What does this even mean?
Have you ever thought about starting a project but just didn’t know where to begin?
Do you find yourself researching and “learning” how to do or make what you want?
Stuck in tutorial hell?
These are traps that I have found myself falling into since graduating from university.
Many people go through their education with a structured pathway to success and completion. Life, though, isn’t so structured. It can be difficult to figure out where to start pursuing your passions.
But, to quote a great hockey player, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” — Wayne Gretzky
Below are some lessons I’ve learned from my recent attempts to break out of this paralysis.
Go for it!
The biggest lesson I have learned is that if you have an idea, just go for it. Try it out. The worst that can happen is that it doesn’t work as well as you thought, and that’s O.K. Being wrong and experiencing failure are what teach us and help us grow. It’s not so scary when you really think about it.
I have toyed with the idea of making games many times. I find video games to be a joyous expression of storytelling, art, and technology. However, I always fell short.
Sometimes I would get stuck following a tutorial and feel like I wasn’t actually learning. Other times I would begin a project only to realize that its scope was massive and daunting. Sometimes I simply failed to stay motivated.
Until one day, I decided to just re-create a classic, small arcade game.
I realized that sometimes all you need is a small, achievable goal and the willingness to start.
Now, I am thoroughly hooked. Games have become one of my favorite types of programs to write. They constantly present me with new and interesting problems to solve, and having at least one finished game, even if it is simple, has really boosted my confidence.
What if I fail?
This is a fear that everyone has, but if we all gave in to it, we wouldn’t have half the products and advancements that we have today.
Failure can feel like this scary experience that needs to be avoided at all costs. I’ve certainly treated it that way before. But it only has as much power as you give it.
Sometimes the best response to failure is to simply ask: why?
That simple question can teach you what you need to know to give it another shot. No blame. No avoidance. Just face it head-on and ask why.
Growth
Some of my biggest growth as a developer has come from simply coding and building things, even if what I’m building doesn’t work out or never sees distribution. Each thing that I build teaches me something.
For years after graduating from university, I struggled with the question, “What should I build?” My GitHub sat pretty barren and empty, and I kept telling myself that I needed to “learn more so I can build what I want.”
Then one day, I simply decided to build a small tool that would help me—and really, only me. That project became Maki.
Maki helped me bootstrap C++ projects in the way that I saw fit. Pretty niche, sure, but it was small and personal enough that I could see it through to completion.
That changed my whole perspective.
The world opened up to me. Things became simpler, and ideas started flowing. I realized that a project doesn’t need to be revolutionary or useful to thousands of people to be worth building. Sometimes it just needs to be something that interests you, solves a problem for you, or gives you an excuse to learn something new.
Sometimes all it takes is one small project, built for you and you alone, to change your perspective.
You don’t need to know everything.
You don’t need to have the perfect idea.
Sometimes, you just need to get started.