I’ve built software for millions of users. But I can’t finish one project for myself.
You’d think it’d be easier. It’s not.
What every aspiring tech founder has (but won’t show you)
The folder:
Half-built projects
Abandoned repositories
Domain names bought at 2 AM
README files that start with “Coming soon”
The pattern:
Sunday night: this is the one
Monday morning: 500 lines committed
Two weeks later: silence
Six months later: guilt
The cost:
Not the money
Not the time
The thing you can’t get back
Your belief that next time will be different.
Most projects die from lack of time. Mine died from something else.
Most developers: Need more hours in the day. Need fewer distractions. Need better ideas.
Me: I had the time. (Late nights after kids slept.) I had the ideas. (23 of them, documented, validated.) I had the skills. (A decade of shipping production code.)
What I didn’t have: A brain that would let me start.
The thing that compounds silently
Project 1: You’re excited, you start, life happens, you stop. No big deal.
Project 2: You’re excited, you start, you remember Project 1, you slow down, you stop. Starting to hurt.
Project 3: You’re excited, you try to start, your brain shows you the graveyard, you stop before you begin. Now it’s a pattern.
Project 23: You can’t even open the code editor without your chest tightening. Now it’s a problem.
The mental overhead nobody warns you about
Every unfinished project? Still running in your head. Background threads you never closed.
What it feels like:
Opening your IDE and feeling dread instead of excitement
Having a good idea and immediately thinking of 12 reasons it won’t work
Wanting to build but being unable to start
Knowing you’re capable but feeling paralyzed anyway
What it actually is: Your brain trying to protect you from a pattern it’s learned to fear.
The engineer’s advantage becomes the founder’s trap
What makes me good at my job:
See the full system before building
Anticipate every edge case
Plan for scale from day one
Optimize before shipping
What makes me terrible at side projects:
See the full system before building (18 months of work)
Anticipate every edge case (paralyzed by possibilities)
Plan for scale from day one (overengineered before hello world)
Optimize before shipping (never ship)
Same skills. Opposite outcomes.
The architecture of giving up
Accumulation: Every abandoned project leaves research, half-solved problems, evaluated tools. Your brain keeps indexing it all. The library of “almost” gets heavier.
Dissonance: You: a builder, a maker, a shipper. Your private repo: evidence otherwise. The gap between identity and reality: where shame lives.
Recursion: Each new attempt carries the weight of all previous failures. Each new start requires confronting the entire graveyard. Your brain learns: starting = pain. Your brain shortcuts: why bother?
Paralysis: Too many approaches learned. Too many “right ways” to build. Too many versions of yourself to choose from. The paradox of experience.
What I’m learning to say
I’m not lazy. I’m not undisciplined. I’m not lacking motivation.
I’m scared.
Scared that starting another project means adding another ghost to the graveyard. Scared that investing my time means stealing from my kids for nothing. Scared that this time won’t be different because nothing about my approach has changed.
My brain knows something I’ve been ignoring: You can’t think your way out of a pattern. You have to build your way out.
Differently.
The only thing that’s shifting anything
Not a new productivity system. Not a better project tracker. Not more willpower or discipline.
What’s working: Recognizing my brain needs proof, not promises. Changing not what I build, but why I build. Radically shrinking what “shipping” means.
The details? Next week.
But the principle right now: If you’ve tried the same approach 23 times and failed 23 times, the problem isn’t your effort. It’s your approach.
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What’s in your graveyard? The project that still haunts you? The idea you started but never finished? The thing you’re scared to try again?
Sometimes naming it is the only way to move past it.
P.S. That familiar knot forming right now as you think about your unfinished work? You’re not alone. You’re not broken. You’ve just trained your brain to protect you from a pattern that wasn’t working.
And patterns? They can be rewritten.
Building in public, one recovered project at a time.