How I Nearly Missed The Biggest Launch I’ve Had So Far
This June, I launched a simple quiz called Why Do I Procrastinate, which got 400+ upvotes on Product Hunt, got to #1 on Hacker News, and sent many tens of thousands of people to visit and use the quiz. Simply put, it was the biggest launch I’ve had so far, in terms of traffic. But it almost didn’t happen.

Back in May, I was following my early morning routine of browsing Twitter, when I noticed a tweet about Product Hunt’s new community of makers and builders. It sounded familiar. Had I received an invitation for this a couple of weeks back? Sure enough, searching through my email, I found it — Maker Goals.
It’s like a public todo list — except with Product Hunt’s built in helpful and encouraging community.
My Sad Pile of Unfinished Projects
At any time, I have a long list of projects I’d started but abandoned half-done, and the latest one at that time happened to be a quiz.
I’d read a book called The Procrastination Equation a while back, and found it very useful to understand the reasons behind my procrastination. However, it was difficult to remember everything the book said. So I’d started working on an interactive quiz to diagnose the reasons why I was putting off work when faced with a specific task. I run a productivity tool / service called Boss as a Service, and this would be a good side project, I thought.

As usual, motivation was high in the beginning, and in a caffeine powered weekend session, I completed the functionality in a couple of hours. The quiz worked well — it made you focus on a single task that you’re putting off, and asked a few questions about your state of mind. Then, based on the Procrastination Equation, which is a formula the book posits, it calculated the reason for your procrastination. I added strategies to address the problems diagnosed as well, tiny but effective tactics you could put into action at once.
But it still looked bad, and the copy could do with a lot of work.
At that point, my interest had started to flag (sound familiar?), and I’d gone back to my usual routine of checking Twitter and Reddit for something interesting. Fast forward a few weeks, and I’d given up on the quiz, somehow convincing myself that it was too small, too silly, to continue working on. Who’d want to use this quiz? It wasn’t worth completing.
And another project joined the unhappy pile of unfinished side projects.
Time to resurrect the Quiz!
I’m a sucker for new products. I want to try out everything new and shiny, which might also explain my addiction to Product Hunt. So when I found the email with the invitation, I joined Maker Goals, and wrote down the next task I needed to do to bring the quiz back to life.

Then I promptly forgot about it.
But did I mention I spend way too much time browsing? So after a few hours, I came back to Product Hunt to see what was new, and I noticed that people were giving me cheers and encouragement on Maker Goals! That’s pretty cool.

I decided to complete the quiz then, just for the sake of the principle — go all the way through, complete something that you start.
I started adding more tasks to Maker Goals, and as I pushed myself forward, people were helpful with advice and tips.

I have a tendency to try to get everything as perfect as I possibly can. I complained about that here, but kept polishing.

And when I’d got it to a point where any more tweaking of box shadows would just be an excuse, people volunteered to beta test and report bugs!



And Finally I Launched … And What Happened Then
Why Do I Procrastinate launched on June 21, in what turned out to blast my best expectations out of the water.
On Product Hunt, it got 446 upvotes, which was actually more than my main product, Boss as a Service got.
And on Hacker News, it absolutely blew up, climbing to the front page, and then to #1 on the front page, for almost the whole evening! (It really happened, I have proof!)

The traffic I got from this launch was more than I’ve got all my life, and Boss as a Service got its fair share of interest, new signups, and customers too. That’s probably a post for another day, but suffice it to say I was up working through the night for almost two days straight, answering questions, doing customer support, and basically enjoying the crazy ride that is Launch Day.
Give your projects a chance
If you’re reading this, likely you have a few projects you started with enthusiasm, and abandoned half way through, with motivation flagging and self doubt creeping in. Maybe you now think it’s not good enough, or big enough, or serious enough, or well designed enough.
Let that be for the world to decide. If something interested you enough that you started it, put in time and effort, and brought it to a stage where it’s nearly complete, it’s a shame not to follow through. In my case, I very nearly missed the huge opportunity I had, because for some reason, I told myself it was too small and simple a product to really matter, and I should forget it and move on.
Look through your old folders, dust them off and find those unfinished projects, the ones you were excited about. Don’t let them die! Complete them and launch them. See what happens.
It might lead to something amazing.
