next. Or leave code broken or a unit test broken. Next time you come back, you should have something simple and obvious to start.


Practice non-distraction. Start little.

Decide, for example, that you're going to make your bed. Then don't do anything but make your bed. Don't check your phone in the middle or go on a side quest to dust the headboard. Just make your bed.

Just keep practicing that on easy things and you'll get better. The key is to set tasks that you can achieve. As your brain gets used to this it will let you do more involved tasks undistracted.

Eventually you'll be able to non-self-distract for 30 minutes, at which point you can strategically use your time and make major accomplishments. That's about as long as anyone can work without some sort of break. If you can stack 10-15 good half hours in a day of work you're going to take over the world.


This assessment, Working Genius [1], helped us out at the company I work for.

The balance we were looking for, from thinking up, creating ideas, to encouraging (galvanizing), structuring, completing, etc, from start to finish.

It helped me explain what I guess I knew, but showed me who I’d need to work with, for best results.

Me, at my best (green), I’m great at Invention and Discernment. Creating and weeding out the potential solutions. In this zone, I can do 8-12hrs easy

At my yellow (I’ll do it, but it drains my energy quick) is enablement and tenacity. I can encourage others and push through my own doubt/insecurity/bug/issue, etc, but anymore than an hour or two of this, and I’m drained.

At my red zone (if I start doing this, I start getting frustrated) is Wonder and Galvanizing. I don’t get energy from rallying people or from wondering about too much, I’d rather figure it out, not dream it out. If I have to talk to rally people over, for more than 5 min, I’m drained and frustrated. Or if we are “pointlessly-brainstorming” and “accepting any input”, I’m checked out 5 min in.

Anyway, there are plenty of good suggestions here, but this helped in figure out what kind of people to surround yourself/team with for completing projects, etc

[1] https://www.workinggenius.com/


I've noticed that most devs, anyway, are either front-loaded or back-loaded.

"Front-loaded" means that the part of a project they really enjoy is the beginning part, design work, etc. Once those problems are largely worked out, the project becomes less interesting to them. A common refrain from this personality is "the rest is just implementation details".

"Back-loaded" is the opposite of that. They hate the initial work of a project and prefer to do the implementation details, after the road is mapped out.

Both sorts of devs are critical. Could it be that you're a front-loaded sort? If so, maybe the thing to do is to bring in someone who's back-loaded and work on the projects together?


Start a page on eg notion titled ideas. When you have an idea, write about it (all the sub ideas) instead of starting it immediately.

Then go back to what you were already working on, until they’re finished. I keep 2 projects active, when I’m tired of one I work on the other. My idea list probably has 100 items.


I'm not an expert, not a person with ADHD, nor an accomplished developer who manages to finish his projects constantly. I have a few ones going on for years and I struggle with the same issue both at work and outside of it. BUT lately things have improved, and by a very simple method: I keep a journal. Specifically, it's to record what I do daily, what I read, the projects I start, etc. Then, I keep a list of daily, monthly and yearly objectives, and at the beginning of each month I plan my goals, which are mostly projects I want to complete. I keep a list of open projects, sort them by priority and stuff them in there each month. It's not automatic thet I manage to work or finish the projects, but at least it builds some pressure which leads me to remember about them, so I'm compelled to work on them. This month I managed to finish my new website revision, which was an outstanding issue since last year's june. This makes me happy, it's a push to continue on this path, and it lift my morale as I see I can complete things.


OP, bear in mind that you're still learning a great deal from all this. It's not a valueless activity. You're losing interest once the challenge and novelty have gone. It may not be in your interest to punish yourself into finishing something like this. Turn it into a superpower - you'll make one hell of a consultant.


I might be less favorable for OP but for me it looks like projects stop being interesting when any real challenge comes up.

Making up name and setting basics for project sound like OP does only easy stuff but has no interest to go into details.

Just like my nephew when playing games, he could “get bored” by 5 games in 1 hour. What I noticed was — he was switching because he was bad at these games but would not admit that - so he would call game boring or silly without trying to actually getting to be good.


It is likely a bit of both. I had the same trait as OP. I would actually enjoy an intellectual challenge, but to see something through you also need grit and you must 'grind' your way through boring parts and dead ends.

Also, when starting out everything looks neat and shiny, and along the way there are ugly problems that don't neatly fit into the conceptual framework you started out with. Things start to get messy, there are workarounds, less than ideal code from finding the right approach, etc. The stuff that I refactor and just 'deal with' in my paid job, but doesn't really 'spark joy' in my private life. Throwing it all away and doing something else gives that green field feeling that anything is possible yet again.


Well that's quite a different situation. I agree. It depends what is stopping the projects.


Yes you can stop project because after setting up name and code you realize it is not really that cool in terms of other people or even you won’t really use it if you build it.

One other way, is you realize how much more work it is and how much other mundane things go with it so you just come up with another project you believe somehow will be easier.


Ship incrementally and often

It doesn't have to be "working code". It could be blog articles, conference talks, youtube videos, github gists, colab notebooks, social media posts, etc other places for your ideas to live, be found, discovered.

For example, I've been playing with vector search ideas for a LONG time. I have many unfinished ideas. I can empathize with your feeling. However, you are never really "DONE" - if you shipped something, you'd find the next thing in that area to work on. This loop repeats forever :).

If you scanned, the vector search stuff on my blog, you might not see the "big idea" yet, but I've written incrementally about parts of it, just to get bits and pieces of feedback.

It also helps my focus as it encourages me to keep going in a direction (or not) based on traction.


Couple things:

Check out the book 'Refuse to Choose'

Do this ADHD screener: https://contentmanager.med.uvm.edu/docs/default-source/ahec-...

Maybe your strength is exploration. That's ok. What makes you feel like you should finish projects?


You could have 'Leonardo Syndrome'[0]

[0] https://thoughtfulatlas.bearblog.dev/leonardo-syndrome/


I recommend spending more time time to plan and explore your idea or project before doing anything. As if you were considering it as a potential business. Even if it's just a personal project, think about the time and money you'll need to invest, and the benefits and value it will provide. Think on why you should prioritize this over other tasks or existing projects. Most importantly, sleep on it. Get away from it and do something else. Spend at least a couple of days on and off planning it. Outline and prioritize features and tasks. Decide on the most important ones and define the MVP. If, after this planning process, you still feel motivated to pursue the project, go ahead! By now you should have a good reason and motivation to do it. Focus on finishing a simple MVP quickly and then iteratively improve it. This will give you the satisfaction of having a functioning product.


