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3 Actionable Tips To Avoid Abandoned, Unfinished Projects

Matthew Collison on April 20, 2019

Why is the "shelved project" so unbelievably common? We all come up with these great ideas, then excitedly spend hours writing / coding / planning ...
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Baruch Hen

Thank you for taking the time to write such an elaborate advice!🙌

I bet this will help plenty of other people who are in a similar situation as I found myself earlier this week!

It's time to re-evaluate those projects 😄

Cheers!

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Matthew Collison

You're welcome!

We really hope it will. Mindset is often the hardest thing to overcome so we hope this sort of content opens new avenues of thinking and possibilities in the minds of people going through the same issues.

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SLA Jobs

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André Pena

Great article. I failed so many times with side projects until I internalised some concepts, some of them are on this article.

Once I read a quote from Ben, from dev.to, that I really related with. He said that, before he started dev.to, he wanted to work on something he would see himself doing 10 years ahead. Knowing what you'll still like doing after so long is the hard part and it takes a lot of experience and self-awareness. I'm 34 now and working on side projects consistently for over a year but before that it was all blured. You have to really be patient.

Also, build something super niche because you need to minimize the chance a big company will come and crush you, but this is another topic.

Have a great Sunday

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Matthew Collison • Edited

Thanks so much André!

It's fascinating that Ben said that because we had a very similar framework when getting started. We had already been training, motivating and inspiring developers within the companies we worked for the last 10+ years, and because we loved it so much, we knew we wanted to do that at scale and in perpetuity. This means we want to impact millions of beginner over the coming years.

Hindsight is 20/20 but we do feel that if we had read this article when we were beginning to be mentors, it would have clicked much sooner and we wouldn't have wasted so much time on side projects that never came to fruition.

Your point about being super niche is great! The long tail wins in 2019 - and has been for a few years. You're far better off trying to build a product solving a specific need than trying to build the next Facebook - because then you're stacking the odds in your favour.

Have a great Sunday - although it is Saturday where we are! Feels like a Sunday though 🤔