Ask News.YC: How to re-motivate yourself?
We have been working on a startup idea for almost an year now. The initial days were fantastic, we were totally convinced we had hit upon a brilliant idea, there was vacuum to be filled. We worked crazy hours, got a lot of stuff done. Needless to say we were highly motivated.
But lately, I am personally having trouble motivating myself. I see myself squandering valuable time that I could have utilized. We suddenly seem to have a few competitors and it suddenly appear as though we don't have a unique value proposition.
And I have been pondering over this for some time now. I do realize that the lack of motivation is a sign that things have to be done differently, or something needs to change. We either need to course-correct, change gears, think of a different market, a different approach or just look into ourselves honestly and understand ourselves better.
I was hoping to find some answers to my misgivings through this forum. I have benefited from news.yc in the past and I have no doubt that you guys will help us bounce back.
So here are my questions to sum things up:
1. What do you do when things are not going the way you want them to?
2. When do you know its time to change? (eg: market, process, partners.. etc)
3. When do you know its time to call it quits? (to start working on a different problem)
I would really be thankful if some of you could share your experiences so that all of us benefit.
Thanks!!!
42 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] thread- User testing, often from the clueful. - Feedback and ideas from users. - Hence, an idea of where I should take the project to keep my customers happy and interested. - Motivation, because I'm doing something for me and not just other people. We're social animals, even if we're also hackers ;)
I find that right now (two months after starting the project) I have plenty of enthusiasm and my objectives are perfectly aligned with my users'. If I'm hunting a bug for someone, it's not a case of "why do I have to do this when I could be doing 'real' programming?" I want the bug fixed, he wants the bug fixed, we both benefit (and I've got some free user testing and bug identification into the bargain).
Now, maybe you can't open source your stuff, either because you don't want to, or it doesn't fit your business model, or it's just not that kind of product. But maybe you could try (if you haven't already) finding some early testers who can give you the benefits I'm getting from my users: feedback, ideas and (critically in your case) an indication of whether or not your product is going anywhere. Maybe you can find a small re-alignment you can make which will allow you to reach a tipping point - it's often the small things which do it. Maybe you could get readers here to help you with this..?
Also, I would say (having worked on many programming projects of varying sizes) there is always a point in any project where you think it's not going anywhere, you're discouraged and wondering if you should go on. You have to push through that. I'm doing some client work at the moment which is really dragging me down, I was unhappy with the database structure and the presentation was ordinary. I showed it to the client and they loved it. It was a real boost. So at least I have them on-side, even though the project overall I'd love to complete and move on.
First you need to stop asking such questions. These are just negative thoughts that you have and because you don't want to say them, you put it in a question form. but that still has the bad effect. so stop that right-a-way!
It is normal to feel this way after you finish any major part of your idea. The best thing to do it to stop looking at it and wondering. go on a short trip. do something fun. just don't be near your computer. after few days you start seeing that you haven't really completed what you had originally thought of. Doesn't mean that you need to change things or trash what you have. think back to why you were exited about your idea in the first place. is what you have now what you had pictured? maybe there are things missing that you can add. if there are similar products out there don't worry at all. lots of companies are based on the same basic ideas. what would make yours better or different is the details of the main idea. Think of it as a painting. it is done in layers. when you are painting you never erase things or change what you had in mind. what you do is add more layers and with more details. It is those details that make your idea unique and so will attract others that can see and appreciate those details.
That is very simple-minded and idealistic. One should look at their product ideas and development objectively to determine if they are building something people will use or not. Simply saying "build it and trust the process" is too faith-based.
What does "things are not going well" mean? It could mean the implementation of an idea doesn't work, the developer can't bring the idea to market, the developed doesn't really want to do it, or the market is telling the developed they don't want to use his/her product. It could mean other things. If any of these conditions are met, then it's time to change or call it quits (hint: quitting a doomed venture is not a failure.)
These are really tough decisions. You can look at every successful company and, thanks to the hindsight bias, see that success is almost always born through persistence through difficulty. But there are plenty of examples where fighting a losing battle wasn't worth it. Or of people who tried, failed, quit at the right time, tried something else, and then succeeded.