You need to realize that those new frameworks and APIs are not really new, they are just a different view on the same constraints that we all have when programming.

It's 90% marketing: a new tool promises to be 10x faster than the other in some circumstances, but forgets to mention that it has a lot of important features missing.

Some frameworks compile to JS (a pain to debug), some don't (but then they have less clean CSS separation because those tools are limited in what they can do).

Then there's the HTML only movement that forgets to mention that it gets complicated whenever there are dependencies between data.

The problems you are facing are real, but switching to different frameworks will get you different sets of problems that you need to face. What's important is to understand what's going on behind the scenes and move forward with your project, whether it's in the framework you're using or the new one.


"After a few days or weeks" that is quite pathetic dedication. In my case, it's months and years. Even a decade for one project. The problem with you and me is that we like the creative part of problem-solving. We like to think about solutions. But once we figure it out, we are bored with it and want to move on to the next challenge. And there is nothing wrong with that, that's a role that not many fit and most prefer instructions to do their job. And it can be very lucrative role to play in the industry, if you have the skill and knowledge for big and mid tech companies. So my advice is to do that - become a part of a project where you will be the architect or hire people to help you materialize your projects. That way you take your creativity and problem-solving skills and join them with the skills of people who like to code by the book.


Because it gets boring.

You're looking for a feeling of excitement, to really feel alive.

After the initial rush, that feeling fades. So do your chances of finishing the project.

Recognize that rush/excitement/feeling alive WILL NOT come from your project.

Disassociate that feeling from the project.

Then you'll pick projects far more stingily.

And then you'll finish one of those projects.


This is sound advice. I was once recommended something similar: budget time to do <something you don't want to>, and then do NOT invest more time than this. Stop once you reach the timebox, even if you feel like you want to continue working on it. Because you have to learn to decouple this task from your motivation. You are not doing it because you feel like it, but because you decided to do it.


Something that you might want to consider, but which hasn't really shown up in the comments, is... Do you actually _want_ to do the finishing?

Are you taking on these projects because you want the end result to exist, or because you just really enjoy the initial phase of learning and discovering and mapping and planning? If you are getting joy/mental stimulation/a creative outlet from this, then perhaps it is serving its purpose already.

Sometimes, doing something you love, even if you leave it incomplete or do it poorly, is exactly what you need to refresh you. Maybe your hobby isn't building software. Maybe your hobby is just... Dreaming up new projects, and learning about new technology. And if this is your hobby, and not your job, maybe you don't actually need to finish projects at all. Leave the finishing to your day job.


>How did you go from a chronic project starter to actually finishing and releasing projects? What can you do to keep your focus on one thing long enough to bring it to fruition?

1. Keeping extensive notes

  Write down your new ideas in a location you trust and will review again in the future. If they really were good ideas, you can then come back to them.
2. Anticipate friction in-depth

  I too have frittered away lots of time on disparate projects that never went anywhere. What would happen is I would lose to start and do all the fun stuff. Then I would hit a frustration of some kind and give up. You have to account for this before you start.


I can’t speak about successful projects yet, but I have begun to make more progress in the past few weeks than I have in the rest of my life. Here’s the thing: if you have ADHD, don’t fight it, work with it. Have several different projects going on and rapid shift between them when you feel yourself getting tired. A problem here, a paragraph here, it adds up. This turns out to be much more useful as an adult at work than as a child at school because this allows you to do the job successfully in a way you can’t as a student.

Also, use the depth of your focus to your advantage in making connections and going deep. Again, helps improve stamina.


Sorry if my answer overlaps a lot with others, I didn't bother reading all of them.

I have a similar personality trait. I have grown up observing this trait around me, and I think I manage it pretty well.

The best way to control an attention that gets caught from one thing to another is to try to build some habits that may give the necessary structure.

If I were to give a few advises:

* Recognize that you are already starting some things and cut yourself some slack. A lot of people do not start things on their own, and even an unfinished project taught you things, the younger you are the more relevant this is. * Understand how hard it is to finish thing. Having a clear idea about an article for my blog takes me five minutes, finishing it ranges from three hours to two days of work: redaction, proof reading, picking an illustration and all... And this is just an article, if you plan to release anything open source. Adding a decent documentation, packaging it, making sure that the architecture does not only fit a personal need, it's nothing fractional. * When you have an interesting idea you often feel compelled to "serve it". In order to not have this frustrating feeling to let it down I have a simple wiki page where I add all my ideas, one after another, with a date. I know it's there and I can come back to it one day. * Have a very high respect of yourself. Whatever you are showing online should have some degree of completion. I am strongly against "oh this was a quick idea I had" public github repositories. Whatever it is I put online, I am thinking that some people are going to judge me viewing only this side of what I did. I impose myself some level of standards. * Pick your battles. Know that you will be able to commit to two or three ideas a year, maybe keep a list of what you have achieved what idea was on your top list and what ideas you actually went through. I try to do a monthly follow up on those. * Follow up. Linked with the above but probably the hardest to put in place. Take the time to have regular meetings with yourself, this enables two things: realizing that you have actually done things (see first point), and review your idea to kind of revive the almost dead one that you find interesting.


I’ve personally been diagnosed with ADHD at 30 years old. Methylphenidate is the only thing that seems to work to calm down the infinite storm of thoughts/ideas you describe (and avoid the spiraling anxiety, etc).

Not saying it’s the same for you, but I personally never considered I could be ADHD, the diagnostic, and everything that comes afterwards has been a life saver for me, that might be something to consider. Because your post is basically describing my brain process without medication.

All the best.

Edit: I would recommend to check „Taking charge of adult adhd“ by Russell A. Barkley, even if just as a way to see for yourself if you match the symptoms or not.


Long ago, I found that when I discussed personal projects with other people, they would argue with me to the point where I no longer had any remaining energy to complete projects. Consequently, I only discuss projects when I am done with them - whether completed or was going to abandon it anyway.

Too much energy is lost having "Why did you do it this way? You should do it that way!" The proper response to such questions is "do it yourself" or "do your project your way and then show me when it is done".


Take the comments here with a grain of salt. There's a lot of bad advice, even of the medical excuse kind.

One thing that jumps out to me is, if you can't finish why not scope it in a way you can?

