That struggle is real. I've got a ridiculous amount of half-finished MVPs that I simply got bored of. It often makes me feel like an absolute failure, especially when I've told others about something I'm working on. When they ask "Hey, how is that project X you were working on 3 months ago going?" I'll have to think about it because it was probably 3 projects ago.
But I think you're spot on. From each of these projects I've gained something, and once I've hit that point the drive has gone away.
While I often feel like a failure with all of my "failed projects", in my day job people are often blown away by how I seem to know a lot about everything. The truth is it's because I end up trying most things in some fashion with one of these many projects.
> in my day job people are often blown away by how I seem to know a lot about everything
This has made my meandering journey worthwhile as well. I don't have many completed projects under my belt, but I have gathered quite a bit of design and coding techniques, different languages, technologies, etc.
The one completed project (completed in a programming sense, but not a business sense), was one that was done just quick and dirty with no patterns, no architecting of any kind. I resolved to not learn anything in the process (besides understanding the dataset I was parsing for human consumption). In this way, I was able to actually "finish" something. That said, I did learn about deploying on digital ocean, about the importance of having a repeatable deployment process, etc, so it was actually a good learning experience in the end.
I’ve been working on the same project for over 15 years. It’s been written in C, C++, Python, Ruby, Java and Scala. It had an XWindows front end, Swing front end and now a simple web front end (but there is talk of moving to Vue or React.) It ran on the local machine, then shared web hosting, and now AWS. It’s used flat files, SQL and Mongo for storage.
Currently it’s in the shop because I decided to rip everything into microservices and deploy it using Kubernetes.
Along the way I learned 2 things. First, I like solving the same problem over and over again with different technology. You learn both the new technology and uncover aspects of your problem you hadn’t seen before. Second, it’s important to release. I’ve got a website with 75% of the links broken, and the only visitors are me and the googlebot, but it’s released. There’s an artifact I can show my wife or my brother without firing up an IDE. It makes a big difference with respect to a sense of accomplishment (despite the broken links.)
I feel this comment. I always have multiple stacks of physical drawings and notes for different projects that I'm working on but don't always finish.
However, the best thing about all of these unfinished projects is it gets easier and easier to learn different things. Even when my interests don't have overlap they seem to add value to each other.
What I would give to have half finished MVP's! I have a long list of ideas that I can't decide which one is the most worthwhile to pursue, so none of them get started.
If we can minimize the amount of time & effort it takes to go from idea to launchable MVP, then all of these side projects and future ones suddenly become significantly more viable.
But I think you're spot on. From each of these projects I've gained something, and once I've hit that point the drive has gone away.
While I often feel like a failure with all of my "failed projects", in my day job people are often blown away by how I seem to know a lot about everything. The truth is it's because I end up trying most things in some fashion with one of these many projects.