4-6 weeks is generally my max. time for spitting something out, otherwise I get bored and slowly stray away and eventually leave the project/app alone. Like if it's 12, 16, 24, or 3 months etc. to get something out, by that time my attention has been moved elsewhere.
My answers to your questions should definitely not to be considered as advice(except for 2 and 3), but:
1. I make them the way I want, or very close too it. Or I leave.
2. After I get feedback from people other than the ones involved in the development of the product, or after you release for use and there is no/a negative response from your users.
3. Once again, after you release and it doesn't work, try to fix it. Ask your users what they want, can you give it to them? No? Call it quits. Yes? Keep on going!
If I want to move forward and make progress, I should look back and think about the past. Perhaps the conditions of the past are no longer relevant to the conditions of the present. Furthermore, I would think that part of the reason why somebody might not be making progress is because they are not paying attention to the conditions of the present while at the same time not reflecting upon the future.
However, what you are describing does have it's purposes as I have done exactly what you've suggested above at some point in the past. While this is a good way to reconnect yourself with past positive states (this helps when you are in a funk sometimes), I have not found this useful to move me forward and be competitive against others; to the contrary, it keeps me longing more for familiarity (the past) as opposed to uncertainty (the future) and whatever might result (good or bad).
then maybe you should quit or regroup.
Time spent working does NOT necessarily = amount of work completed. It's easy to get discouraged when you "sense" you're not spending enough time on something. Two days ago, for example, I came here 827 times (well maybe not that many). But it was a very productive day! By the end of the day, I figured something out and the flood gates opened. That's just how it works for hackers sometimes. If you don't care anymore, that's one thing. But being frustrated about time spent is a signal something else is wrong, not your commitment.
Some experts think we are either preprogrammed with "moving toward" or "moving away" internal metaprograms. OK, whatever. I'm a very positive optimistic person, so I just assumed I was a "moving toward" person. Wrong! I am HIGHLY motivated by that which I do not like, but I never realized it. If I see something I like, I think, "that's cool". But if I see something I don't like, I think, "That sucks. I can do way better than that." So I do. It may be one of the 7 deadly sins, but jealousy is a great motivator for "moving away" people. I'm older than every speaker at Startup Weekend, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and possibly our next president. But I'm just as smart as any of them, and I haven't got mine yet. That just pisses me off! (See, it works, I'm ready to hack right now.) What about you? How are you programmed? What can you do to stoke yourself (or piss yourself off)?
"When do you know its time to call it quits?" Never. I realize most people will disagree with me. Walt Disney and Colonel Saunders went to a thousand banks before getting a loan. How soon would you have given up? When do you quit trying to teach you child how to walk because it's not going as well as you'd like? Jerry Seinfield jokes that it took him 20 years to become an overnight success. I've seen the same thing with many hackers I know. If you know deep down inside that your project is a winner, you must do whatever it takes to get it to "walk". If you're not sure, then maybe you shouldn't have started it in the first place. Only you can answer that one.
Hate to be like Oprah, but if things aren't going as quickly as you would have liked, maybe you oughta read this:
http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Secret-Getting-Absolutely-Eve...
It's amazing what you can make happen if you follow the simple advice of this book.
Collect data from everyone. Then go with your gut. Best advice I ever got.
Now, right until the very moment when you decide to do something else, obviously you want to be working your tail off, and you want your team to have enough confidence to be motivated. But there's a limit to the value of cheerleading; it can only go so far. The only reason cheerleaders have something to smile and dance about is because there's some hard-assed coach in the background who takes reality into account when making decisions.
There's no reward for cowardice, or giving up on a good idea before giving your best effort... but it's equally true that there's no honor in marching stridently toward failure, on a path that you should have rationally abandoned months ago.
Also, realize that there's a difference between giving up on your project, vs. giving up on your self, your team, your professional aspirations, etc... the former need not imply any of the latter.
Changing strategy does not equal giving up.
Giving up prematurely is the single biggest impediment to failure in any field. How do you know if it's premature? You don't. So you keep going.
FWIW, I hope my competitors think like you do. I'd be the only one left standing.
