| The problem is following a "maximizing" strategy, instead of a "satisficing" strategy. Maximizing means you do things based on what seems like the best possible path. Satisficing is focusing on the minimum requirements to reach your goal. Never finishing seems to be a combination of maximizing when you don't need to bother, and also failing to identify the true requirements for you. In order for you to start a successful venture, there are a surprisingly large number of fixed requirements: 1) You need a product that people care about 2) That you can charge for 3) With a viable customer acquisition strategy 4) Where 2) × 3) = enough to support you 5) It needs to be something you can actually implement 6) That you can stay excited about for many years The problem is that maximizers will start maximizing on some handful of these. Often they'll take #5 super seriously and start trying to execute perfectly on their vision, do great design, etc, etc. But then at some point along the way they start to realize that even if they maximize on that axis, they haven't satisfied one of the core requirements. Indeed, the can't satisfy one of the core requirements. It's a depressing realization, and the only option is to jettison the idea and move on to something else. Which leads me to my somewhat unexpected conclusion, that the solution to never finishing may well be not starting. Which isn't to say that you should twiddle your thumbs and not build stuff. Building stuff is a critical skill that you need to practice. But just treat your projects like side projects. Don't start running off and thinking you're going to actually start a company until you have a project that you really think can hit all six requirements. And don't try to maximize any of them. The important thing is to get all six cooking at an acceptable level. |
I have concluded differently, however, based on the following lesson I have learned repeatedly in all areas of life: until you do something, you often don't realize all the potential outcomes available. You can easily sit there today and think "ah but how the hell am I going to get customers?" and then choose never to work on your idea. That's OK - if you have something better to work on (where better = some other idea where positive, realistic evaluations of the "viable business" preconditions have been met and the total score beats the score of the current idea you're evaluating).
But if you don't have something better it's STILL a good plan to start working on your idea because (a) you'll learn something (b) you'll probably be (pleasantly) surprised, either because a solution will materialize that you didn't expect (are you really that brilliant and omnipotent that you can predict all outcomes?), OR because it will lead you to thinking of a new idea that doesn't have the same problem (how many successful start-ups switched ideas half-way through implementation?).
For instance, you might end up building product X that generates you 100,000 users but doesn't make much money, even though it doesn't cost much to run. But in the process of building X, you come up with idea Y, which turns out to be a great idea according to the preconditions but only if you have 10,000 users... ah but look, you can probably advertise Y on X and suddenly you're likely to have the users you need for Y to take off. By working on a problem, you unconsciously and implicitly start exploring related problem spaces. By not working on a problem... you can't solve it, or related problems you might not even have noticed yet.