Building Solo

When you are building a project solo, whether that's a personal project or a startup, it's not as much of a cakewalk as it seems.

In my networking calls and chats, I've learned that many people love working by themselves, or just working with less supervision. They love autonomy. They can go to the gym in the middle of the day and then choose to code from 7-9 p.m. if they want to. The free choice, the freedom, is what gravitated them in the first place.

However, accountability isn't a bad thing, and pressure isn't a bad thing. When you know that you don't have to work, when you know you can watch Champions League and play Madden, you procrastinate, not because you are lazy or unmotivated, but just because you have the choice to do so.

I've put off work so much because I know I don't have to do it. So in school, when you have deadlines, you do the work because you have no choice. That's the same in a 9-5, well, most of them. You have project deadlines, every day you have to fix a new bug or error, and you need to talk with the team.

That's why some people actually prefer the 9-5 work life, because if you don't have pressure, you don't perform. You don't build.

A solution would be to make artificial deadlines, like saying by Tuesday, make a prototype of the frontend, by Friday, scrape all the data, and on Saturday, do some research on algorithms. However, it still doesn't work, at least for me. I know it's fake. I know I can bypass it. I think having a friend to hold you accountable is a great thing, allowing another person to be like, hey, you need to work, or hey, what's up with your project.

Being distraction-free is also something that needs to be implemented. Since you can choose not to do work, you need to be on DND, throw your phone in Boston Common, or place your PS5 outside your apartment. No one will take it. Distractions hit harder when there's no pressure because they suck you in more easily. It's easier to get sucked in.

While I usually try and offer some solutions, I don't have any at this moment. It's hard to find a solution to something I just started. However, I think that when I hopefully have more people helping me with my startup, and people depend on me, then I will actually have to deliver.