|
When I was a teenager I would hop from project to project and rarely finish anything. I wouldn't necessarily say it was an addiction so much as I didn't know any better, and I would quit whenever I encountered a sufficiently challenging technical problem, because at that point the excitement waned, and the project actually became difficult. Then it was easy to get excited by a new project, which, in my head, would be all fun and no stress, until I encountered the next major technical challenge. In order to break out of that pattern I had to recognize that I had a problem and that this pattern existed in the first place. Nowadays, I usually stick to smaller project with a well-defined scope, avoid starting too many projects, etc. That being said, as a hobbyist, you have no duty to finish anything. In my opinion, it's OK to reassess your priorities from time to time. If you started something, and it's really become too stressful, you're not really sure where it's going anymore, it's OK to put it on ice and move to something else for a while. It's one thing to keep pushing because you really believe you'll be creating something that adds value to the world, it's another thing to punish yourself because hey, you really have to finish this thing, otherwise you're a quitter. If you're working on a startup, you definitely don't want to quit, particularly if other people depend on you, but if you already have a full-time coding job, you don't want to burn yourself out working on side-projects, which is unfortunately possible. So you also have to learn to respect and accept your limits IMO. |