Ask HN: How do you maintain long-term focus

[amaranand]

How do you maintain your long-term focus for building a truly successful software project?

Most great pieces of software will take many months to build. How do you maintain focus over the long term?

I've started a few software projects with friends that show promise, but my month three or four we (or at least I) get sick of looking at the same code base everyday.

My mind starts to wander and get more excited about other projects and I lose focus on my original idea.

Do others struggle with this? If so, how do you maintain focus over the long term?

[flignats]

One of the best ways I have maintained focus is to surround yourself with people that keep you sharp. A peer with similar skills but slightly more advanced than myself always keeps me working hard to elevate my skill level - then it becomes less of looking at old boring code and more of a personal achievement.

Also, I am very goal oriented, I like to set small milestones along the way and think that if I don't reach them Armageddon will occur.

[autalpha]

I understand exactly what you're going through. Over the year, I tend to "put all my eggs in a basket" so-to-speak on one project or another. It becomes overwhelming at time because most problems I try to solve are (at least to me) complex.

Naturally, when problem gets harder, it's easy to let your mind wander and it's much more difficult to get things done. This year, I am approaching things a bit differently. I plan to work on a few smaller projects at a time instead of focusing on one big project that never gets done and spirit-draining. It will at least cure my "mind wandering" issue for the time being.

I don't think there's any negative side to working on multiple projects at the same time. As a one-man band, you can definitely work on different phases of projects to keep your mind sharp and interested.

I am actively coding one project, designing for another and thinking about/planning another project :P

[khanm]

A very good video on project plateaus: http://vimeo.com/13399691 which addresses exactly what you speak of.

But from what I've seen it seems there are a few in a startup who are creators and innovators as they get excited at the fact of generating ideas and talking about them but when it comes time to follow through, things get tough and interest wanders.

Having a few partner as you have is ideal as there is some accountability. Everyone should be motivating everyone else. Also try to keep building from small iterations and tasks instead of having a very large goal. Break it up into small cycles and most importantly get feedback on each of those cycles from potential users outside of your family.

this has been asked before on HN located here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2185359

[amaranand]

I think my situation is pretty different from the one in the other thread. My team and I have put 3-4 months of actual code in our last project. Last project we got a working (albeit slightly buggy)prototype working of a pretty technical (hard) project.

When it came time for the stretch run to add polish and really get the project stable, we lost focus and motivation.

Unfortunate really, but I want to avoid the situation in the future

[stickfigure]

Read yachting magazines.