Let's say that after 1 year, given changing competitive dynamics, it is the rational conclusion of the team's leader that continuing to build that product is no longer worth the opportunity cost of those 5 people's time based on an up-to-date risk/reward calculation (perhaps Wrigley's has just produced a prototype of their own Gubmarine that is 1.4 times better than yours and will be ready for market 5 months sooner than you can hope to be, and they already have a major advantage when it comes to distribution, which makes puts you at a considerable disadvantage). Is it then not plausible that ceasing work on your project is a good idea?
This stuff happens in big companies all the time -- they try something new, and it doesn't work, so they cease efforts and try something else. That's a "change in strategy," not "quitting," because the company as a whole continues. But in a startup, it sometimes is called "quitting," because you often only have one product, and your team is specially designed just for that one product (and incidentally, that what made you so efficient)... but it also means that you can't just shuffle those people around to different positions in the company; instead, sometimes, unfortunately, you quit. You die.
Same people, same product, same/similar change in capital allocation -- but for the big-company it's a "change in strategy," while for a startup, it's "quitting."
Isn't this how startups work? What's wrong with condemning projects that aren't earning their keep?
I am fully cognizant of the importance of having strong motivation and not giving up when it's too soon, and how difficult it is to know when it's ready to quit. And as long as I'm leading a project that's been decided to continue, I'll have my eyes facing forward and I'll raise all the hell I can muster to make things work, let me tell you. But the idea that it is never good to quit is, in my mind, still worth of the word "ridiculous," even if using that word makes me sound impolite or foolish.
FWIW, I won't particularly mind if all my contemporaries think like you do -- that way many of them will never become my competitors, as they'll be too busy working on that great idea they had 3 years ago to notice that the world changed in the meantime, and that they'd be better off giving up and starting something different.
(Or maybe I hope they think like I do, but they'll misjudge and quit too early. That's also a possibility. We're dealing in grays here, not B&W).
-- Update --
Important to note, belatedly, that my talk about "giving up" etc. was in response to the comment I replied to, not the original questioner (who doesn't seem to be in such dire straits as someone who needs to hear what I've written).
Humbly spoken.
The important part isn't who said it (in this case it happened to be me), it's the simple fact that sometimes, it's good advice. This was obviously not an original idea of mine. In fact I doubt if I've said anything original at all here; every time I think I've thought of something original, I seem to find myself reading a book by someone who's already thought a couple steps ahead of me a few weeks later (luckily, that's okay -- ideas need not be original to be useful).
I might have said "someone who needs to face the realities of extricating themselves out of a dead end project" instead of using the shorthand "what I've written" to avoid such confusion. I was not intending to come across as some know-it-all guru, and it is my fault if my words conveyed that impression (and they well may have).
* Also note that the first half of my sentence said that the questioner was not "somebody who needs to hear what I've written."
* I am assuming that you were being sarcastic with this last reply, which I felt was a safe assumption, but I can't really know, because I don't know you, and communicating via text is hell and we are prone to vastly overestimate our own comprehension of the other person's intent. My apologies if I screwed up.
Just like I was not being literal when I said "never". I was just trying to emphasize that too many give up too soon with an extraordinary (and apparently inappropriate) word choice.
You can never be too thin or too rich, either. Oh, never mind. (Oops, I did it again.)
Good arguments all around. I think we've pretty much beaten this one to death. I give up - gotta go fix that bubble gum submarine leak.
Please read the second paragraph in this article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1604891,00....
How different would the developed world be if he didn't persist in creating his own "Gubmarine" and listened to his colleagues who told him to quit?
Success is the veil of hard work, difficulty, and a whole lotta pain. It's the result of these things (and many more negative things people usually avoid enduring) that we identify as "success". Rarely do we see the torment that the successful go through in order to get where they are.
Offering an anecdotal example is very problematic. What about all the other folks who were working on making blue LEDs whose, inventions had no chance of competing with Nakamura's? Because of the survivorship bias, we don't hear about them, yet they are just as important to understanding the dynamics of reality. After his invention was released, are they supposed to continue on the same path? Of course not. It doesn't mean they give up on life, or on themselves, but it does mean that they give up on a mission that they had committed themselves to for some period of time.