Focus on making it so simple and break it down into steps so clear that you can accomplish it in one or two weekends. If you can't, make the scope and project even simpler the next time.

Once you get into the mode of simplifying the problem and the iteration, completing things becomes easier.

Don't auto diagnose anything. If you think there's a real problem go see a professional.


Haha, I know that feeling!

What helped me:

1. Don't start immediately. Let your idea sink in for a few days. If you're still excited a few days after the initial spark, it's worth working on that idea.

2. Build in public (or with friends). As soon as you've got some people sailing with you, it's harder to get carried away by "the next big thing".

3. Make sure you always know what's the next non-technical milestone. Lay out the steps you need to take to get there but don't over-plan (analysis paralysis really is a thing)


Funny enough ... I just listened to this 2021 podcast episode https://timharford.com/2021/05/cautionary-tales-fritterin-aw... that goes into some of what you're talking about (of course, it's different - but still amusing to me that the general topic is very similar)

Being a "chronic project starter" is not inherently bad

It may be "bad" or or may not be "bad"

I, likewise, tend to get bored with the middle parts between "idea" and "finalization"

I'm really good at architectural-type stuff - big picture, planning, design, pricing, etc

And I'm really good at detail stuff (get that bar chart 5 pixels further left, and 10% shorter)

The middle (ie really boring parts) ... not so much - I can (and do) do them: but they are distinctly not my favorite :)

The only way that has worked for me to move from "project starter" to "releasing projects" is to have an outside deadline imposed - whether it's needing a new chicken coop before the chicks are big enough to move from the mini coop, or something else: I personally need a hard cutoff from the clock to help me get there

Otherwise ... it just sits on the pile of "I'll get a round tuit"


Those saying ADHD could be wrong, could be right. Many things look like ADHD and ADHD looks like many things - the differentiating factor being ADHD is throughout your entire life. So be curious, if you feel the need, but if you seek diagnosis find someone thorough.

My suggestions though, and slowly introduce theses one at a time, are start with exercise, sleep, nutrition, and mental health.

While doing that practice organization skills. I don’t mean come up with some complex system or tool. The way I do this is I have a notebook (simple app) for ideas / wiki with no special system. And I have a Kanban-like now / later board for tracking work on ideas etc.

This has helped me immensely. If you do some of these great. If you don’t, introduce them slowly and focus on consistency over intensity. I take 30-min a day to work towards some goals / ideas I have, and I have made a ton of progress over a few months.

Also, even if you suspect you do not have ADHD, many of the organizational tools / skills / systems that are recommended for folks in treatment are also useful for non-ADHD folks.

If you want to learn more information from a source I trust, check out HealthyGamerGG. https://youtu.be/0hePvDEOZYs


Those were the 1st 7 years of my self-employement.

I know it sucks having to work on one and the same project. It gets fucking boring.

But you need to learn discipline.

No one has ever been successful who never finished anything. Toughen up and bite the sour apple. You can experiment with different things as long as you get back to your main project.

Each new project is great, until you hit a roadblock. With that in mind, stop quitting as soon as you hit one. Work through it or don't and keep being a failure.


It's always attractive to create new problems in the face of resolving existing ones. This applies to everything in life.

From what I'm hearing, you're doing the easy familiar shiny new parts then distracting yourself with a replacement doing more of that part when the shine dulls and Real Work begins.

It's like you're breaking up with you girl/boy friend after the honeymoon phase is over, so you can go experience that part again, instead of actually doing the work of a long-term relationship.

This isn't to say it always makes sense to finish whatever you started. Knowing when to cut your losses is an important life skill to develop. But starting projects that are within scope for you to finish in the first place is also an important skill, unless it was just an academic exercise you deliberately started to never intending to finish.

My only advice here is to try improve self-discipline and actually introspect enough on these matters to make starting/cutting losses/finishing conscious choices made after weighing the costs vs. benefits etc. Maybe look into existing guides/literature for improving self-discipline, overcoming adversity, "sticking it through" etc.


Don't jump on the assumption that you have ADHD. Get it diagnosed by a competent professional if you want to be sure. But even then, I feel like a lot of people get diagnosed with ADHD (or self diagnosed) while they probably don't have it (mostly in America is my impression).

Instead, it might simply be related to your personnality. I tend to be like you, and for me it is simply that finishing all the little details at the end of a project get boring and the new and grand ideas are more exciting.

Some suggestions:

Surrounding yourself with people who are good at finishing stuff can help, especially if it's on the same project.

Cycle between projects: when project A becomes boring, does project B become interesting again ?

Filter things to get the things that you're the most excited about and focus on the those instead. I found the book "Essentialism" to be particularly helpful for me in that regard. Check for patterns: what are the commonalities between the projects that you are interested in ? Try to find what really gets your excited.

Finally, this is perhaps more controversial, but I recommend looking into the 4 sides of the mind theories by C.S Joseph on YouTube: your personnality type might be ESFJ-ESFP-ENTP-ENFP, and learning to leverage your psychology instead of going against it can help. It's similar to MBTI but less.. horoscope like in my opinion. Maybe the big 5 model also has something interesting to say in that area if you're more comfortable with something less novel but more accepted within psychology. For me, learning about my strengths and weaknesses is something I found extremely useful.

Good luck!


I think this is a common trait of creative people. After all, we want to create new things, not necessarily shepherd products through often-tiresome paths to completion or marketability.

Some random thoughts:

I watched a documentary about the production of the new Mustang at GM. The head of the project said something like "Once the initial excitement and enthusiasm are over, it's 95% bad news."

Something I have been occasionally thinking of doing is making a list of all my abandoned projects. Sort of a litany of my failures. A reverse-CV of sorts.

In my latest project (a 3D Common Lisp system), I made two decisions which have so far kept me involved. (1) I am not aiming at developing a commercial system. This means I can ignore necessary-but-tedious development a commercial system would require. (2) Since the system is a sandbox for me to explore my ideas, I can work on whatever interests me most at any given moment. This keeps me motivated, though to be honest I still go through slow periods. I have written some blog posts about this: https://kaveh808.medium.com/

It does help to be clear about why you are doing what you are doing. Whether it is intended to make money, solve people's problems, is just a hobby akin to picking up painting.

Overthinking leads to paralysis. Take it one step at a time and try as much as possible to concentrate on what motivates you, rather than imagining and enumerating all potential pitfalls.

