Starting feels good and landing doesn't because all the compounding lives in the part with no dopamine — nothing you ship halfway pays you back. The people who reliably land things didn't get more disciplined; they built a runway that makes finishing the default on the days motivation is gone.
Great read. Resonates well. So many times I have seen celebrations of success after winning a project and then further celebrations after delivery of concept and schematic design stages. Project going well, highly profitable! Even sometimes that continues through to developed design! And over the next period of time finalising the design stage and moving into construction phase everything changes……
The quiet deaths are the part I keep chewing on. A project that fails loudly gets a postmortem. One that just stops gets a calendar invite nobody declines and a channel that goes from twenty messages a day to two. Do you treat a fade as a decision that has to be made out loud, or is naming it usually enough to restart it?
Starting feels good and landing doesn't because all the compounding lives in the part with no dopamine — nothing you ship halfway pays you back. The people who reliably land things didn't get more disciplined; they built a runway that makes finishing the default on the days motivation is gone.
Excellent article, James! Applies to research work too.
“I’m glad you can’t see my private GitHub projects” – I should make more of my repositories private 😊
Thank you! 🙏
This was one of your best articles. Well done! I’ll share it with a bunch of people now. 😁
Thanks so much for the kind words! Pleased you liked it.
Great read. Resonates well. So many times I have seen celebrations of success after winning a project and then further celebrations after delivery of concept and schematic design stages. Project going well, highly profitable! Even sometimes that continues through to developed design! And over the next period of time finalising the design stage and moving into construction phase everything changes……
Yep, totally true. Save the celebration until it's actually /done/. :-)
Nice write-up. Ninety-Ninety rule is one of the most forgotten rules out there: https://lawsofsoftwareengineering.com/laws/ninety-ninety-rule/
The quiet deaths are the part I keep chewing on. A project that fails loudly gets a postmortem. One that just stops gets a calendar invite nobody declines and a channel that goes from twenty messages a day to two. Do you treat a fade as a decision that has to be made out loud, or is naming it usually enough to restart it?