I'd never say that a founder should listen blindly to colleagues, and certainly not to me(!), in deciding whether it's worth continuing. These are complex decisions that need to be made carefully.
In short,
Success requires persistence, but persistence does not imply success. Most stories of success will be stories of persistence, but not all stories of persistence will lead to success.
And many stories of success will include "giving up" on previous projects/companies before finding success in a new one.
It is an amazing story isn't it?
1.) Has the world changed appreciably because of your success? Will people notice the difference?
2.) Are you now the best in the world at the particular mark you've chosen to make on the world?
If the answer to one of these is "no", you probably want to give up and try something else. Just because the answer is "yes" doesn't mean you should keep going (I've seen more startups killed because they couldn't build the product than because they built the product and nobody wanted it), but it's a pretty strong indicator that you're on to something. Technical problems have a way of being solvable if you get desperate enough.
These questions were a major reason I quit FictionAlley - as much as I liked the people involved and loved the community, it's hard to justify working on a plain old website used by a narrow subculture that legally has no prospective of revenue or buyout. They were a major reason I quit my last employer - the mission had changed from "revolutionize the financial industry" to "build products for keeping track of obscure SEC regulations", and we were using technology (Java & JSF) where there is no particular benefit to being the best in the world at it. It's why my startups is no longer maintaining Diffle.com, which was really intended as a "warm up" to get a feel for the industry. It's a major reason I'm sticking with our current plan, because I feel that if we can succeed in our execution, it's something fundamentally different from what's out there. I may have to reevaluate in 6 months though, since the competitive environment may change any time.
Seriously, procrastination is the way your subconscious tells you something is wrong and needs to be fixed, or all of your work is for naught. So either stop, talk to your buddies, and fix it so that you can get re-motivated, or check all the code back in unlocked and go find the next challenge. Your subconscious is trying to tell you something; listen to it and address it, because it's almost always right. The answer is not here, but you already knew that, didn't you?
If after a week I still can't face it... well I'm probably screwed. The idea may be fine but I've lost it. I generally soldier on for a month, take another week off and repeat. If the cycle lasts a few months and I still can't get past the pain. I think (for me at least) it's time to move on.
I can't really answer the specific questions you pose because, well if I could answer them, I'd be VC boss dude with a suit and a very fast car.
Time away from most problems seems to make them less of a problem in my experience.
good luck
In either case, the mind sorts itself. I know EXACTLY what I have to do during my next run and I'm motivated and charged to execute.
1) When things are going terribly? Dig down and talk with your partners in the trenches. Get motivated (see other posts). Remember your users because they are the ones who give the best advice about your product. At the earliest stage, I think your community of users, fellow hackers, and partners are your best way to respond. Know to admit that you don't know and you need guidance from others. 2) Usually PG's comments about iterating apply here. You will always be changing because your users will tell you to. Whatever is hindering make smart and rapid changes to your product should obviously be changed. Nevertheless, maybe you just haven't made the right product for a growing market or your competition beat you, then... 3) Quit... I honestly don't know when though. For us, it was when we I realized I had become Ahab. Except instead of a great white whale, my partners pointed out it was a small beluga. The market was not there for political gaming (outside of the slow-growth educational sector) and if we wanted to really compete, we would need to be a media company or provide a utility to gov professionals (e.g. vertical gov search or customized gov aggregation). My partners and I talked over it and they really never liked politics as a vertical (but they thought Moby Dick was somewhere out there). One of my partners bristles at the mention of politics and he sort of outright dismisses politics even as a backup for our YC app.
Sometimes the backlash to failure is hard to handle, so it's important that everyone tries to focus on what's best for the company. We're still in it because we dream of electric sheep and we really want to create value in the world (even though we're still the quintessential guys in a house).
We now are back to square one, with no experience with the new bad-ass idea, and we're in the middle of tying things up with our previous contracts and licenses (which keeps us from just diving in), but it'll be okay even if you do quit. The good thing is that since you're bootstrapped you didn't waste a significant amount of money from someone else.
I'm always re-motivated by improving the UI. It makes a huge difference when you can see the benefits of your work.
Good thing there are both kinds of people, huh?