I'll leave you with a quote by Ray Bradbury: "You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down."


Stop having new ideas.

It sounds strange, but as long as you keep loving the idea that you constantly come up with new ideas, you will continue to do so, and the new ideas will distract you from the current project(s). Ideas always sound and feel a lot better in your head than when you're developing them. They are, in many ways, siren's calls.

You new ideas may be either (1) truly unique new things worth pursuing, or (2) rehashes of existing ideas where what sounds cool is shaping them to your taste and liking, or (3) just plain bad ideas. When you are already embarked in a project, the only reason to look for a new idea is if it's substantially better than the one you're already working on, i.e. if you're working on a (3) and you get a (2), or you're working on a (2) and you get a (1). Without being experienced and/or exceptional, you will almost never have a (1). And if you have a (3), you're probably better off not starting it beyond a weekend jam project. So you will almost always be working on a (2) and at best you would switch to another (2). Nope, looking for and having another (2) idea is not worth it.


Or prioritize your ideas and discard the rest, use INVEST


You are high in Big Five trait Openness, but probably pretty low in Conscienciousness.

I'm similar. One of the tricks is to focus on making something beautiful/complete as the goal. Similarly, you need to break down big grand ideas by ordering them more. (Creativity is somewhat impulsive and chaotic, work is the opposite). Split grand project goals into smaller jobs, reward and celebrate when you complete them.


If your work isn't professional, high-stakes stuff for a client, perhaps you can take some sting out of the hard finishing part by heavily and prominently disclaiming your work, and writing down the things you haven't done.

Is the purpose really to release polished products? Or to learn and try something new and share it?

By stating the purpose you can make those disclaimers more relatable and reasonable and set your users expectations.

Also know that starting, exploring and learning are brilliant useful skills by themselves.

Finishing is another skill, and if you want to be good at it I think it's useful if you can take some pressure out of it, start with low expectations and then with practice you get better, like all things.

Also, you can't expect yourself to finish all things because its time consuming like all the steps.

Example and shameful plug: models I release here that are plastered with disclaimers, but this is what lets me share something and move on.

https://observablehq.com/@declann/pension-calculator-ireland...


I think part of the problem is lack of project planning and goal setting. I wondered the same thing from me. It's easy to quit a project if you have no goals or purpose for it. Once you quit there's no problem since there was never a plan. The other must is a sense of urgency. I'm an easy going guy. Never in a hurry. It has always bothered me when I work with someone that makes an emergency out of everything. There's no hurry, I used to say.

The easiest move in any project for you, your coworkers, customers and investors is to quit and move on. The longer a project gets the easier it is to quit. Your goal is to forestall that urge as long as possible by showing results as soon as possible and in on going basis. Yes, EVERY project has a deadline whether you set it or not. The implicit deadline is the point where you will quit. Again do your best, so you don't get to your quitting point, by showing progress and you can best do that by having a plan that has goals and deadlines to show progress.


>> How did you go from a chronic project starter to actually finishing and releasing projects?

Why do you care if you finish them or not? I mean that seriously.

This isn't your day job so j presume you're doing this for fun (intellectual stimulation) -once it's no longer fun, and all projects stop being fun sooner or later, then you stop and move on.

If you're doing this for fun, then recognise that "completion" is not a goal, and keep doing it.

If there's another motivation - perhaps you underlying motivation that prompted this message - then you need to acknowledge that and figure out what project best fits that motivation.

For example if your motivation is to ship, and you are aware of that, then you won't be distracted by a new shiny thing because you can objectively see that it will hinder your goal.

But be honest with the goal. If you're honest then the goal will be all the motivation you need. And if the goal is "for fun" then be honest about that, and don't feel bad for abandoned projects.


My solution to subclinical ADHD is to embark on a project of such ridiculous ambition and scope that it's never going to be finished anyway, where it's possible to work on different sub-projects within the larger project and still move forward.

Don't listen to people who tell you to keep your ambitions small. Small is boring and boring never gets done.


I think that you're on to something.

Sometimes you've just gotta let your food touch.


I have a lot of those unfinished projects too. I regard them as PoC's and that gives me a better feeling about it. If you want a better chance of finishing one them, then start with the parts that you regard as the least interesting and most tedious. If your initial enthousiasm survives that phase, the rest will be a lot easier.


The last 20% of any project is where 80% of the work lies. At the beginning its fun and frenetic, you can write tons of code and feel like you've made big progress. The last 20% is integrations, debugging, sometimes painful bits you had deferred to later.

What you need is discipline, not motivation. Motivation is fleeting, while important, it always runs out. Work on making a schedule and sticking to it as a goal unto itself. Make a contract with your future self and do it. Discipline is something you need to train, so expect to fail at first - but strive to improve in a structured way.

Also a note on small thing that has really helped me - don't tell anyone about your project till it is finished. I find talking about your half finished projects gives a similar sort of dopamine hit to finishing and can rob you of the gratification which would drive you to finish.


I have some similar experience, but I don't think it's entirely bad. If the motivation to check out <new language-X> was to learn something about it and you cooked up a project with that goal in mind, not finishing the project doesn't mean you didn't accomplish your actual goal of learning something about language-X.

In other cases, I'll start a project only to learn in the course of it that it's a bad idea or doesn't have as much upside as I initially thought. In those cases, finishing the project would lead to a worse outcome than stopping the project once that discovery was made.

Projects as an adult aren't the same as school projects. If you don't finish a school project, it's bad (at least locally). If you don't finish a project as an adult, that could be either good or bad.


I feel you...this describes a lot of my github. I find I burn out after I get the fun technical part done and it's a viable proof of concept. The polishing going to release it to others is a high burden. I recently have been building something that in passionate about with a level of polish that is not typical. Here are some pointers from that experience and some of the others I actually got into the hands of other people. All depends on your motivations but here are some things I think drove me (outside of work hobby development)

1) find something you are passionate about or that solves a problem for you or people you care about

2) "don't try to boil the ocean", sounds like you are already trying to scope your projects well, but really focus on the smallest minimum viable initial product you can get into the hands of others for feedback.....

3) find users or some external force driving you to finish. It helps me when I have some constraint on time that drives progress. User feedback and showing your work to someone is incredibly motivating.

