Creator not a finisher

I have this unfortunate struggle where I become very excited about creating something new, but lose interest in the idea about halfway through the project. I love the feeling of coming up with new ideas, mapping them out and executing them. The entire process is a feeling that I can’t really explain, but truly enjoy. The bad part about this is, I cannot work on these personal ideas or projects for too long without getting burned out. I may work for a few weeks, piecing parts together, but eventually will be more excited about creating something new than finishing the project that I am working on.

This frustrates me most because I would like to work on personal project from start to finish without having to rely on others to keep me motivated. In a work setting, I find myself motivated throughout an entire project when working with peers. I strive for this same motivation on personal projects, but can usually make it only so far before I start something new. It suprises me to go back and look at old applications I have written, sometimes I don’t even remember writing them and find myself baffled by the work I’ve done and then stopped doing.

I’m not really sure how to overcome this issue, but I’m trying to find ways to help. One idea I have is to break each feature into a single milestone, or mini-project, than can be quickly accomplished and then move on to the next objective. Hopefully when it’s all said and done I will have something more complete than my previous attempts.

Hell, I can’t even finish this blog post without thinking about another one.