Re:Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where t...
by wpietri on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @10:18AM
(#14042233)
You don't have to feel satisfied. You're supposed to feel unsatisfied with an MVP. If you didn't, you wouldn't have the drive to build anything better.
For me, I use three other feelings to combat my high standards.
One is fear. In particular, fear that I'm building a bunch of stuff that won't work. It's the same fear that drives me to write automated tests, or at least to manually run something and see that it works. Except here the fear is that it might work for me but not for my audience.
Another is rigor. This part feels very sciencey to me. I'm trying to test the hypotheses that are implicit in the thing I'm making (and that I've hopefully at least tried to make explicit before I start coding). I want to test my hypotheses as early as possible, and when I don't I start to feel like I'm not being rigorous.
The third is joy in results. The early tests are only looking for one step forward. If that's all I'm looking for, it is really exciting to see that. And so I temporarily set aside my concerns about all the things I'm not testing for and celebrate the wins when I get 'em.
For me, I use three other feelings to combat my high standards.
One is fear. In particular, fear that I'm building a bunch of stuff that won't work. It's the same fear that drives me to write automated tests, or at least to manually run something and see that it works. Except here the fear is that it might work for me but not for my audience.
Another is rigor. This part feels very sciencey to me. I'm trying to test the hypotheses that are implicit in the thing I'm making (and that I've hopefully at least tried to make explicit before I start coding). I want to test my hypotheses as early as possible, and when I don't I start to feel like I'm not being rigorous.
The third is joy in results. The early tests are only looking for one step forward. If that's all I'm looking for, it is really exciting to see that. And so I temporarily set aside my concerns about all the things I'm not testing for and celebrate the wins when I get 'em.