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Comment by thelastidiot | Hacker News Reader

The main issue with going after random ideas, is that suddenly 3 months down the process of building some proof of concept, you lost so much of the initial thrill and focus (build B in order to build A, build C in order to build B, learn D in order to build C...) that you've eaten all the energy, end up burned out, depressed and browsing TC and sites like this one to reflect on what went wrong.

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That is a huge issue indeed, but it usually gets a bit better if you manage to overcome it once or twice as well as understanding where that thrill comes and feeds from. Learning to become better at your own 'thrill-management' is actually a super-important skill, i.e. knowing that you better build that prototype in two or three days rather than the next two or three months (no excuses, almost ANY SAAS prototype can be built in a week or less -- it's all about prioritising what you can do manually, fake, or add later), as well as knowing that, inherently, a lot of us here are problem-solving fans, we like to figure something out and once the challenge is completed, or we see the finish line, we want to move on to other things. A good tip I picked up from writing is to stop working not when you've finished a big package of work, but instead, right in the middle of it when your brain has already started thinking ahead of your next two or three steps. That's where you leave it, and it'll be MUCH easier to continue next morning.

What also helps, of course, is past experiences -- I've built a product that requires little to no maintenance (now), the prototype took one looong day and then another weekend to roll out, and it randomly picked up Toyota as a customer in its second week. New customers kept the thrill going, and when times were calm, I just let the website 'exist' on its own -- it's made over $100k and while those kinds of projects are my daily work (compared to an 'an actual job'), the time it required to maintain would've easily been available next to a moderately demanding job. Much like other things in life, even with software, it may need to simmer for quite a while before it really starts shining. There's no single recipe of success, but people tend to forget (while looking for big dramatic SEO-guru growth-hacking insights) that getting a few basic things right will improve your chances of success dramatically (managing motivation, knowing when to let things simmer (getting from 0 to 10, and from 10 to 100 customers can often take depressingly long), knowing when to let users guide you, stuff like that).

This is called Yak Shaving and happens all the time when building complex systems, especially by yourself. It’s happened to me many times: you start out wanting to do “simple” thing X, and end up with a tree of task dependencies 20 layers deep. After spending a whole lot of time, all you have to show for your planned mansion is a pile of foundation.

But it's great, because once you have all that foundation you can quickly iterate on your top layer and quickly discover new pieces you are missing and must build before completion.

Except by the time you get there, you need to figure out how to make a living (bills don't suddenly disappear when you are in "sabbatical" mode.) Trust me, I am in this right now as we speak.

That's your experience, but far from reality. You're right, it's not easy, but that's why we're here. You also have to realize discipline > motivation. Everything you just said is a personal problem, not something inherent to the process.

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