| Yes, I've had similar periods of doubt when considering ideas for my personal projects, though never to the extent you've been experiencing. In general, doubt is a healthy thing. It allows you to weight the decision and the consequences before blindly jumping in and possibly making a terminal error. Without doubt as a balancing mechanism, humans would be acting on a rush and we would be living in anarchy and chaos. That said, however, there is a limit as to what you should allow your doubts to do. Speaking of your personal projects, it is normal to have an idea, initially consider it great, get excited about it, then in a few days sometimes weeks/months to cool down with regard to it. This is in principle the necessary process. You need to let your ideas prove themselves before you act on them. But then when you're convinced this is a solid idea, which has a potential for market acceptance and the real need it can satisfy, then it's time to put your doubts in the back drawer and decide whether you go with it or not. The idea may be great but too big for you alone to handle it, in which case you start to look for outside help. If it's small enough and you can pull it off alone, then do it. In the past I had ideas I began to work on to realize later their scope was beyond my abilities to complete them so I stopped them unfinished. I choose not to think about them as failures, but as painful but valuable lessons which taught me things I otherwise would never have learned. Then in the future I would not make those kinds of errors in judgement again. Fear of failure is also a cultural thing. Certain cultures are very much averse to risk taking and failing where the society looks down on those who tried something unconventional and did not succeed. I don't know if it applies to your situation, only you can tell, but at least you should be aware that this may potentially be affecting your perception of reality. No one starts a software project with an official warranty letter from some authority stating that it will work. You simply recognize its potential, you believe in it and that should be enough to keep you going. That's how the mind of an entrepreneur works. |