[lastangryman]

I took time out to work on a personal project that sounds a lot like this article, a lot of what's said here resonated with me really strongly.

It's funny how the spark of an idea and excitement can fade once the reality sets in and doesn't match what was in your head. Endlessly plugging away at it, trying force the outcome you want through sheer will can be quite exhausting and defeating.

One surprising take away for me was that I missed having other people involved (it was a software project). Just having other people to be accountable to or some sort of other stakeholder that can help share the mental burden I think is key for the days when you feel unsure of the direction or purpose. I've done exactly what the article says and taken a step away for now, but hope to come back to it with a different approach and hopefully others involved.

[techisneat]

I agree with working with someone. Don’t think I could do this day in and day out without a cofounder I strongly resonate with. All the smaller projects in which I was flying solo is where burnout/lost of motivation would set in so fast.

[earthling8118]

On the other side of things I prefer going solo to having someone that I don't resonate with. I've worked with people that just don't work together well with me and that causes burnout signicantly faster.

[techisneat]

Fully agree with this. It’s what completely killed my first startup which did in fact have legs.

[withinboredom]

I’d be interested in joining forces (I’m in the same boat) if you’re ever interested in starting back up or just want to build a project together. I’m not looking for a unicorn, just enough money where I don’t care about money and enough control that meeting-spawners won’t get hired.

[jvanderbot]

I'm not knocking your goal here, but it's not exactly unique. I'm fairly certain everyone would be fine with

> just enough money where I don’t care about money and enough control that meeting-spawners won’t get hired.

Implying you are wealthy and have oversight over most the company

[acuozzo]

Not OP, but as a person with a similar goal I can state with certainty that the goal itself is a proxy for wanting stability.

Specifically, the only thing I want is the ability to continue providing a 1960s-era American middle class lifestyle to myself, my wife, and my children.

I've been fortunate enough to be able to pull this off for the past decade, but the little voice in the back of my head that keeps me up at night keeps reminding me that relying exclusively on skill & time capital can easily put me in a position of being unable to do so if I get unlucky enough or if our society suddenly stops valuing my skills.

If it were just me, then I wouldn't be worried. I'm tough enough to withstand living as a tramp like Jack London did in his younger years on "The Road".

But it's not just me. I have four other mouths to feed with my skill & time capital and neither my wife nor myself have any family to rely on.

[withinboredom]

> Implying you are wealthy and have oversight over most the company

As an old man once told me: Wealth should not be mistaken for riches. Wealth is the ability to generate richness and experiences. You can be ridiculously wealthy but poor as a bum.

I have no desire to be rich and most of us here are probably fairly wealthy.

As for "oversight over most the company" I have no idea where you got that from. I just said (in so many words) "I'd like the ability to fire/remove/never hire meeting-spawners."

[jvanderbot]

If you control all of hiring, you have the power to shape the entire company in your image, is what I mean.

[withinboredom]

When did I say I wanted to control all of hiring?

[jvanderbot]

Oh man, here we go down pedantic path. It's so important to be right. I'll explain my logic since you asked, then we can happily part ways if you'd like.

> and enough control that meeting-spawners won’t get hired.

Ok, you want enough control to say that any meeting-inclined person cannot join the company. This means that every person who would join the company has to appear, to you personally, to be a non-meeting-inclined person, and that if you find them too-meeting-inclined, you can veto the hire no matter how many other people want to hire them. The logical conclusion is either that you personally review every hire, or that you adjust the hiring process to include an infallible "whithinboredom approves of this hire" check, which must be conducted by every interview cycle.

So, yeah, you now control the entire hiring (and presumably firing) decision process.

[alexalx666]

I think its next to impossible to complete anything sufficiently complex if I don't enjoy the process itself