We should stop trying to finish stuff

Over the last 2 weeks, I had the chance to join the Minimalist Entrepreneur course Inaugural cohort organized by @sahil. It has been a very intensive yet rewarding experience.

Intensive because it challenges me to think and see things in a different light. Rewarding because I feel like I am learning a lot and have the chance to meet and interact with all the amazing people who are part of the community.

As a software developer my joy always came from building stuff. I love the rush of starting from nothing to have a fully built app with all the things I like to think will make it ready.

What usually follows after these sprints, is a sense of pride for being able to build something followed by sadness. After all the rush is gone, comes the realization that almost no one is using the product.

Even worse than no one to use what I have built, there is always a feeling of emptiness because I reached the goal, I built all the features and there is nothing else to do than trying to think what comes next. I mentioned the process of building something but I noticed this cycle in many other aspects of my life too.

Looking at some of the things I learned in the course so far, I realized that this cycle happened repeatedly in my life because I have been focusing a lot on trying to FINISH stuff.

Some people say that life is a race and we are running against time. I in the other hand think that we should try to make the most out of our time but that doesn’t mean that we should consider life as race. Unlike a race most things in life have no ending.

There is not such thing as finishing to study, we are constantly learning something new. There is no such thing as finishing a business or a product because the needs of the people who rely on the business will always evolve.

Luckily I learned that there is a better way. A way that removes the idea of trying to finish something with a commitment to a process of iteration.

This way challenges us to be present, be generous by listening and interacting with the people we are building stuff for. This way requires us to show up consistently and be committed to the idea of doing small things better every day.
This way we never reach an end because there is always something that we can do better.

In the past I would have not shared this writing. I thought that to do that I needed to have everything planned to the minute details. A consistent post schedule, an audience ready to praise my writing, a slick looking website and a lot of unique ideas of things to write.

Now that I know that there is a better way, the best I can do today is to commit to the idea of keep coming back. Coming back to share what I have learned with you and use what I hope to learn from your feedback to keep improving.

You probably have some things of your own that you dread to share because they are not finished. I want to take this moment to tell you that you are not alone and to challenge you to change your approach. Start today, think about the minimum thing you can build and ship, the closest person you can help with what you are working on and JUST DO IT.