Ask HN: Why do I lose interest in every project after 6 months?
It's like clockwork.
I'll get HYPER-interested in something, to the point that I can't stop talking about it or thinking about it nonstop. I go through 'buildout' if it's a project, 'level up' if it's a game, or even went down the road of DJing and playing in a band.
Each time, after roughly 6 months, I burn out and end up moving on to something new with little desire to pursue my last project.
I'm extremely worried about this as I've been working passionately on a new startup idea with some friends and we're nearing the 2 month mark.
How can I stay enthusiastic?
100 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadIf you find that this does'nt work. Maybe your brain is telling you something.......
The brain could be telling me something, but I would argue that many of the ideas were 'great' and nothing is going to be successful if you only see it through to 6 months :\",
This applies to a product, not so much a WoW account.
Knowing that your product/service is relevant, because you got early feedback, is the biggest motivation factor which helps you not to lose interest in the long run.
Your seemingly unlimited drive is not something providential, it is something you can 'conjure' up, by consciously shaping your every thoughts:
Try and go a day focused only on the most awesome outcome of your goals. Actually imagine and feel that outcome as if it already happened. Do this constantly and before you know it, you will suddenly have the same 'Hyper-interest' and motivation you had in the early beginnings.
Cheers, Edo van Royen
I'll give the 'awesome outcome' of the goals a shot.
A clear idea of goals and self-discipline are what separate the extra-ordinary people from the rest.
But since you're working on a startup, sometimes it's important to know when to give up rather than pursue an unsuccessful idea. But I'm sure enough people have talked about this.
The real question to ask yourself is whether reward_of_finishing * probability_of_reward > costs_of_finishing. If not, you're better off taking the lessons you've learned and moving on to the next project and cutting your losses. The important thing is to not lose sight of the actual goals/rewards that you want, and asking yourself whether your actions are putting you on an effective path toward them.
A good example: I worked with a small team on a web project for a company I worked for. We sprinted sprinted to get it out there and it grew very rapidly. Nearly 500k uniques in 3 months.
For some reason, even though I was working on it every day until launch (roughly 6 months time) and VERY adamant about fixing things for the first 2 weeks or so, I eventually just stopped browsing the site, stopped reading users' posts, and stopped responding to e-mail from them.
I found something new and I ran with it.
How about breaking your large A, B, and C tasks down into much smaller ones (something I definitely need to do)? Then you can just work off your lists and check, check, check without a lot of mental thrashing about.
This would also help with setting a more realistic schedule.
Buying toys for me was according to my family the stuff of nightmares. I'd play with something for 3 minutes really excited, then see if it could be taken apart and if not toss it aside and never look at it again. And the ones that I could take apart suffered the same lot, only in bits and pieces.
It took me a long long time to outgrow that, I still have to be very careful when I am exposed to something new and shiny to stay away from screwdrivers.
In software projects I have much the same tendency, as long as it is challenging, new and I can learn it's ok. But woe the day the last bolt is screwed on to the carriage, that's when I'm in real danger to lose interest. Building is great, maintaining is not, so I try to build things in a way that they are as maintenance free as possible (which is good anyway).
If the money would be the motivating factor (or the 'desire to change the world' as some other commenter put it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1369566), then it would be easy to keep going.
But for me the driving force is to learn, and it's hard to keep 'learning' the same stuff over and over again. So I try to frame my days and the things I have to do that are not exactly 'new' in terms of what I will learn from them, and if I can then I can usually do the job in a reasonable time.
If not, I have a tendency to make mountains out of molehills.
The motivating factor for me is more in the 'change the world' idea, and I think that learning is definitely a key motivator for me. If I'm not learning, and I'm just "executing" what I've learned, I get stuck.
Can you give an example of how you've made things (preferably software!) maintenance-free?
