Productivity

How to build your own products without burning out

Too often we expect instant results.

It's not that we consciously expect things to move quickly and work out the first time, but our brains are wired to race to the finish line without enjoying the view along the way.

I've built so many failed products.

Once I built a custom printed t-shirt site. Another time I built a note tool to compete with Evernote. Yeah, that was going to take off. And I even spent months building an online marketplace site to compete with Craigslist.

All of these are now defunct. Why? Because I wasn't in it for the experience. I only ever wanted the cashout.

I'm writing this as much to remind myself as to inspire you: The only way to succeed is to be fulfilled by the journey toward success. To create something of value to someone else without expectation that you'll ever receive anything in return.

Instead of chasing the pot of gold, appreciate the fact you're sitting on a rainbow.

The Internet has the potential to connect you with people across the globe who need your help to fulfill their dreams. Your help might be offering your insight in a blog post or building a SaaS tool to help them save time, make sales, or connect with others.

It is our contribution---not our payout---which ultimately leads to our satisfaction as developers and entrepreneurs.

I've been finding that out as I've been building Formbot. The slow trickle of new users is discouraging at first, but then I realize how lucky I am to live in a time where I'm able to help others across the globe. Finding new ways to help them is more gratifying than money could ever be. And I'm confident that with that attitude, money will come.

What are some strategies you can use to build your new product without feeling discouraged by the climb ahead?

Strive to help others before yourself

Instead of constantly worrying about monetization strategies, social media outreach, and when you can retire to the beach, focus on producing something that helps other people.

Your product needn't be world-shaking to be world-changing. It could be as simple as automating a workflow that makes you and other people more productive.

You'll smile when you see other people deriving value from what you made. And when they do, they'll be happy to pay you for it.

Give yourself a break

If you're going to build something that other people want to use, it's going to take time. Consistency always wins over short bursts of intensity. Do the work, but then go live life. You'll find that when you return, you'll see things from a renewed perspective.

Just last week I was struggling to figure out what feature to build next. Luckily, I took it upon myself to shift gears and do some writing instead. Then suddenly, a burst of inspiration came all at once yesterday and I shipped a whole new feature all in one day!

Take a break, work on a different project for awhile, and come back. You'll be glad you did.

Smile and enjoy the ride

I need to remind myself of this constantly. As digital creatives, we spend the better part of our lives at the computer. Let's enjoy the time! It's an incredible era to be alive when we're able to produce so much value from the comfort of our homes.

Would you enjoy playing a game you always won, or would it bore you after the second or third round? Failure is critical to learning and growth, but it's also fundamental to our ability to experience success in the first place.

Now let's all go make something great. But first, let's go look out the window. Ooh. A squirrel!

Slack, the ultimate workday distractor

Unless you're living under a rock, you've probably heard of or used Slack, the now wildly popular workplace chat application that's slowly killing IRC. It's uncommon for me to look over the shoulder of my peers and see another chat client these days. Slack's emphasis on collaboration, clarity, and fun make it the go-to choice for workplace chat. Slack attempts to replace email in the work setting by creating a realtime chat environment that gives teams an always-on channel for discussion.

Don't get me wrong: Slack is an incredible tool if you work in a fast-paced, customer-oriented environment. If you work in tech support, customer service, sales, or sysops, Slack is indispensible for staying on top of inbound alerts that help keep your business running day-to-day. But when you're a programmer, designer, writer, or other creative, it's imperative that you're granted several hours per day of uninterrupted flow.

Also make no mistake: Slack is an amazing chat application. It's the best I've ever used. It's intuitive, friendly, fun, and engaging. I love it.

But Slack represents a destructive psychological shift in the way we conduct creative work: The always-on always-available culture amplifies anxiety and destroys real productivity by putting our attention up for auction in a highly distracting and unactionable environment.

Always Available, Never In Focus

In Merlin Mann's famous Google Tech Talk about his Inbox Zero methodology for email processing, he explained how email has turned from a fun and exciting new medium of exchange into the reactive centerpiece of the modern desktop. At one time, checking your email was a once-per-day activity, something you did when you connected your 56k modem to the Internet for an hour. Now it has become an always-on communication center from which we draw our next actions and conduct our day-to-day tasks.

Not only does this always-on approach segment our attention from our most important work, but it provokes a sense of constant anxiety, wherein we believe we must respond to every message with ever-accelerating urgency. And that's exactly why I believe Slack is the ultimate productivity killer.

When there's an unspoken, implicit expectation that we'll be on Slack all day long, we begin to measure our personal productivity in terms of our response to chatter instead of in terms of the completion of our most critical tasks. We lose control of our time and what was once creative, intentional work turns into a constant stream of opinions, anecdotes, and noise.

Like Email, Slack Causes Anxiety

Studies show checking email frequently causes anxiety. By constantly feeding our brains new inputs about our responsibilities, we're effectively sending ourselves into a panic about whether or not the task we're currently attempting to complete is the most important.

Slack effectively puts this anxiety on overdrive. Sitting down to implement that new feature your investor is expecting next week? Too bad: Your teammate needs help defining requirements for another feature and sent you a private Slack message to ask you to help. With Slack, true heads-down focus and intention is a thing of the past. And you can forget losing yourself in your work: Slack will make sure you always have something more pressing (read: an opportunity for procrastination) to do.

Unlike Email, Slack Doesn't Have Threads

In Slack, you can organize your team's discussions into channels, but that's hardly a substitute for the hard lines drawn by operating within threads in email. If Slack truly replaces email, how do I reach Slack Zero? When I'm scanning Slack for any actionable information, I end up re-scanning conversations numerous times to find the discussion I'm looking for. Email and project management tools don't beget that problem. They're threaded and that's the way discussion about specific tasks and projects should be.

None of this is to say that realtime chat doesn't have a place in the workplace. But I do think using Slack in place of a more rigid communication medium is a sure recipe for losing your mind.

Solution? Check Slack Twice Per Day

That's why I'm making a commitment to checking Slack as infrequently as I check my email: Once in the mid-morning and once near the end of the day.

When we reduce the number of inputs vying for our attention during our workday, we are better equipped to focus on what we've already deemed our day's priorities. Let's turn off Slack, turn off email, and get to work.