The projects I’ve finished all have one thing in common: they were embarrassingly small when they launched.
The ones I abandoned? All ambitious.
Scope is the enemy
A feature you can ship this week beats a system you can ship this quarter. Every extra week of building is a week of zero feedback — and feedback is the only thing that tells you whether you’re building the right thing at all.
If you’re not slightly embarrassed by v1, you shipped too late.
My rule of thumb
Before starting anything, I ask: what’s the version of this I could ship in two days? Then I build that. Not as a prototype — as the actual release.
Most of the time, the two-day version turns out to be all anyone needed.