As soon as that happens I stop and I analyze the problem, if I can automate it completely I'll do it, if I can only automate a part of it I'll do that and then try to find a way to either get rid of the remainder completely, offload it to my users in some guise or other and failing that I'll pay someone some money to do it for me.
Concrete examples are for instance the system administration tasks involved in keeping 20 servers up and running without additional staff, scanning email in my inbox for recurring questions (people not reading the FAQ), which get handled by an auto-responder pointing them to the relevant page with a friendly, personalized letter and so on.
Support is inevitable, I put myself forward to handle the 'problem' cases because those tend to drive development, but if I can get away from boring work I'll do it.
Someone joked that I'd rather spend a day at automating something that costs maybe 5 minutes to do by hand, and in a way that's very true but it's gotten to a point now where I can run a huge website pretty much by myself with occasional help from a few users with 'elevated' status.
I think the hard part is to decide that it's better to spend several hours automating a 5 minutes manual task.
I'm often faced with repetitive tasks and I realize that it's wrong to do them, but it's not easy to say : "Ok, let's put my important work aside and automate this."
Real progress is still being made, but it is much less visible later in a project than in the beginning.
So those of us that are motivated by being able to measure their progress on a day-by-day basis have a hard time to stay motivated later on in a projects life-cycle.
Good one!
Self-help books have limited use they are too general, but the situation between HN'ers in the same profession as the OP is so comparable that it is possible that some concrete tips will in fact materialize.
Even I learned a lot from the answers in this thread and I really hope that such questions keep coming. No such thing as a stupid question.
* After a few months, the hardest parts of the problem have been solved. Since your skill level exceeds the challenge, boredom results. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
* Perhaps you are not motivated by the actual task, but by the sense of mastery. Once you've mastered a challenge, you are satisfied because you've learned something about yourself: I can do that! The project still requires work to be done, but you're interested in pursuing some other new challenge that validates your sense of self-mastery.
* If you're cycling, perhaps you have a touch of bipolar.
* Perhaps "How can I stay enthusiastic?" is the wrong question. Maybe "How can I persevere when my enthusiasm inevitably wanes?" Expecting to always be enthusiastic is unrealistic.
Here's how I resolved it :
Stop working 18hrs a day on project (even if it's a startup), find other hobbies, meet people enjoy your life but be very productive in your 6-8hrs dayjob.
The thing when you're too much involve in a project is that any deception, even something taht looks ridiculous will lead you to a lost of interest and motivation.
Take a breath, take your time. A project need to mature in your head it's not a rush, it's a marathon (I know it's already have been told thousand of times).
The problem is that your projects are things you're interested in and you're obviously too easy on yourself. Do something for someone else. The meaning you'll be making together will keep you interested until you finish, no matter how long it takes.
You may not want to hear this, but you just answered your own original question: you lose interest because you don't care.
I can't imagine "snubbing" anyone, much less my own customer. And I know lots of people that would give almost anything for a customer. You may not realize it now, but the "pushy" customers are the best ones, especially when you're first starting out.
Go pursue some other passion. Leave the start-ups for those of us who really care about the people we service.
I definitely set unrealistic expectations for my customers, as identified below. In the past I've been bad about overpromising and then spreading our dev resources thin, which definitely contributes to this feeling that customers are pushy (because they don't get what we've promised).
This is something I've gotten better at recently, but still remains a major pain point: Keeping customers happy with the CURRENT featureset rather than promising new things.
I would say it's one of my greatest weaknesses.
It seems to me like you need some time to work on that. For me, learning to say "no" and establishing my authority to clients regarding the direction of a project was HARD. It took me at least 2 years from the first time I noticed to get to a point that I could run a project pretty damn smoothly.
Also, I suggest you take some time off. Like, a day or two just hiking / playing around / having sex / whatever. Just go outside and so something away from computers and away from your customer's emails. Then come back with an objective mission of taking care of shit in a prioritized way.
