Comment by bbx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bbx | Hacker News Reader

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I've got the same issue, but only for the first 80% of the project. At that point, the project becomes a burden I have to finish, otherwise I would have wasted my time.

The initial burst of inspiration is always exciting: you've got a novel idea, there are no restrictions, no deadlines, no requirements. You don't care about bugs or beauty, just about making things happen. You could even abandon the project and it wouldn't affect anyone.

But the last 20%… I usually struggle with that last sprint. You need to handle the boring aspects of the project only to make it solid enough to launch and "decent" enough to share. This happened with CSS Reference [1]: very excited at the start about the concept, but then I had to go through all CSS properties one by one, and it took a very long time.

My most successful side projects are actually the ones that were quick to start and quick to finish. I had the idea for a "Web Design in 4 minutes" tiny project once [2], and for a few days, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I managed to design and code it rather quickly (as a result, several bugs still exist, but at least it was launched).

In comparison, "JavaScript in 14 minutes" [3] took me months, and I was dreading not being able to finish it. It was in the end less successful.

[1]: https://cssreference.io/ [2]: https://jgthms.com/web-design-in-4-minutes/ [3]: https://jgthms.com/javascript-in-14-minutes/

>I've got the same issue, but only for the first 80% of the project. At that point, the project becomes a burden I have to finish, otherwise I would have wasted my time.

It's only an issue if you're trying to publish or launch. If it's for learning, fulfillment, or just exploring something new, 80% might be more than enough.

By the way, CSS Reference is awesome.

It's worse if your hobby attracts users. Not a lot of users, of course, but barely enough to continue. You feel responsible and can't drop it. After a while the project becomes boring and keeps you from learning new and exciting things.

Soon you have to make excuses to family and friends, which don't understand why you still spend your time on the project...

I'm living through this right now. I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I think about dropping it. Do not recommend.

Just wanted to say I really enjoyed clicking through "Web Design in 4 minutes", every click brought a deep satisfaction of a task accomplished.

Awesome work!

Oh wow, just realized by clicking through that that grandparent poster is the mind behind Bulma.css.

I'm at 81% :) The fun part is over now with my e-commerce project. I have to integrate with payment provider, design a checkout form, create a shipping API, write legal text, subscribe to callbacks, etc :)

I will push it though, it's just boring stuff that must be done, but luckily I have the chi inside me thanks to the 80% fun part and positive feedback that I received during it.

Are you me? I literally have been through this recently, the first 80% went smooth, but when it comes to polish/css, it sure felt like taking forever to cross the line. Thanks for the cssreference link, looks like a gem.

I really wonder if this passion oriented coding is not a remain of teenage self absorbing passion.

With age I find myself caring about simple but group-global tasks. It's almost not about how joyful it makes me but how positive it affects you. Maybe nature natural triggering of caring for babies and/or the group.

Chunking your work, or using pomodoro are good ways to break this cycle. As you get closer to the end of the work make smaller chunks and have more breaks. Also understanding what gives you pleasure in your work will help through the mundane tasks.

Procrastinating here at 95% completion of my side project. Can't wait enough for it to get over at the same time dreading the fact that the end result will be never as good as it was in my mind.

Completing the remaining 20% is a learnable skill in itself. Like everything else, the more you do it, the better you get at it.

In that case it would make more sense to try and isolate the tasks comprising the last 20% and train on them separately, so that you get more practice.

the good news is that virtually all of the software in the linux ecosystem is missing the last 20%, so there's plenty of opportunities to train.

Thanks for your work with Bulma. I love using it :)

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