Hi there, I'm Victor

#1

I’m building uptime monitoring service! =)

Alex, Hello :slight_smile:

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#2

Hi Victor. Welcome! I heard you already spent 440 hours for your service. It is like 3.5 months of a full time working. But I suppose you have a desk job or take freelance gigs to pay your bills? This means it took you more than 3.5 months.

I’m wondering what kept you motivated on your way? People often ask me “how to keep the fire on”? What will be your advice?

#3

I have full time job, yep.

You cannot imagine how hard it was and in which places I did my work.

Every day right after work I went to a cafe and spent 2-3 hours coding. Or before work, in the morning.

So here is the key points:

  1. I’ve chosen a product whose idea is familiar to me. I did not invent anything new. And I knew that it’d took a long time to implement this.
  2. My first estimation was 300 hours. Now I’ve already spent 440.
  3. First motivation was: “Well, I fully understand what I should implement and how to do this”. When choosing between hard task and easy task our brain choose understandable task. So if I understand how to do something, it doesn’t matter if it’s hard or easy. Hardness/Easiness is subjective
  4. Almost all work was done in cafes. Here is key tip which works for me: when I go to a place like cafe, where I don’t know anybody and which is located somewhat far from my house, I usually work. Because it’d be silly to spend 30 minutes to get to the place and, say, open youtube. Cafes also provide work atmosphere for me. But beware: when you visit the same place often, it becomes like second home: you know everybody there, you spend time talking, you start watching youtube etc. So it’s crucial to change the place from time to time.
  5. Ideal place is coworking, previously I worked there, when I was freelancer
  6. Sometimes I changed my lifestyle to wake up early, which also worked. I mean, I still worked at cafes but early in the morning, before going to my desk job.
  7. I got plenty of motivation when I saw revenue report of the project which does exactly the same. Now I see that at least it’s possible
  8. I spent a lot of time at desk job, like 8 years. And I consider that only having your own projects can provide me what I want (well, it’s not a secret: I want more money)
  9. I love some stuff in life, and personally for me it is home design, real estate, buildings, houses etc. They cost a lot. But I really like, you know, loft design or something like that. Cannot imagine I can buy something I want with my salary, even with credits, it’s impossible. So I remind myself that I really love these things and I want to buy them
  10. I want to relocate :)
  11. I attended a psychologist which helped me with motivation and it worked
  12. I track my time in Toggl, and for me it looks like “Okay, if the number of hours getting higher, it means that the product launch is getting closer”. At first I really thought like “Okay, it’s now 200 hours, I need 100 more and the product is ready”. Of course it’s not, but somewhere in subconsciousness I thought like that.
  13. I LOVE building nice UI. And my competitors has BAD ui. Also at my work we do BAD ui. I want to prove that I’m alone can build something better that companies with a lot of employees do. So I enjyer the process, from time to time. When the task was not enjoyable, it was quite hard to motivate myself
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#4

Whoa man, this is an awesome piece is knowledge! Thanks for this!
I will send people to your post every time I’m asked the motivation question :star_struck:

  1. Ideal place is coworking, previously I worked there, when I was freelancer

+1 for coworking. The best investment in my life. But I need to change it in a few months because as you said, you get used to a place and get friends there. And then you start chatting a lot :smile:

I FEEL YOU! Being materialistic-oriented is not popular today. But if you can’t live without something, you get a nice motivation boost.

In my case it is old Japanese cars. Oh boy I want to build a car for drifting!
My GF loves the Samoyed breed gods. But that kind of doge needs a lot of space.
It all costs $$$.

  • I want to relocate :)

Where do you want to go to?

I LOVE building nice UI. And my competitors has BAD ui. Also at my work we do BAD ui. I want to prove that I’m alone can build something better that companies with a lot of employees do. So I enjyer the process, from time to time. When the task was not enjoyable, it was quite hard to motivate myself

Yeaaah so much yes. The business books from smarty-pants tell you to keep out of polishing
UI. But if you really do enjoy it, let it be a part of your development process. Let your business be less productive but more fun. Why not?

#5

Canada / New Zealand / Somewhere else. Haven’t decided yet :)

Yes, I literally hate bad products, I hate when people do ugly stuff and try to sell it quickly. I’d better do something I like, and get profit, than I’ll be visiting psychiatrist all the time in order to keep calm and answer my customers “Yeah, you have to click 2483 times in order to change your name in profile, don’t be mad. Btw, why don’t you like design in 2000th style?”

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