Just Whining & Prototype Update
Working a full time job and trying to build this application in my spare time is really getting to me. The project that is keeping me busy at work is mentally exhausting me. I would love to spend all of my time working on Ataraxis Unity. I'm still plugging away at the prototype. I would have been done with it already if I could work on this full-time!
As for the prototype. I've recently decided to not include 2 features that I really wanted to put into the app. (Kind of funny, Ian beat me to the "I'm taking some features out" blog post. ;) ) I already made the prototype screens for the features, but after thinking about the project I've decided I need to shrink my scope a little. I really want to have a releasable version out this year. Will I be able to do it? Not sure.
Reading an article like this, really makes me wish I could turn back the clock to when I was in college. Paul Graham, author of the article, talks about programmers - he calls them Hackers - just busting their asses in their apartments, building awesome software. I had so much damn spare time back in college. I could have started a few dozen businesses! ;)
I've been meaning to write a blog post explaining my specific target markets for Ataraxis Unity, but I just haven't had the time.
Sorry for the lack of an interesting post, I'm just whining... :)
As for the prototype. I've recently decided to not include 2 features that I really wanted to put into the app. (Kind of funny, Ian beat me to the "I'm taking some features out" blog post. ;) ) I already made the prototype screens for the features, but after thinking about the project I've decided I need to shrink my scope a little. I really want to have a releasable version out this year. Will I be able to do it? Not sure.
Reading an article like this, really makes me wish I could turn back the clock to when I was in college. Paul Graham, author of the article, talks about programmers - he calls them Hackers - just busting their asses in their apartments, building awesome software. I had so much damn spare time back in college. I could have started a few dozen businesses! ;)
I've been meaning to write a blog post explaining my specific target markets for Ataraxis Unity, but I just haven't had the time.
Sorry for the lack of an interesting post, I'm just whining... :)
posted by Michael Sica at
8:08 PM
5 Comments:
Actually this is a great post for people starting out to read. This is real. It's funny because me and my wife were just having a relevant discussion tonight. I work on HelpSpot fulltime and we were discussing how many hours of "actual" work I get done in a day. In a normal day where I work 8am - 6pm + somewhere between 1-3 hours later at night I do about 4 hours of actual programming. That's probably at best. The rest of the time is stuff I do to step back. Most of the time that means marketing (aka blogging, either reading or writing).
The fact is that this type of work is mentally draining and doing it all day, plus living, makes it very hard to do more at night. I think you're making the right move by cutting back a bit. If you're not in a practical position to work on it fulltime to get the full version out then try and structure it with just the most important components and get that done and out the door in some type of reasonable timeframe. You can always add on or if it takes off make the jump to full development, but you'll never know if you never get anything finished!
I'm in the same boat as you (and so is Ian probably), but I don't think that if we had a chance to go back to the college days we would start businesses. In those years, the pressure is too high to go the 'normal' route of getting a full-time job, getting an apartment, maybe pulling off an internship before hand. I think it takes a certain kind of personality to say, screw it, I'm going to start a business (or for that matter, travel the world), instead of following the well-accepted path.
Michael, I too feel your pain. I'm trying to bootstrap my company while maintaining my fulltime job and it is a never-ending struggle. I find myself constantly distracted at work because I'm passionate about my own ideas and less than motivated by what I'm doing at my day job. My goal is to produce something simple to establish a customer base and begin generating a revenue stream. Eventually that will fund additional features and new products, but it's going to take a lot of time and effort to ramp it up.
I enjoy tracking your progress and I wish you great success. It's good to see others, like yourself, overcoming similar circumstances to my own.
Keep plugging away, Michael! I understand what you're saying about turning back the clock. Having just moved house, I now have a mortgage to pay which means that things seem just a bit more serious.
Thanks guys. I appreciate - needed - the encouragement!
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