Thats my last advice : write down what needs to be accomplished and check it off. Do it each week or monthly at first and eventually you'll be banging them out daily and feeling stoked.
Good luck!
I'm taking a few days off this weekend during the holiday. Hoping for the best :D
Sorry if it seemed like that; it certainly wasn't my intention. OP asked a question and then provided some clear data: any attitude toward your customers is your problem, not theirs.
People can be involved in business and startups for various reasons, not just a personal sense of ideological purity.
I believe that caring for your customers is necessary but not sufficient for any business. I also believe that if one doesn't believe that, then they shouldn't be in business. Period. No "ideological purity" here, just basic functionality.
How long will you try to teach you child to walk before you give up? Ask that to any parent, and they'll look at you like you're from Jupiter. Then they'll give the obvious answer, "I will never give up until my child walks!"
I feel the same way about helping my customers solve their problems. And if OP felt that way, his 6 month attention span problem would just disappear. That's all.
My only issue with your reply to OP was that it seemed unnecessarily sharp in tone ("Go pursue some other passion. Leave the start-ups for those of us who really care") and addressed an effect ("snubbing customers") of his problem rather than trying to untangle the source of the problem itself (being addicted to inertia but lacking grit).
Examples:
• You offer a self-service product and someone comes along and wants extensive hand-holding for the self-service price.
• You offer an SMB product and an enterprise comes along and wants enterprise level customization and support at the SMB price.
Less obvious:
• You offer an SMB product and think you can make an enterprise sale. You get distracted from your core audience and overextended.
There are different types of "pushy" customers, some who are simply adamant about their needs and will teach you about your own offering and some who are simply hard-nosed. In the prior case, if your product hasn't been validated in the market it may mean that you're just wrong in your assumptions and need to adjust, but if it has been it may be an indicator that you've stepped too far away from your target market.
You're right, some prospects should not be converted into customers. But existing customers should be treated with respect and not abandoned. Their "pushiness" is a symptom of a larger problem which needs to be identified and solved one way or the other.
Not quite sure where the "bullshit" came from.
Is it possible you're not managing expectations, and then that's killing your motivation?
This is explained by my above post, which indicates that I set lofty goals which were not met (both by my fault and management inside of said company) and customers got pushy as the days progressed to weeks to months.
Again, I am nice to them and try to support them the whole time, but when pieces aren't delivered, they get angry.
Therefore, rather than trying to be someone you're not, learn to harness your strengths and avoid your weaknesses.
Personally, I'm the same way. I'm a good project starter, but not a good finisher. Once I've gotten a project started, I'm ready to move on to something else. Guess what though? There are plenty of people out there who are great finishers, but can't start a project to save their life. Thus, they'd be my perfect partner.
That's what you have to do: harness your strengths, but realize that you're a human being. Rather than trying to be perfect, find someone whose skills complement yours. Then you'll be unstoppable.
A few things I'm noticing I don't do after reading the responses in this thread and thinking alot are: 1) Setting reasonable goals to start 2) Communicate my goals clearly w/ the others involved 3) Don't spend every waking moment thinking about it
I suffer from the same problem (haven't found a solution yet), and I've done the 'get started on something else', but I find that I get more and more sucked into the new thing, and the old thing slides.
If it can be organized ala Google 20% time, and make sure that the overarching goals don't get in the way, then I'd say it may work, but I don't think it is for everybody.
Look back through life and build your startup around what excites you the most, and you'll have better luck sticking with it.
The problem I'm running into on this one is having 3-4 GREAT ideas to improve the software, but being stuck waiting for idea #1 from last month to be implemented. This may be a big piece of my motivation issue. Figuring out how to release things faster is key for me at the moment, I've even turned to coding to try to speed it up.
Implement 1 idea. Then figure out why it doesn't work. Then change it.
As for all your other ideas, if they're better than idea #1, move on, if not, stick with #1.
Getting Real: Release something today http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/getting_real_release_some...