Sustaining Drive: How to keep going while building products alone

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2024-07-02 15:00:08

Your product’s a vessel for your fantasies, developer. It promises a journey to lands where you could be who you hope to be; where your life could be what you want it to be. But a short journey, it does not promise.

As you sail, uncertainty blinds you like a fog. Instinct and skill are your compass, but even the best compass is unaware of hidden obstacles. Progress becomes a game of going around surprise-bergs: Huge problems that show up only when you’re right next to them. You dodge them by making sharp turns, and that makes moving forward slower than expected; more trying than predicted. Then in the middle of the journey, things start to feel surreal.

An endless ocean of detail surrounds you. The air’s thick with a fear of drowning in complexity, and you see no land in sight. The details consume more headspace than the fantasy. The journey becomes less adventure, and more task. A sluggishness pushes against you, and your determination pushes against it; you get crushed in the middle, and you realize why some call it a grind.

This is where people and payment help a lot. A crew you believe in, a steady salary, users you care for, investors you trust, and reliable revenue; all soothe like a balm; all externally applied when you need them. But a solo-developer often starts with none of these.