What surprised me was how much the ugly first version taught me that planning never could. You learn what users actually care about (often not what you expected), which edge cases matter in practice, and what "good enough" looks like in context.

The hardest part is giving yourself permission to ship something you know is flawed. But the feedback loop from real usage is worth more than weeks of hypothetical architecture debates.

This one works for me, and I've learned it from a post on HN. Whenever I feel stuck or overthink how to do something, just do it first - even with all the flaws that I'm already aware of, and if it feels almost painful to do it so badly. Then improve it a bit, then a bit, then before I know it a clear picture start to emerge... Feels like magic.

[0]: https://strangestloop.io/essays/things-that-arent-doing-the-...

They'd love to talk about problems, investigate them from all angles, make plans on how to plan to solve the problem, identify who caused it or how to blame for it, quantify how much it costs us or how much money we could make from solving it, everything and anything except actually doing something about it.

It was never about doing the thing.

At work we built something from a 2-page spec in 4 months. The competing team spent 8 months on architecture docs before writing code. We shipped. They pivoted three times and eventually disbanded.

Planning has diminishing returns. The first 20% of planning catches 80% of the problems. Everything after that is usually anxiety dressed up as rigor.

The article's right about one thing: doing it badly still counts. Most of what I know came from shipping something embarrassing, then fixing it.

The way to break through that is indeed to start doing. Forget about the edge cases. Handle the happy path first. Build something that does enough to deliver most of the value. Then refine it; or rebuild it.

Seriously. The cost of prototyping is very low these days. So try stuff out and learn something. Don't be afraid to fail.

One reason LLMs are so shockingly effective for this is that they don't do analysis paralysis; they start doing right away. The end results aren't always optimal or even good but often still good enough. You can optimize and refine later. If that is actually needed. Worst case you'll fail to get a useful thing but you'll have a lot better understanding of the requirements for the next attempt. With AI the sunk cost is measured in tokens. It's not free. But also not very expensive. You can afford to burn some tokens to learn something.

A good rule is to not build a framework or platform for anything until you've built at least three versions of the type of thing that you would use it for. Anything you build before that is likely to be under and overengineered in exactly the wrong places. These places make themselves clear when you build a real system.

1. https://strangestloop.io/essays/things-that-arent-doing-the-...

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45939431

In the GenAI era, "doing the thing badly without planning" has become so easy that some counterweight is needed.

The characters in the book are quick to cut non-productive discussions short, but it feels like the feel good discussions around "the thing" are about as far as many people want to go these days.

I needed this today. Currently questioning my career choices, as I hit my first wall where people are involved. Gave me quite the headache.

There are things that humans have to unfortunately do when working as a group of people. That's why we became the alpha predator. Not because we were the strongest ape. That includes:

- Filling in timesheets, quarterly, half yearly cycles, company meetings, team meetings is not doing the thing — as a solopreneur. But not as a member of a group.

- Writing tickets, reviewing PRs is not doing the thing — as a solopreneur.

- Commuting to work and back is not doing the thing — If I'm a solopreneur this doesn't even matter.

- Answering technical questions, analyzing data, attending to bugs is not doing the thing — If I'm a solopreneur especially on a greenfield stuff, I have zero baggage.

- Writing test cases and putting up alerts is not doing the thing — if it's only me judging me, I have nothing to judge.

This one hit me right in the feels, I have been buying more woodworking/DIY tools than the projects I've worked on with them.

Guilty as charged, going back to work.

What I am still on the fence about is when "design" or "architecture" type work counts as Engineering. There's a certain amount of design work that is valuable to do before coding and is part of the thinking process. But sometimes you get into a lot of abstract talking that is "not doing the thing".

I have found these articles on the exact same topic to be creating more actionable mindset.

1. The cult of done by No Boilderplate: https://youtu.be/bJQj1uKtnus?si=efV5OTF35LcDjuN3. Through the years, I have come back to this video many a times and even have the Cult of Done manifesto (snipped from this video) stuck on to my wall.

2. High agency by George Mack: https://www.highagency.com/. This is a long form article and sitting and just reading it has helped me unblock myself. I have a bookmark of this on my favourites bar at all times.

I still believe there's a mise en place step before doing the thing, when quality counts.

I like that this was included.

Whoever the guy from ‘Strangest Loop’ is it’s my impression that it’s meant to resonate with self-starters; as if he’s speaking from that vantage of and for hustle culture. The grinders. The movers. The seniors. The managers. The founders. [1]

I don’t get that vibe from this derivative and in fact I think it carries a slight affect of a neurotic employee while the original airs determination. Reading this brings one into the mind of an observer, the founder of a VC firm, watching OP wring over a Palo Alto brewed latte.

[1] Am I the only one who was unable to find out his actual name on this website?

Edit: Seems like a way to show they’re looking for roles, I guess.

Why not? If i need a saw to build a deck, buying a saw must be the first step?

You can very much do the thing when it's not too costly to fuck up. For many important things, thinking about doing the thing is even more important than doing the thing.

No it's not. Sometimes (or maybe most of the time) doing it badly means maybe it's not your thing.

I used to have a neighbour who liked to play the piano and sing. He was doing it consistently badly and he didn't have anyone to tell him that he should probably stop trying.