Follow-through

Something I think most developers can relate to is having at least a handful of abandoned side projects. We have all had that great idea for a product that the world truly needs, only to abandon it a few days or weeks later. But if the idea was so great, why do we abandon it?

It's not always because of the idea itself. More often than not, at least for me, it is the initial excitement wearing off. Once I have been building for a while the cracks begin to show. Sometimes the idea was achievable, but not what I signed up for in terms of commitment, other times it's me becoming bored when the "fun part" of building the project is over, and it's just the menial dev-ops and bug-fixing tasks that remain.

Following through is a mental battle many of us lose regularly. But the sad thing about it is that most of the time following through would not have been as strenuous as we imagined.

I have been particularly poor in following through on things that I don't have to do. I always make sure to fulfill my promises to friends and family, and I always take my work obligations seriously. But it's my personal goals where my follow-through average takes a deep dive.

In 2018 I committed to the goal of teaching myself to code. This is one of the best decisions I have ever made, and I am not entirely sure how I managed to follow through on such a huge undertaking, but I did. That is how I know I have it in me, I just need to search for it. So lately I have been really pushing myself to follow through on as many things as possible, including - but not exclusively my side projects.

As a result of this, I finally released my first side project called vs-battle. It is a simple game where a user can create a battle with a set amount of options, and then the people who play the battle have to pick one of two options until there is only one option remaining. It's quite a simple concept, and I will be writing a post about what I learned while developing it. But the feeling of actually releasing the project was amazing, and it inspired me to press on further. This website is the second project. The fact that you are reading this now, means that I have followed through on two projects in a row!

I think persevering through not just tough challenges, but also menial and boring ones is one of the things that makes you better as a person. They all become lived experiences that you benefit from at some level, as opposed to giving up and going back to the status quo.

I will continue to push myself to complete my goals. I have already set my third goal, which is to publish at least three posts by the end of this year. Two down, and one left to go!