<story><title>I Shipped, Therefore I Am</title><url>https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/012-i-shipped-therefore-i-am</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hazz99</author><text>Semi-related.&lt;p&gt;Whenever I&amp;#x27;m building something, I get &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; strong tunnel vision. Part of what makes me a good engineer – submerging myself extremely deep and specific context, &amp;quot;the zone&amp;quot; – seems to work against me becoming a good product person. There&amp;#x27;s always product stuff I seem to forget, or don&amp;#x27;t pay attention to, or I end up focusing on the wrong things.&lt;p&gt;After &amp;quot;shipping&amp;quot;, however, the tunnel vision goes away. I can view my work with a level of clarity. Some features I built might be valuable, and some won&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;By splitting my work into build&amp;#x2F;evaluate phases, rather than continual building, I&amp;#x27;ve become much better at focusing on the &lt;i&gt;impact&lt;/i&gt; of what I&amp;#x27;m building, and not the engineering in-and-of-itself.&lt;p&gt;I have a terrible habit of spending too much time building, and not enough time thinking&amp;#x2F;marketing&amp;#x2F;etc. This is how I try to manage that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>teekert</author><text>This level of knowing oneself is gold. The older you get, the better you get at managing your self and your (sub-optimal, emotional, human) tendencies.&lt;p&gt;When you are young you may think that you can just adapt to anything (I did). But you often can&amp;#x27;t. You will be lazy, procrastinate, feel like you deserved a relaxing day, get cranky for (un)known reasons, etc. You will have emotions, and they are not rudimentary things you can ignore because the annoy you from time to time. They are you and they need to be listened to and understood.&lt;p&gt;This is what experience is to me: Getting to know yourself and riding your own waves of enthusiasm and productivity and knowing when to stop and reflect or seek help or when to accept your shortcomings and move on without shedding tears. To know when you are fooling yourself and know that you will get disappointed in yourself and will develop negative emotions and learn how to avoid that by being more realistic about your abilities (and time management skills).&lt;p&gt;More an more I accept deep down that I won&amp;#x27;t be the next president or the next Steve Jobs even though my parents told you I could do anything I set my mind to! And I know that that is ok.</text></comment>
<story><title>I Shipped, Therefore I Am</title><url>https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/012-i-shipped-therefore-i-am</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hazz99</author><text>Semi-related.&lt;p&gt;Whenever I&amp;#x27;m building something, I get &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; strong tunnel vision. Part of what makes me a good engineer – submerging myself extremely deep and specific context, &amp;quot;the zone&amp;quot; – seems to work against me becoming a good product person. There&amp;#x27;s always product stuff I seem to forget, or don&amp;#x27;t pay attention to, or I end up focusing on the wrong things.&lt;p&gt;After &amp;quot;shipping&amp;quot;, however, the tunnel vision goes away. I can view my work with a level of clarity. Some features I built might be valuable, and some won&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;By splitting my work into build&amp;#x2F;evaluate phases, rather than continual building, I&amp;#x27;ve become much better at focusing on the &lt;i&gt;impact&lt;/i&gt; of what I&amp;#x27;m building, and not the engineering in-and-of-itself.&lt;p&gt;I have a terrible habit of spending too much time building, and not enough time thinking&amp;#x2F;marketing&amp;#x2F;etc. This is how I try to manage that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mejutoco</author><text>I have realized something similar recently.&lt;p&gt;When building a website I would use bootstrap or similar to design the website as I implemented it.&lt;p&gt;Recently I have been designing the website in figma some days, and implementing said design other days, and my productivity had skyrocketed.&lt;p&gt;For me, it simulates a boss giving me requirements. I can focus on the task at hand without context switching all the time (or that is my rationalisation)&lt;p&gt;Edit: typos</text></comment>