LVanguard's comments

Oh wow. This reply came at a great time as I've been at the beginning stages of grappling with the benefits of having a publicly available personal blog. I've always had starts and fits but never really gave it the time of day it deserved. I think I'll want to commit to it at this point. Best way I can think of achieving that (via Atomic Habits) is just to commit to writing the same time of day, everyday. Never even thought of the whole "It could help your employment prospects" angle.

I had this experience a couple of months ago when I noticed a gap in the shopify app ecosystem. I saw some comments discussing this need, found nothing in the store, and had a friend starting a shop that could potentially use it as well.

Worked on the app for 2-3 months, polishing, coding, learning tailwind and a bit of formal UI design in the process. Kept thinking "It's not ready yet. Just needs this hook into the UI. Needs React. Needs a Rails backend. Needs built in email support"... As you can guess, I never shipped.

Fast forward 7 months later and I found myself browsing the store again, and yep, found TWO applications in the store that solved the same issue I was attempting to solve months earlier. With installs, and reviews! Got pretty down on myself for a couple of days with the author's same sense of happiness, doubt, sadness..

I'm working on another application where the same 'hesitate to ship' tendencies started rearing their ugly heads. I've started experimenting with just setting deadlines for shipping, feature complete, etc.

I'm submitting the app to Shopify today. And no, I don't consider it anywhere near 'ready'.