4) find the part you usually burn out on. For me it getting the interesting part database backed with a web GUI. I always joked the perfect UI was command line, but for many users it's not. I found a tech stack that I am productive in and enjoy writing in (Refine.dev,Supabase). I had tried for years to find something that stuck...all the way back to when rails was the new hotness.

5) Automate work flows so working on your project does not involve slogging through manual processes. CI/CD is pretty easy to set up these days with GitHub actions, netlify, fly.io etc.

6) find ways to integrate stuff you read about on hacker news or other sites into your project. Use it as a sandbox for testing out new technologies you read about.

7) chatGPT...some of my least favorite parts of a project, chat gpt has made immeasurably easier. This resource is truly game changing, helping my productivity and letting me quickly prototype new functionality.


Can you finish and release stuff in your working life?

There are lots of great tips and perspectives in this conversation. I think you should ask yourself the question why you actually want to finish these projects. Do you think you should? If so, but do you actually want to, and how hard do you want it?

If you don't find a clear answer to these questions, consider to decide to not finish from the start: take all these little projects just as experiments, explorations, little code essays. Do a lot of them but don't become invested as much.

If you do decide you want try finishing something, I think you need some external accountability. If you don't want that, you can also try to make a rule for yourself that you aren't allowed to work on anything else while your current project isn't finished.


>What can you do to keep your focus on one thing long enough to bring it to fruition?

Find a thing that fulfills a lasting desire.

What do those 100 projects tell you about your desires? If you cluster them by the underlying desires, which desires are the most important to you?

Also: From now on, you are allowed to finish your projects.


Maybe playing around with a lot of new frameworks, APIs is actually what you want to be doing? Maybe you don't actually want to make something popular that you'd then need to maintain, as that's more boring. But let's assume you do.

I also have a list of ideas, with hundreds of entries on it. As I've gotten older, the amount of time I can put into one without becoming demotivated seems to have increased. Used to be a weekend, but now I can now put ~2 months into one without knowing if anyone is interested in it.

To keep going past that limit, it helps if the idea has a shape such that a very simple version can be quickly released, but then extended. Once you have any minor traction at all, the external validation makes it way easier to remain motivated.


I have built and released 4 webapps this year. Not more than 2 weeks (50hr) i spent on any project.

One of those got about 20k unique users when it's launched here, one got few thousand users and another one will be launched next week.

Having said that before all of this i spent a year building a mobile app which ended up abandoned after all done due to lack of confidence. After this failure i asked myself just one question "how much more time i have on this planet?" That's it . I became super productive overnight after that. I still have slow days but mostly everyday equals to 3days for me. Trying my best to cover all the lost time.

My advices are 1. Count your remaining days everyday 2. Good enough product is enough. Don't think about outcome. Just enjoy the process


It's like one of those 80/20 rule things.

Something like 25% of any given project is the 'fun' part. These include refining the basic idea; building a prototype; getting some simple functions working; seeing it do one or two things extremely well.

The other 75% is the 'grunt work' part that may not be fun to work on (e.g. documentation, bug fixes, refactoring, etc.) but is often absolutely necessary to have a 'finished' project. (Not that any project is really ever finished, but rather one that is usable to a large audience)

I have experienced this with various projects I have worked on over the years; whether ones I worked on professionally while working for someone else, or my own 'hobby projects' that I did in my spare time.


I believe it’s motivation, interest and having some idea of an mvp; although a complete product of some kind is great and is the end goal, it’s best to not be overwhelmed and better to enjoy the process.

Anything worth your time will keep you motivated. Otherwise keep looking for that product or idea, you haven’t hit the big one yet.

Start the project using a new language, tool or framework that you’ve been wanting to try out or use; this will motivate you.

As you get closer to a mvp, things will get interesting. Keep the mvp achievable in a short time period; everything else that comes after are features, enhancements and tasks.

Each iteration you’ll find yourself with new ideas and tasks such as enhancements and features. Be sure to store these on something like trello. A checklist works!

Rinse repeat.


We all have different pools of energy that we pull from each day that motivate us to get things done. According to the Kolbe Index, the 4 pools are follow through (FT), fact finder (FF), quick start (QS), and implementer (Im). Everybody has different starting values in each pool. People with high follow through like to work through a list or project until it’s complete. High fact finders are motivated by learning new things. High quick starts are very creative and constantly looking for something new. High implementers like to build and create things. Nobody is high on everything. From what you described, you sound like a high quick start and low follow through (and probably higher fact finder and lower implementer but I don’t have a lot to go off here). As others have noted, the high QS + low FT combination is perfectly correlated with having ADHD (but this is not a diagnosis tool!)

You can find your actual Kolbe by taking the Kolbe-A index at Kolbe.com (No connection, just think it’s an amazing tool, does cost $55 and their website is truly terrible)

The bigger take-away though is there’s nothing wrong with any Kolbe combination. They all have different strengths and weaknesses. For example, you would be very good in a startup environment where things are rapidly changing day to day and where others would get stressed out. But you might need someone else with more follow through to see your ideas to completion, or maybe you need to find ways to keep your fact finder satisfied as you finish a project by not planning everything out at the beginning. The best founding teams usually have complementary Kolbe’s so they fill each other’s missing energies.

Once you know your Kolbe and understand how each dimension is impacting you, you can start hacking your life to take advantage of your Kolbe instead of fighting against it. This is particularly hard for low follow-throughs (including me!) because most of society is optimized for high follow throughs, leaving us feeling like something is wrong with us when there isn’t.

I could talk about this all day, feel free to hit me up if you have more questions. I’ve been thinking about writing more detailed tools to help explain these concepts since Kolbe does a terrible job on their own.


I used to be like that, but am now more of a finisher. It's habit you have learn and then consistently practice. It includes learning to be done vs perfect ("perfect is the enemy of good"). Sometimes perfect is important to finishing, sometimes not. It's also important to know when to let things go. Sometimes a project's time has passed. To get started with the practice, start with a small thing you've started, take the mindset "I'm going to practice finishing", and then finish it. The first few times will be hard, but you'll get better every time you go all the way through to finish.


Maybe you just need a friend with business acumen.

I also must have 100s of projects that I started, built a bit, then abandoned when I got bored. But for some of them, friends and/or acquaintances later asked me to finish it for them (or their company). Staying motivated is much easier if you have a team rooting for you and excitedly asking for updates. Also, it feels fantastic to see your hobby project turn into a real product.

