Death by Planning

Or how not to release projects

I released an iPhone app back in April 2014. It was called Mingle, and I was immensely proud of it. I was still in high school, it was my first major app, it got featured on MacStories, TechCrunch, and a bunch of other great sites, and I was interviewed on most local news channels.

Fast forward a year and a half later and Mingle has just 1 or 2 downloads a month, I haven’t updated it in quite a while, and haven’t released anything new either. So what happened?

There is a very serious problem that I hadn’t given much thought to until recently, and that’s the problem of overthinking. I have a huge list of ideas that I’d want to start one day. And, as a matter of fact, I have started a bunch of them. But, here’s what usually happens when I do:

1. I pick a project excitingly
2. I start building the project
3. I remember another project
4. I quickly get bored of what I’m currently working on, and convince myself that I should stop because it has no potential
5. I stop

And this has been going on for a while. It’s a huge issue that I face, and that I’m sure many others face as well. Previously, whenever I read the “fail fast” philosophy, it was followed by an eye roll. It sounded a bit ridiculous to me, but that’s because I didn’t really get it until now. Failing fast just means getting yourself to build and release what you’re building. I could spend months trying to decide if what I’m building has the potential to succeed or not, or I could find out. From now on, I’m going for the latter.