Starting and finishing projects

15 Jun 2015 - sjl

I discussed working remotely in my last post, but didn’t mention the website I use to find (or at least browse casually for) remote roles: remoteok.io. It’s an interesting website for a few reasons:

Firstly, because it aggregates remote jobs from other sites, it has the most comprehensive listing. It’s also reasonably sleek and does just enough to be useful to both employers and job seekers.

Secondly, it helps legitimize remote working as a thing. Incredibly, the largest job search site in Australia (Seek) doesn’t even recognize “remote” as a work type or category. By selecting the location as “anywhere”, that doesn’t really mean you can do the job from “anywhere”.

Finally, and what I actually wanted to talk about, is that it was developed by someone who goes by the (suitably futuristic) name of levels.io, as part of an attempt to create 12 startups in 12 months.

I’ve always admired relentless productivity in others, and it’s something I’ve always aspired to myself (with mixed success at best..).

For example, I admire writers who just keep writing despite the rejections. While I’m not a massive fan of Stephen King’s work, I have enormous respect for him as a writer for that very reason.

“By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.”

― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Likewise with other artists who just keep drawing or writing, knowing that the next attempt, project or page will be better than the last (on average).

Because if you’re driven to do something, what’s the alternative when things don’t go as planned? Give up? Or do something else? Or try again?

This practice of persistence is closely related to the mental phenomenon of perfectionism. Now there is obviously nothing wrong with striving for high standards and quality, but when those standards stop you from actually producing (or finishing) something, then I view that as a negative. Which is to say, something is always better than nothing. As a software developer at least (and I assume this holds true in other fields also), I have long ago come to terms with the reality that nothing is perfect. Not surprisingly, one of my favorite dev-related books is “the Pragmatic programmer”.

In fact, I actually get quite frustrated when I see other creatives with amazing natural talent who do not put that talent to good use, seemingly because they are scared or falling short of their own high standards.

I have a bulging and continually growing notebook (aka a spark file) full of ideas for small web applications, technology, startups, visualisations, tools etc. I generally think that those ideas are worthless until they start becoming reality. And even if I were somehow able to implement all of them, and every last one was a failure (using technical, financial, or some other criteria.. ), it would still be better than having them exist “only as ideas” in a notebook. Because by building all those projects, I would have gained a whole lot of knowledge and experience along the way. And I’d be in a better place to create the next idea I have, and the next.

There is also something deeper going on though – that drive to create. I’m proud of lots of things I’ve built in the past (in the physical world, not just the virtual), even things that have only ever been seen by few people. It’s a sense of mastery you obtain and the satisfaction of being able to point to something and say, “that wouldn’t exist without me.”

So I’m tempted to embark on some sort of 12 projects in 12 months style goal, for similar reasons as levels.io: “By just doing something you position yourself ahead of most people already”