But business is a people's job and a team effort. So if you're more on the introverted tech side, you might need a trusted intermediaty between your problem solving skills and companies' unsolved problems.


Ideas are worthless. As a project manager and game creator, I can see you don’t have something to achieve. You masterfully avoided the essential: WHAT ARE YOU BUILDING? To me for example, how I achieve my goals (coding, framework, design) is irrelevant, I just want to get the idea out and implement it in its finest details. Also to note, the 80 20 rule: the last 20% of the project is 80% of the build time. So, you’re focusing in the wrong things. Hope this helps, good luck!

ps: also as a side note, if you don’t focus on anything, perhaps a physical activity or job would do you good: yoga, sports.


There is plenty of literature, especially practical literature: an example can be "Eat that frog ... Stop procrastinating" from Brian Tracy. There are also related YT pieces, one sees from searching for "brian tracy procrastination".

Maybe you could benefit to refine your framework of practice (i.e., in a way, the "coaching" literature that spells out the beneficial attitudes)?

Because the direct reply would be "choice and discipline - you do things that you elected as priorities by actually doing them, "staying there" until satisfactory completion".


How did you go from a chronic project starter to actually finishing and releasing projects?

I found the appropriate mediums for creative outlet.

For me, that's only rarely been software.

And often been writing...hence all the HN comments.

At the meta-level, I've learned that mostly my creative output benefits from small scale projects which can be completed quickly.

And that my large scale projects emerge from a collection of small scale projects. They rarely arise from grand plans.

For me, "idea" is a four letter word because ideas are not creative because there is no artifact. The only ideas that count are ones I must act upon immediately.

Good luck.


My own personal 'hack' has been focusing around a core and doing things fast. I've done a range of things but they've always been roughly relevant to the same field, so I can apply what I've learnt previously onto new things. This has also resulted in being able to make things faster due to familiarity and having dealt with the friction points before. I put 'hack' in quotes because it was about a decade(and a lot of money in domain renewals) until things started coming together regularly for me.


One suggestion I have is to consider what problems people are currently facing that you could help solve with your projects. By focusing on a specific need, you can better direct your energy and attention towards creating something that is truly valuable and impactful.

It's important to remember that building something just because it's trendy or new doesn't necessarily mean it will be successful or helpful to others. Instead, focus on creating a product that genuinely meets a need or solves a problem for your intended audience.


Focus on really short term projects first. Get those done before committing to larger projects.

If it is a large project, find a way to break it down in pieces you can call done, that can stand by themselves. e.g. MVP, service, etc.

At the end of the day, you're going to need discipline to ask yourself whether the project is dead because it turned out to be a bad idea, or whether the easy part is done and now you're in the deep pit of work that has to happen and are being lazy. Discipline is the only thing that will get you through that slog.


My current approach is document ideas first, group similar ideas and execute them at the same time. For example, throughout the years I've had four or fives ideas for games, I'm writing all of them down in Google keep, thinking of interface, mechanics, etc. This way when I feel productive I can push multiple projects at the same time, (all using the same stack). I can have a doc trail for when I want to come back for a project.


@annie_muss I'm curious, are those ideas something you'd like to share publicly with people? I had an idea to build a service, where users could post their "side-project idea", as they don't want / don't have time etc to build them and are okay with others using these ideas to build something meaningful. I feel it could become a place for active startup builders to connect, a place for creativity.


https://kern.al/ does this too, but if you want to do it, just do it and draw inspiration!


Change your focus from how to instead what you are making.

Taking what you've said at face value, you don't have a clear idea what you are doing so it seems inevitable that you would "fizzle out". You don't have a goal, you are just wandering around aimlessly with your new tools of the week.

So stop making "something", try and go make a thing instead. Make a specific goal and strive towards it.


There are a lot of great responses in this thread. One thought I had is to maybe set a goal to “release” like a week or even weekend from the time you start. Bang out the minimal viable product with a buddy and get your project into an alpha phase. You don’t need to openly share it but that milestone might help you to set a cadence of success that will keep you working on the project and meeting more future releases.


Looks like ADHD person with high IQ and curiosity (like me). You could cure the problem with medicine or just become better managing it with age. From my experience, eventually you'd become more selective with your ideas and more involved into really finishing them when having long term plan and returning to implementation from time to time. But it might took some years for ambitious projects :)


I know my interest will fadeout after few weeks, so in the honeymoon phase itself i will try hard to ship the MVP as much as possible, even taking couple of leaves at work.

Use the code from past incomplete projects and minimise the repeated work for each projects.

Keep the MVP as minimal as possible, target solving only one problem for your potential customers.

Push at-least one git commit a day and keep the github graph green until launch.


It is ok. There are many things happening when you pursue a project. Only one of them is the output of the project.

One day when you have done this enough, you will stop, and you will know something that someone who created and maintained a few projects, someone you might presently assess as more accomplished, will not know.

You are spending desire to capture diffuse information in your own understanding.


What has worked for me is trying to build a product and focusing on user needs (as opposed to being a technical demo), which need not be monetized in any way.

The focus on users makes helps you in planning many aspects of the project which you may not have considered otherwise, as well as keeps you on track. (Why am I overcomplicating this, don't I just need X to work like this?)


If you've nevertheless consistently brought some of these to completion, don't be worried at the graveyard of incomplete projects. Just as there's a sales funnel for vetting and converting leads to good customers with attrition along the way, so too there's a funnel for converting ideas to your projects' goals with attrition along the way.


Used to be the same for me and in a way it still is. It's nice though to have a long-term project to deep-dive into. The last time I started a longer term project, I've set myself some sort of deadline, if I can pass this critical problem to get a first proof-of-concept after a month or two I continue. So I had a hobby project for a few years.


You’re probably over-planning.

Scale back and just plan for a release in 2-4 weeks. Ignore everything else outside of what you can get done in that time frame. Drop the consideration of things like the domain and the name. Fight the urge to play with fancy scaffolding that eats productivity. Once you’ve launched, you’ll have a foundation to iterate on.

Release early, release often.


Find users for your project. I've been (and still am) in the same boat as you, but the two projects that I haven't abandoned started when I made something for someone else. I haven't made any money on these projects. Simple user satisfaction is my motivation to keep working them.


I have the same thing, but it goes away after I launch something. So I always went from idea to launch in max 2 weeks, otherwise I know I won’t execute.

