Building really great stuff takes a lot more time, attention, and focus than is really possible to understand up front.
It's hard but I've had to learn to say no to even my own best ideas if they mean spinning another plate, or I eventually resent them for getting in the way.
It's hard but I've had to learn to say no to even my own best ideas if they mean spinning another plate, or I eventually resent them for getting in the way.
If you want to do a lot of things, focus on things that can be finished.
Write a book, record an album, organize an event, produce a video, give a talk — you can build a rich catalog of work if you are deliberate about doing things that can actually be *done*.
Write a book, record an album, organize an event, produce a video, give a talk — you can build a rich catalog of work if you are deliberate about doing things that can actually be *done*.
But if you want to do things that can't really be finished (like software), I think the right way to be ambitious is to focus on one thing and make it great.
The sacrifice of saying no to a few fun ideas is not as bad as the sacrifice of never feeling awesome about your work.
The sacrifice of saying no to a few fun ideas is not as bad as the sacrifice of never feeling awesome about your work.
(I am still terrible at this — this thread is brought to you by me feeling completely overwhelmed by the projects I’m already responsible for forever ☠️)
More thoughts — it is *way easier* than it sounds to take on new “forever projects” without appreciating it at the time.
Be very deliberate about asking yourself “will this ever be done or does it mean an extra responsibility forever?” any time you are starting something new.
Be very deliberate about asking yourself “will this ever be done or does it mean an extra responsibility forever?” any time you are starting something new.
Personal example — we added Figma files to Tailwind UI but somehow didn’t really appreciate that it was going to mean twice the amount of work any time we wanted to add new components forever. Knowing how much it slows us down now, I think we should have said no to that project.
Another — I built my own course platform (twice!) for my courses. Now even though I’m not working on courses anymore I’m responsible for keeping those servers up, keeping library versions updated, etc. Should have used an existing course platform.
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