Week 2—Failure
This week I wanted to step out of my comfort zone a bit (OK, a lot), after all there wouldn’t be any point to this otherwise. I wanted to create an RSS reader with a front-end based on Rob Hawkes’ 10K apart entry, only to get as far as implementing a broken login system. Yes, I didn’t even get to the RSS part. Although, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.
It’s not like I haven’t learned anything in the past 24 hours. I know more about MVC than I did previously, I know how to break codeigniter in many ways, and I know I’m really bad at MySQL.
Perhaps I should give up. Although, at this point, I think I’ve come too far to just stop. While the past 24 hours haven’t been exactly enjoyable, there is something quite satisfying about slowly building something through trial and error. So I’m going to continue and see if I can get this working before next Saturday. “But that’s more than 24 hours” I hear you cry. To which I must reply: “You’re right, it is.”
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm”—Winston Churchill
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5 Responses to ‘Week 2—Failure’
Keep up the enthusiasm Ralph!
I wouldn’t call it a failure until you give up on it.
You’d hardly be out of your comfort zone if you managed to write a perfect system within 24 hours, using technologies that are new to you. Also, don’t look at it as a failure; look at it as a new lesson learnt.
I’d suggest working backwards. Start with the fun stuff that you are doing this project for, like the RSS visualisation using my 10K Apart entry. This is the most important thing to get right, so set up some RSS data and work out how to visualise it in canvas. Once you’ve got that working you can always work on the general everyday stuff, like login systems and backend databases.
What I’m getting at is that you shouldn’t let yourself get bogged down working on the things you don’t want to do. Your time is precious, so spend it working on the things you do want to do; the same things that made you want to do this project in the first place. Of course you’re going to feel like you’ve wasted a day if you spent it working on a login system, when you really wanted to be learning canvas.
One last thing. Don’t be afraid to stop once you’ve achieved all that you wanted from this project. A lot of people get stuck in this mindset that they have to finish everything that they started, otherwise they’ll be a failure, or be seen as giving up. There is a saying that you spent 80% of your time working on the last 20% of a project, which usually consists of tweaks, bug fixes, and random unrelated stuff like login systems. There’s nothing wrong with stopping at 80% of the project (the 80% that is fun and new) and putting it aside to work on something else.
Oh, and make sure you show me when it’s done!
When I get bored with a project, I put it aside, give up, and move on. I keep it in the back of my mind so I can start on it again if I feel like it.
But I think it’s important to realize what projects I’m interested in and pursue those, not the ones that make me feel like I’m torturing myself. Ask yourself “why am I making this?”
Or, even better, “why shouldn’t I make this?” If you can answer that with, “I don’t particularly want to,” I suggest working on something new.
OR, pitch the idea to a developer. You’re a front-end designer, correct?
Officially I’m a designer/front-end developer, but part of the motivation behind these hacks is that I want to do some more back-end stuff so I can actually build my ideas. While I’m open to the idea of collaboration, I didn’t start these projects with the view to making them into startups/whatever, so I’m not really that interested in pitching
While this project did frustrate me a lot, I don’t think it was a bad thing. I certainly didn’t find what I ended up doing soul destroying, even though it wasn’t the main focus of what I had intended to do.
I guess what I’ve taken away from it is that I should start on the bits that are interesting to me. That way the hacks are still about the core idea and I can worry about the other stuff later.
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