But what worked even better; having employees. Seems as a product manager (of multiple products), I don’t have this issue at all. I only have it if I am coding.


I'm like this. I have started literal hundreds of projects, most of them game ideas. Projects are never _really_ finished, but through the years I have become better at leaving them at a satisfying point, even making some of my projects public. For me, this was a journey. Here's a few lessons I learned for me:

- Figure out why you are doing this in the first place. Usually, my core desire behind a project idea is not at all "to make money" or "help people", but something more simple. It's to figure out how to do something, or to quench my own curiosity. - I realized I have a near-unending pool of ideas, but I can just do one at a time. Which one to pick? For a while, I chose them based on project size; how easily could I gratify that core desire? How quickly could I be happy with this project? Almost any project that I'd think would take more than a weekend would be sent back to the pile. Sometimes it took a while to distill the core desire behind a project idea, to really see why it was interesting to me. - Doing this also taught me a lot about how to make projects smaller. This was extremely freeing. I don't have to worry about losing work -- I'll lose maybe up to a day of typing, and the real value was working on the project anyway, not necessarily the produced artifact. I also realized I can do many projects with nothing but a browser and a text editor, and the more I used this small tool set, the deeper my understanding got and the more I could do in a weekend project.

Over time, I've 'finished' many of these projects, and I've also started to learn that finishing really is a skill in itself -- something that takes practice. More of my projects nowadays are at least somewhat ready for public consumption, and I'm still getting better at this. I still start projects that I don't finish. If an idea is cool enough, I'll still give it a try. Some project ideas were so cool/fun to work on that they would just be able to capture my attention for the weeks or sometimes even months they asked for to get them somewhere (most recently, that's https://kaesve.nl/projects/shells/). Some projects can't capture all that attention at once, but are still fun enough to revisit. They take years, but slowly move forward. And if I abandon a project, that's okay too; it usually means I found a new, shorter-term project, or that I realize that that core desire behind that project idea wasn't so satisfying after all.


I was the same but figured it out.

I documented my process here: https://medium.com/@alibadereddin/personal-kanban-with-trell...


If you don't have experience in building things, why not just jump on a stabilised project and build something smaller there? Reflect which free software you use the most or find more interesting, and then check how you can contribute.


Life is short. Life is what happens in between empty neglected side projects on GitHub.


I too have the same problem. I’m really good at starting things, and unless I find someone or some important reason to complete it, I seldom get there.

Nowadays I try to only start projects with those in place or else I find that I don’t fi…


At some point I chose one project as a main one, while I still start loads but that one plugs on.

Still, within that project I start things then come back.

When I'm going around GitHub it takes me about a year to get back to a project.


Although I am against using chatgpt its impartiality should be handy in this thread. We have lots of posts saying not to jump to conclusions or its a textbook case, whether HN is biased towards ADHD etc.

---------

Unfinished Tasks: ADHD/Bipolar Suspected

Model: Default (GPT-3.5)

User which dsm defined psychological assesment has the following symptoms? many different ideas, starting many things with a lot of energy but never completing them

ChatGPT The symptoms you described, such as having many different ideas and starting multiple tasks with high energy but never completing them, can be associated with different psychological conditions. However, it's important to note that I am an AI language model and not a qualified healthcare professional. A proper diagnosis requires a comprehensive evaluation by a trained mental health professional.

That being said, the symptoms you described are consistent with a characteristic feature of several conditions, including:

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): Individuals with ADHD often struggle with impulsivity, difficulty sustaining attention, and a tendency to start tasks but have difficulty following through and completing them.

Bipolar Disorder: During the manic or hypomanic phase of bipolar disorder, individuals may experience increased energy, a heightened sense of productivity, and racing thoughts. However, they may struggle to complete tasks due to shifting focus and rapidly changing interests.

Cyclothymic Disorder: This condition involves recurring periods of hypomanic symptoms (similar to bipolar disorder) and mild depressive symptoms. The pattern of starting projects with enthusiasm but not finishing them may be present during the hypomanic phases.

It's important to consult with a mental health professional for an accurate assessment and diagnosis. They will consider your full clinical history, conduct a thorough evaluation, and utilize the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) criteria to make an appropriate diagnosis.


I'm the same, what I did some time ago was to team up with people who decided to build real business around one of ideas and put real money to back it. Now I wish I could just give up ;)


Have clearer goals

It sounds to me like you have a lack of consequences

I cant focus until I have external pressure to make more money, for example. So I go rent in more expensive trendier neighborhoods for the pressure.


Maybe it's not a problem to let your brain wonder without constraints deadlines and stress. Let it be creative. You can do this and still release something once in a while.


Try to build something that you would use by yourself for daily job/needs and then share with others Or extract something from main job code base into open source library


I have had similar issue as you, my go to solution was to write everything down in notes and break the features into super small tasks I can complete when I have time.


As several have mentioned this is a common symptom with ADHD, what no one has mentioned is it is also a common symptom from various types of heavy metal poisoning.

While I am not a doctor or a psychiatrist, you may want to speak with one to get an idea of various things you might do to help yourself.

I can tell you from experience, structuring your life is important when you drift. That means enforcing strong boundaries; creating a routine which you do not deviate from, and following a process methodically, and other things like meditating and visualizations can help. A lot of developing habits is simply to set a process and not give yourself the choice to deviate. After you've developed them (several months later) you can choose when you have the choice; i.e. there are conditions where you can reasonably give yourself a choice.

Its very hard to get properly tested for heavy metal poisoning because they can really only test for acute poisoning. Chronic poisoning commonly goes undiagnosed because the heavy metals get bound into your cells and out of your blood so quickly. Literally, to test for heavy metals the doctor needs to cause acute poisoning by using a chelator. As far as I'm aware that is still the case.

Common avenues for heavy metals are lead paint, arsenic in contaminated water, and mercury from silver dental amalgams (50% by weight; it leaches from acidic foods).

If you've had any of the following symptoms, its more likely this is poisoning than anything else.

Mercury: Tremors, Emotional changes (such as mood swings, irritability, nervousness, excessive shyness); Insomnia; Neuromuscular changes (such as weakness, muscle atrophy, twitching); Headaches; Disturbances in sensations; Changes in nerve responses; and/or Poor performance on tests of mental function; Brain fog; Skin rashes and dermatitis; .

