I've lashed myself to the mast (so to speak) and forced myself to finish projects that I would've otherwise walked away from, and I'm so so glad I did.
> You can free yourself from this pain without lifting a finger.
Sometimes the cost of doing things is pain. I was going to say the cost of doing _great_ things is pain, but honestly, the cost of doing anything is usually some level of pain.
It's fascinating seeing the varied (and sometimes quite opposite) replies. I think a good chunk of this comes down to one's personality.
I've had an internal notion of "healthy masochism" for a while — much like what you're saying, where pain is part of the process. And if you go through it enough, and taste the final reward enough times, you almost start to feel the pain as a good thing, or a reward on its own.
On the other hand, there are other personalities (maybe less of them in software, given the amount of pain to be found there :), where the "whip yourself forward" approach plain sucks, and just creates scars rather than promoting growth.
Different strokes for different folks, though I definitely get where you're coming from.
I mean don’t most of us fall on either side of the divide at different times? Pushing myself through weight lifting to resolve knee pain feels worth it. Finishing a goofy side project I’ve lost interest in doesn’t.
Yeah everyone is super different, and it is kinda funny to see all the varied replies here.
Some of the stories I hold onto when I'm having a tough time finishing are those of writers who talk about what a struggle it is to write. Jerry Seinfeld on the Tim Ferriss show was one of my favorite interviews ever. He talks about about how his advice to young comedians is to just work. There's no way around it. That's been a great comfort to me. The War of Art is another good source of inspiration.
I don't know what your goals are when you start projects; personally, I seldom start projects just for fun. If it's a program, then it's a tool I want to use. If it's project around the house, it's probably a repair or upgrade that has meaningful impact on my life. It's easy to get discouraged on these kinds of projects, but you have to see them through or in some sense you suffer for it.
In the middle ground there are things you kind of started because you wanted to, to see if you could do it, or because you thought it would be cool. Maybe a drawing you you were working on, or a research project (actually, I don't know if this fits or not). In a home wood shop, maybe you're making an new tool because you enjoy owning nicer tools than you can afford or just tools you made yourself. These projects, you don't really have to finish, but you probably don't want a graveyard full of them either. It's a pride thing. I start projects like this myself on occasion; they end up particularly hard to finish because I have too many of the first type.
Then there are people who are just screwing around, doing what's fun in the moment. I basically never do this, but a lot of people do. Those projects are fine as well, but people doing that sort of thing are going to have a very different outlook.
It isn't always the case, but I have found that pain is the #1 litmus test for "is what you are doing valuable". Some times this turns out to be a "you worked hard instead of smart" problem, but game theory wise one can assume that painful things are generally avoided or not fully explored.
There is a really good reason you are spammed to death with GPT chat bot clones, but have to go around like a beggar to find things that actually matter.
One thing: internal satisfaction. External success, too! The biggest one recently was releasing a course on MySQL at https://planetscale.com/mysql-for-developers. It was painful to push that over the finish line, but giving up on it would have been a huge disservice.
Aaron, thank you for this course! I started watching it about a week ago, and I love your teaching style.
I've been using relational databases for years, but my conceptual understanding was never that strong. I hadn't touched MySQL in particular for several years. Your course not only got me back up to speed, but I learned a lot of things I'd never known before.
I love how you organize your lessons, how you make sure to answer the right questions at the right times, and how you prioritize helping the learner build a strong mental model.
I hope you make more content like this in the future.
Gah, this is so encouraging. Thank you for taking the time to say so! I put _so_ much into that and I'm glad to hear it's been helpful for you. Organizing the content was actually a really big struggle for me, so this is particularly meaningful.
A lot of my day job work is self directed because our managers expect a lot out of us but also leave us alone to do the work (amazing right?) but message received.
Let's take one not related to software at all! I turned a shed into an office over the course of many months: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/1333866090573811723. I wanted to give up and burn it down at some points, but I powered through and ended up with the perfect shedquarters!
I created a course teaching college students financial accounting that's made over 100k in the 5 or 6 years it's been live (http://acct229.com). That was a freakin grind that I thought about quitting a lot.
That interview led to another piece called "Publishing your work increases your luck" at https://github.com/readme/guides/publishing-your-work. I gave a talk on that article at GitHub Universe. That article led to... this article. And here we are!
Each of these things have 1) felt awesome to release and 2) directly increased my luck, my bank account, or led to the next thing.
Thank you so so much for listing these examples. I am the exact target audience for your financial accounting videos. Immediately bookmarked and shared with a few of my close friends. Appreciate you for finishing these projects -- they definitely will come in valuable for people like me :)
> You can free yourself from this pain without lifting a finger.
Sometimes the cost of doing things is pain. I was going to say the cost of doing _great_ things is pain, but honestly, the cost of doing anything is usually some level of pain.