Sometimes, I envy smokers because they always seem so relaxed while smoking. My drug of choice is programming. I am lost in my head when I am in the zone, arranging lego blocks of code both in my head and on my screen. I love coding, so naturally, I chose to wallow in pleasure. There lies the problem – I mixed work with pleasure.
It was supposed to be a weekend project
I am currently working on an untitled project. It was supposed to be a weekend project, but I gave it a week instead because I wanted a "polished MVP" (minimal viable product). It will now take three weeks instead of one because I rationalized that the product should include some features that will test the stickiness of the product.
Stickiness is a scaling problem
The product that I am working on does one thing - providing a stream of content that you desire and cannot be found anywhere. For example, deleted threads on Eat-Drink-Man-Woman on the subforum in Hardwarezone.
The hypothesis that I needed to test is if users care about content as such.
Instead, I decided to build a social network because I can.
"Because I can" is a curse
I should have built a single-page app that crawled Hardwarezone threads and mirrored deleted threads. I could have finished that in three days if I was committed.
Instead, now I am building everything else from the registration system to user management.
At least I am having fun.