Notes on shipping alone.

Working on your own projects means nobody is waiting for you. That is the best part and the most dangerous part.

The first habit that helped was writing down what "done" means before I start. Not a roadmap, just a list of the things that must be true for me to call this version finished. When I am tempted to add something, I check it against the list, and usually it waits.

The second was telling one person a date. Not a launch announcement, just a friend who will ask me how it went. It is remarkable how much a single expected question sharpens the last week.

I also try to ship something visible every few days, even if it is ugly. A deployed page with one working button beats a perfect local branch, because it turns the project from an idea into a thing that exists and can be improved.

Energy matters more than time. I have learned to do the hard thinking early in the morning, before the kids are up, and save the mechanical work for the evenings when I am tired. Matching the task to the energy is worth more than any productivity app.

And when a project stalls, I let myself put it on a shelf on purpose instead of letting it rot. SignalFeed is on a shelf right now. It is not dead. It is waiting for a better idea, and I am not pretending otherwise.