1. Take a break.
2. and 3. Most of the time I want to stop, it is not time to change. A perfect analogy for me is I was working on a really difficult puzzle (yes, a real puzzle), and with about 100 pieces remaining I would have swore with a 99% certainty factor that a bunch of pieces were missing. I was so close to finishing, but I started to think a handful of pieces were missing so I almost quit. It turns out, one piece was missing and that is what planted the seed of a bunch of pieces missing, and the other pieces were just difficult. So for me personally that last push to finish and stay motivated and not quit is very difficult.
Different people deal with things differently, but that puzzle analogy relates to a lot of things in my life. I almost quit right before I am about to make a breakthrough, and forcing myself to struggle and churn is quite difficult but necessary.
Often having someone else help me get through that part is useful, for example just working on something with someone else will give me a reason to finish. Sometimes they can even help do that finishing part - some of my best working partners are great at polishing and tweaking right at the end, since thats what I lack.
Just wait until I release my next app, I am sure this will be reflected in it.
What a lot of startups don't get is that you can only push people to work crazy hours a very limited amount of times.
If the startup is just fragging around and not working towards a real moment where 'it happens' but still pushes people to give it all then the backlash will be huge and people will become demotivated and start asking the questions I see you asking.
It sounds like you guys need better management. Better management to get the show on the road. Better management to give the startup a meaning. Better management to motivate people.
Talk to them. They are probably struggling with the same issues.
(Or maybe you are management, dunno, you didn't really specify your position)
S.
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I'm going to first share a personal experience from my early trading days to illustrate where I'm coming from. I used to wake up at 4:30 am everyday in the Chicago suburbs to beat rush hour traffic and make it into downtown Chicago at 6:30 am. In order to wake up so early, I fell into a habit of sleeping at 9:00 pm and like a robot waking up at 4:30 am. This simple routine was indirectly helpful when things seemed darkest.
For the first six months, I lost money and was ridiculed constantly by other traders who were more successful than me (which was about 20 other guys CONSTANTLY using me as a punching/whipping bag). The only thing that kept me going was the fact that some of the very same traders that would be making wise cracks at me for losing money were some of the most successful people I knew at the time. For better or worse, if I needed a trader to model myself after, it was the same people that were telling me how bad a trader I was - and although I was not open to really hear what they were saying, they were right about my skills in every way (but their feedback was always packaged in some sort of insult).
After racking up some rather hefty losses, I was determined to quit at one point during month four, but because I had a habit of waking up at 4:30 am I simply "forgot" that the night before I told myself I would quit and spare myself further humiliation...by then I was warned that I was now on the red list of traders ready to be cut. Also, my personal savings were starting to approach zero (the base "draw" for house traders was enough to pay for food; you usually make your money on a percentage of your profits, and I was deep in the red at the time).
To say the least, there were many excellent reasons to be "reasonable", forget about my dreams, and quit.
After 4 consecutive "failures to quit", I realized that I didn't quit because somewhere deep down I was hanging on to a dream, however remote at that point: that I could somehow be as successful as the other traders that I knew. At the same time I realized that I had hit rock bottom in that I couldn't even succeed in failing! Very tough times indeed...
An interesting point to note here is that although my losses were starting to get very large, the people who were funding me as a trader kept me because I had one redeeming quality: EFFORT, and this helped build tenacity. Other traders who barely traded but had a fraction of my losses were cut much faster because they didn't put forth much effort. They were not willing to take losses and be bold/brave and fight it out; I was willing to take risks, and this saved me from getting cut faster than others.
Slowly I began to reinterpret the constant humiliation I was suffering: perhaps the other traders were right about their "jokes" and there might be something in what they are saying that will help me get out of the red. I also realized that since I had failed at quitting (which was now the ULTIMATE failure), there was no further failure for me and that if I took baby steps they were surely to succeed (this translated into taking smaller trades/profits).
Only after improving upon my abilities as a trader and channeling my energies appropriately did I succeed and earn everybody's respect as a trader (and you have no idea how this made me feel!). I quickly made enough in commissions to be trading my own account, and be successful as an independent trader onward. When I look back at those final months of 1999 (yeah that's right, I was losing huge cash at the end of 1999 when the entire market was going crazy UP!), there was more good than bad even when I was getting my ass handed to me. It's just that I was intentionally creating my own feedback (I'm right everybody else is wrong) instead of seeing the results I was getting (losses/insults) as feedback and information that would help me be successful.
