HN, I need to learn how to ship | Hacker News Reader

HN, I need to learn how to ship

16 pointsfooboy15 comments

(Using my favorite throwaway account.)

The title says it all, HN. I can't ship.

This isn't about shipping the first version of my nascent startup's web app, though. This is about completing anything in life, putting a big bow on it, and calling it done. I'm terrible about finishing things in all areas of my life, whether it's chores around the house, libraries I need to finish at work, or OSS bugs I've promised -- but failed -- to patch.

I hate it, too, because it is a particularly flaky behavior characteristic of people who are "big talkers" or commit to doing too much. I don't want to be unreliable, but I really just struggle to finish things up.

Has anyone solved this problem for themselves? Have you gone from someone who underproduces to one who knocks things out of the park? I'd love to hear your advice.

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Chores around the house: if this causes you more than five minutes of mental stress, outsource it. Some people can program, some people can carry boring tasks to completion, these people should trade to maximize their mutual welfare.

Projects: Accept that "shipped" is less of a binary "Is it perfect and ready to ship, if not it is still in development" decision and more of a totally arbitrary point of technical/marketing readiness at which you call something shipped. You'll continue improving it later, but that is no excuse for not getting it in front of customers (be they paying customers, your boss, or the other OSSers) today.

If you, like me seem to learn a great deal from posts like this from Patio11, I highly recommend going over to his blog and, at the very least, check out his 'Greatest Hits' section. Well worth the time spent: http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/

Some general advice that's helped me improve productivity since I started working for myself rather than for the man.

1) Don't "multi-task" ever. Make a plan and then do everything on the plan in serial and make sure you focus 100% effort at the task/project at hand. My immediate to-do list is only ever 2 items long. 2 items only because I am working on #1 and when I finish #1 I need to know that #2 is the next thing that needs to be done. When #2 becomes your focus you move it to #1 and add a new item.

I do this at the macro level i.e my startup has 2 big projects to be shipped, I'm not going to put any effort/thought into anything that comes after, only what I need to finish right now. I also do it on the micro level, each feature has X user stories, I only have have 2 of these on my daily to-do list at any time.

2) Use timers like Pomodoro technique - I don't subscribe to the whole philosophy, I just enjoy the fact that a physical 25min timer gets me over the 'procrastination hump' for getting started. Keep working in 25 min chunks till said task at hand from (1) is done.

3) For pesky ongoing stuff add some rules to your life e.g I must publish a blog post every Wednesday (and I'm not going home till I do)

4) Whenever you finish a large project that might've taken you a few weeks to complete, give yourself some time to decompress and admire the work you've done.

I forgot to add - if you work with someone else or a couple of other people (cofounders in a startup) rotate the role of 'motivational taskmaster'.

Basically it's this persons jobs to drive projects by saying to everyone else - 'Where the F is this? you said you'd have it done last week, don't do anything else until you've got this done. Oh you need help? let's jump in together and do it together now!'.

Only works in small teams and everybody considers their peers to be equal. I have an awesome cofounder who's a woman who nags me to do stuff sometimes. The more she nags the more gets done so I don't mind :)

Shipping anything is a matter of knowing when it's good enough. Some people are good at deciding on the fly; others need to know ahead of time and it sounds like you need to know when to stop before you even start.

So before you begin something, decide what "done" looks like and learn to stop when you are in the "done" state. Sometimes, "done" changes. Not a problem, just understand what it means to be done and do that, no more.

This is a great great point. "Done" changes sometimes, but it can also keep getting pushed back in favor of "one more addition." That happens to me a lot.

The Seinfeld calendar has been pivotal to me. Look it up.

Basically you come up with a standard of behavior and check off every day if you act in accordance to that. Helped him discipline himself to create a comedy empire.

My slant to it is that I

1) constantly email rule adjustments if I want to have new rules (say I'm not allowed to drink until a Wednesday demo).

2) have a sponsor, well my wife, who I run ambiguities by, in case I want to have an exception to a rule. Example, if I commit to cleaning every day and I get sick, that day is okay to mark off. But forcing me to verbalize my exceptions means I'll only use them as needed.

3) I treat this calendar as holy, simply so I take deviations seriously. Reason for this is that it is a bitch starting it again if I fall off.

4) I have prescheduled cheat days and stuff like that.

In short, this system works great for me. I might be bad at explaining the complexities here, but feel free to contact me for more info. My best weapon.

Maybe you are trying to do to much? If you can find people that have similar interest to yours, and have skills which are applicable to building your ideas, I'd recommend teaming up with that person. It helps a lot having someone to not only push you along to the finish line, but also to do some of the running as well.

I had a similar issue where I would start projects, implement a bunch of it, and seemingly never finish any of it. I got in touch with some friends who enjoy design and from there I started doing back-end things and leaving the design implementing to a friend. Not only did he push me to hit milestones but I did the same for him.

Also make sure you are picking projects that the end result is something that you yourself want to use. That way, you will have a little extra motivation when it comes to finishing.

Good luck!

What's worked for me is a two pronged approach:

1. Eliminate from my life things which need my attention. I've found that I can only focus on two things at a time: one work thing and one personal thing. That's it.

2. Relentlessly remove distractions and focus on the one or two tasks right in front of me that need to get done. Only when those are done do I come up for air and think about what I should be working on.

Basically I think of myself as a processor with a tiny pool of RAM. I can only work on one thing at a time (my one work or one personal thing). I can keep one other thing in RAM (the remainder of my one work and one personal things). Trying to add another thing means that I need to start hitting disk and performance gets exponentially worse.

Ship it half-working. Launch the user-facing things that have to work right away and make as much as you can a manual process. Work out of PHPMyAdmin if you can to save time on fleshing out that backend that will be super tedious to build. Don't try to make the site look perfect. Just make it passable. Put off as absolutely much as you can if you are the kind of person that "can't ship." Once you've shipped then you've gotten past that hurdle. You can build the features as they become more pressing.

My suggestion would be to break down whatever you are doing into smaller tasks. Instead of thinking, I need to do this...and this...and this...and this...and this...and this in order to complete...change your mindset to "I just need to do this small task to complete". Once you complete the small task, then move on to the next one. Each goal will be smaller, so you should have more frequent completions. Start from there and work your way up

Have you looked at the Meyers-Briggs personality types? If not, you might read that to get some insight into your personality and how it's different from others around you.

I've definitely looked before. How would being INTJ or INTP (somewhere between the two) affect anything?

Over-rationalization. Analysis paralysis. Always thinking, never doing.

Oh man, this hits close to home...thanks for the reminder.

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