Getting It Done

Some people are great at getting things started in a project, but maybe lose interest pretty quickly and aren’t much use towards the end. Others take a back seat where decisions are concerned, but work their ass off on whatever they’re asked to do, completing the majority of the work. Then you have people that are great at completing things. The project is 99% there, it just needs gently pushing over the line with the finishing touches added.

I think the finishing touches bit is the thing I find the most difficult.

I like starting things. I like coming up with a problem that I’m not sure how to solve. I love working on the problem and developing a solution. But once I’ve broken the back of the problem, I become paralysed. Is it finished? Am I sure it’s ready for public consumption? Am I happy with this stuff being associated with my name? These questions stop me dead in my tracks, and, convinced that I’ve gained as much educational value as I’m going to get personally, the project is temporarily abandoned.

This is 99% completed syndrome, and I’m especially prone to it.

Unfortunately, a bunch of nearly finished projects aren’t fantastic to blog about. When you consider that each blog post is a mini project in itself, prone to the same 99% completed state that any other project is, you get why my last post was in August 2011.

The will to finish things is also worn by the thought that no-one actually cares about the crap I’m messing around with in my spare time. Rather than worry about this, it’s much easier for me to just to abandon what I’m currently doing and start on something new, or worse, vegetate in front of the TV, or murder adolescent teens on Xbox Live as they spout bizarre racist abuse at each other. Seriously; I think masturbation would be more productive than spending time on Modern Warfare 3.

This is rubbish for me, because I’m left with a head full of things I want to talk about but don’t, and I’m left with a stale blog which always says ‘Comparing LINQ’s ToList and ToArray Extension Methods’ at the top. It’s also potentially rubbish for the Googler struggling to find results on a subject I may have written about (although I’m very wary of over-estimating the value of this blog to others – something else that wears at my will to try and contribute something to ‘the community’).

Anyway, the plan is for me to complete more stuff and blog about it, regardless of how unimportant I might think it is, or how I think it might be received. But even now I’m reviewing this post. Is it finished? That first paragraph – does it require more introduction? Is it interesting enough? Should I have said ‘masturbate’ and ‘murder’? Could this post negatively affect my future employability?

Fuck it. [Publish].

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