Lead: stomach cramps, constipation, muscle/joint pain, trouble sleeping, fatigue, irritability, and loss of sex drive

Arsenic: Has quite a lot see below. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/arsenic


This is like the ADHD meme of "My hobby is collecting hobbies".

You get excited from the dopamine of New Shiny and as soon as that fades, you pick up a new one.


Focus is about saying NO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8eP99neOVs


I have exact same thing. I just gave up on trying to "fix it" and now enjoy my life with this "trait".


What I do is: write in down in a text file. Work on it a tiny bit until the idea stops looking so good.


Aside from all the very helpful comments here, I'm mildly curious what your github looks like?


It is likely you have ADHD, as I do.


This is called undiagnosed ADHD.


Everyone struggles with committing to things. Especially projects where the fun is front loaded.


Not every bad approach is some illness to pop pills about.

Terrible comments


Nobody said to pop pills.


Finishing things is overrated.

I think I have the same problem. I solved it by accepting it.


You have an inflated sense of your own ability. You think you are Notch or the guy who did Plenty of Fish and think you can do everything yourself. You're not that good. You need other people to help you. Get other people involved and you'll get further.


Creation and destruction are both very attractive. Maintenance is not.


hey, this sounds like me. I think a cofounder might help. im working on an ai app if you're any good with nextjs/react or langchain.

(This goes for others reading this too... email in bio).


Create an achievable task list using INVEST criteria


I’m a finisher. I set the goal to finish something very hard.

What I mean by that is finish it and automate it so much that I don’t have to see it ever again.


You may have undiagnosed ADHD. I found this out about myself a few weeks ago and it has explained an awful lot about the last few decades.


I try to complete them faster :)


Maybe you need collaborators.


In the early days of Android apps I saw that there was an LGPL-licensed Java library that could parse Microsoft Access files. I wrote a very simple Android UI for it that one could load a file, choose a table, and then page forward through it. Four days after I had the idea I released the app. At the time there was no other Android app where one could just have an Access database file on your phone or tablet and be able to read it without some convoluted means like net access. So it was popular among its niche crowd immediately.

Not so hard to "finish" - within four days I created an MVP that people found useful. I didn't stop working on it after four days - people asked for the ability to page backwards, which I added. Or the ability to search, which I added. Or for case insensitive search. Or for wildcard search. Or for a recently opened files shortcut if the same file or files were opened frequently. All these things users suggested, all of them I added. I even began sending patches upstream so that the library would work with the then latest version of Microsoft Access.

I had a product which people were using after four days. Because I had a free open source library to use and there was no competition at the time.

David White author of the game "The Battle for Wesnoth" had a similar idea about creating a simple project in a short amount of time ( https://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?t=441 ). He had the same problem, so instead of something complex and time-consuming, he started building something simple.

> After a few days or weeks I completely forget about it, having not really made any progress on the project and not having released anything...I intentionally plan to have extremely minimal features, cut corners because this is just a first attempt and yet still it fizzles out.

If you're overflowing with ideas, then work on the simplest of those ideas, which will take the least amount of time to complete. One with even less of the extremely minimal features.

There's nothing wrong with reading about a new language, a new framework, a new API and toying around with it, I do that too as do many people. Lately, when I'm not poking at Android Compose frameworks, I poke at Stable Diffusion or Deep Floyd or LLMs or the like.

But if you want to finish something and never finish something, then a project which takes weeks as you say is out. From your overflowing ideas, pick the one which will take the least time to complete and complete it. If you run into some unexpected very complex tangle, which can happen, then if you want abandon it like the others and try the next simple seeming idea which comes up.


Does it matter?

Sounds like you’re having fun.

If you enjoy that process then relax.


It sure sounds like we have the same problem. For me however there are a few things I have learnt:

1. There is nothing (medically) wrong with you. Although I should own a t-shirt saying *) may contain nuts.

2. No you don't procastinate or are lazy for that matter. You probably already moved on to the next 10 things before people can come up with that diagnosis.

3. Yes you are the librarian of the infinite library of unfinished projects. In that you do have the tendency to keep track of all the projects you have not finished and feel inadequate (that moment between projects)

But the honest problem is that projects fizzle when you solve your erebra problem. And that is usually way before anything got made. Let alone finished. Quick win is to ask yourself: What have I learned from this project? And make that the result of the project. But after doing that a couple of thousand times you start to realise: Why am I learning all this stuff if I never use it to create something.

And that is the biggest problem. All your insights never lead to anything being created and that sucks.

Possible solutions ( and I personally do all of them ):

1. Find a job/role/gig where you think of the solutions and let other people implement them. Just always remember that it is no longer your project. You might have thought of something, but without the efforts of others it will never amount to anything, ever. So as long as you can respect the work of others and your own limitations in doing what they do you will do fine. But is harder than you might expect: My rule of thumb is that the moment I think they should be able to solve something on their own I failed.

2. Find more challenging problems. I usually do this by trying to expand something that spiked my interest to make it more generically applicable or asking myself if the problem is actually worth a solution ('faster horses') and if the underlying problem is not more interesting (mobility). This has two advantages: It will keep itching longer and takes you longer to scratch. Less projects to add to your library. You might create, solving your original itch, products that are basically byproducts of the solution you are looking for. Such a product is basically what pays my bills at the moment.

3. For those smaller itchy patches it helps to promise other people something: Present your findings, write a paper, make a POC by an agreed upon deadline. Now you have to be empatic enough to want to meet their deadline and thus create what you promised with all the works that comes with it. That is your result. You also have to be selfish enough to tell people that is where you end your involvement, because it no longer interests you, regardless of the plans they have pursuing this further. That is a tricky balance to strike and I struggle at times and do it wrong.

What ever you do and maybe you have better ideas than the above make sure you get to the point were your projects lead to something being created, because that really makes the difference.


Hey man, we all do this, it's normal. I don't know what to say to improve so much but definitely don't fret.

Maybe try to think a bit bigger picture, and as some authors like to do: just grind.

I've read that some authors force themselves to sit down and write x-page in the morning and that's that.

You know the Beatles used to clock into the studio every day like factory workers - making the best albums of all time was mostly not impulsive, it was 'work'.


You quit right when it gets difficult whether through fear of failure or laziness or not having a skill set or some internal flaw you have.

Hard work is painful. Don't expect accomplishing things to be fun. Sometimes instead of asking people online how to do hard work you just need to conquer the demon inside you and do the hard work.




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