I kind o...
Like many, I love building new features, and don't love fixing bugs. But after a while of not fixing bugs, I get this 'ewww, my code is icky' feeling, and slowly start to hate my project.
That's when I know I need to spend a whole day fixing bugs. By the end of the day, I feel differently. There's something about quality that's viceral, the sheen of quality makes it easy to love my project again.
2) If you are really questioning the value of your project, ask: - how could I morph this into something else? - What else could I use my existing network of contacts for? - What is an adjacent problem?
I recently went through this after feeling very trapped in my problem domain, and it resulted in a great new insight and, I hope, and entirely new set of products in an adjacent domain.
Mentioned a while ago here was a "martini method", and I realized the above after I started using that a few weeks ago. For review, the modified version of the method I proposed is just to do
and exercise as much self-control as possible to avoid some specific set of timewasting or otherwise enjoyable activities (traditionally, drinking a martini) until the diff reaches a certain length. (Occasionally I give myself a break if I just came off a hugely productive run the previous day, or if I'm just wiped out from my day job.)However, I accidentally set what turned out to be ridiculously low limits (because of the extra metainformation and surrounding lines of code that svn diff prints out). As it turned out, I didn't need to revise the limits upward, because it turned out I was frequently (not always, but that doesn't matter) staying engrossed in the task long after I'd reached the limit. I realized that it was enough to create an incentive to reach that easy goal, just to get me to switch to the task.
The best part is that I never sit down feeling like I've got some insurmountable pile of work I have to do, even though the project I'm working on as a whole is much larger than I'll ever be able to do by myself. When I task-switch, I'm just focused on thinking of what little piece I can do next. I _can_, if I want, make a few small scattered trivial changes, and I'm done for the day, but usually it's enough to get me thinking about the code, so I usually stay at the keyboard.
The fact that the goal is so easy to reach also makes self-control a lot easier. It's really no big deal if I feel like vegging for the whole evening -- I just have to do a smidge of work first. And I usually find after I've taken that first little step that I wasn't as tired as I thought I was.
Viewed through that lens, then as soon as dissatisfaction or a lack of motivation become chronic rather than intermittent, it's clear that something needs to change.
It sounds like you have been trying to whip yourself into shape -- trying to create external motivations to push you through tasks you no longer find enjoyable on their own. This isn't sustainable; sooner or later you'll run out.
Personally, I:
* Don't beat myself up about time spent procrastinating as long as it's reasonable. Brain breaks (I play a lot of go online) are just fine; it's taken me a lot of work to break the "slack off -> guilt -> demotivation -> more slacking off" cycle,. Hint: The solution is not to crank up the "guilt" lever.
* I make sure I'm not working too much, even when I'm very excited. Things will still be there tomorrow, and in the sober light of day my 2 am code usually sucks.
* I nurture other interests and hobbies, including non-programming ones. I always have a couple of 'learning' side projects going on, and I make sure to go rock climbing (my excercise drug of choice!) at least once a week.
* It's always time to change! My business plan (drawn out in Inkscape) looks like a railyard, with lots of potential branches being added.
* I always start with high expectations and a huge feature list; I've begun to accept that trimming this back is a natural and inevitable part of actually getting anything done. Maybe it would be a good idea for you to call a 'feature freeze' and get a release out? Like someone else said, a year is a long time to be working in a vacuum.
...
Time for me to get back to work and stop being distracted, now. ;)
2. You can almost sense about the potential of your startup idea. If you think there are ways which could improve you revenue, or media exposure ( in a good way ), do it. Change your maket processes, partners so that you save every single penny, but make sure you build a lot of good will along the way)
3. If your startup is bleeding a lot of money, and when you don't SERIOUSly see a future for your startup, QUIT. Of course, when the market doesn't need a product, its value goes down. If you believe you product has the potential, but isn't successful because of other factors (like lack of media exposure, etc), go GET IT.
Hope I was clear... Thanks!!!