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Comment by Diederich | Hacker News Reader

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: an un-nervingly large amount of the work I've done over the years has had this property: the long-term value is inversely proportional to the time put into it. Learning from this correlation remains a big priority for me.

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Same here, my best projects are the ones that were banged out over at most a week or so (then possibly supported with minor fixes over time). Still though, every shitty cancerous hell project before that plays its part in training your mind and preparing you for the moment when you can finally produce your opus.

What if you produce your opus and a series of constant organizational changes puts you right back in hell? Is there an end?

I have heard this explained as stuff that needs to be done yesterday almost always also has the property of cannot be disrupted for any reason (which is why it was so urgent to begin with). So your quick hack that stops the world from exploding cant afford to be meddled with, lest it causes the world to explode in the process....

Its similar to the worse is better philosophy, low quality wins because it can be churned out quickly, it stays in place because the value proposition of replacing it is unclear or insufficient.

When it comes to critical things, its very important that changing things has a definite, demonstrable purpose in regards to its outward effects, not just itch scratching. Aesthetic concerns matter little because the potential for disruptive effects is a near certainty while the upside is much more nebulous typically (the devil you know etc)

I've observed a similar effect in my own work. I wonder if it's as simple as the capability to produce more smaller projects and fewer large projects. Curious if you produced a lot of smaller projects before having valuable ones.

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