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> Shipping is the most important quality.

So.. Can you trick yourself into directing the perfectionism into shipping fastest?



That's roughly what I did. I often do side projects with two goals: there's something I want to exist, and something I want to learn. And I'll learn that thing by using it to build something I want.

At one point, the thing I wanted to learn was "call something done". So I did that, and because it was a side project with learning as an explicit goal, I was able to actually do that - it was literally impossible to ship something imperfect, as shipping would already mean I'd perfectly reached my goal.

But that turned out to be enough faking it to make it - the feeling of shipping it felt good, and gave me the confidence to spend a small amount of time to polish my side projects up enough for shipping, rather than a large amount of time to do everything I want. And it's way more fun now to be able to occasionally pull up an old side project of mine that's still usable, because I got it to a usable state in the first place.

(In case anyone's interested, you can see the project, and how small its scope was, at https://agripongit.vincenttunru.com.)


The best I’ve been able to do is: if perfection == high quality, then shipping smaller iterations faster is the most cost-effective means of improving quality.


I did that too :) I learned that sometimes, I'd ship the perfect wrong thing. And to avoid that I'd ship earlier versions faster and get back to it after feedback.


Basically I want TDD(make it run!). I want something runs and everyone can see it. Ship faster, get it run faster, get feedback faster, improve faster, iterate faster.

Perfectionism comes from iterations




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