Code Soloist #6: Do the thing
Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Do the thing, and you will have the power.”
What I believe he meant was that experience is the only true filter, for both consuming and producing value. When you actually know how to do something, which you’ve earned by throwing yourself at a problem and living with all its trade-offs, disappointments, and victories, you see similar aspiration and effort in the world with a calm, critical eye.
Once you know how, you can stop reading most technical blogs. A lot of the time, what you’re reading is process: someone is learning out loud. If the proposed solution is clever, interesting, or even “productive” in the sense that it makes something perceivably easier, it may actually provide zero net value to you. Value, in this case, is something that drives your project forward in a tangible way. If it doesn’t affect the person that’s actually going to use your creation, it’s worthless, for the time being. If you don’t have the experience, you’ll spend a lot of time implementing other people’s idea’s that have likely never paid for the time they took.
Once you know how, you won’t need to look over the fence, or over your shoulder, at other people building products with different tools. Sometimes toolchasers stick together and create movements. None of these collectives help build your idea faster; before you launch, you don’t have problems specific tools can solve. Your only problem is: what’s in your head doesn’t exist yet. And it must exist.
Once you know how, you know if you love what you’re doing. You don’t love the idea of the end result, or the thrill of imagining some future process where you’re free from daily pressures. You know it’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done. Your experience reaffirms that this is your calling. Nobody else would have survived this long.
The only way to be proud of what you’ve done is to really do it. And the only way to finish is to take pride in every day you bring yourself to the problem.
Code Soloist is for single-person software development companies that are trying to start something big with their bare hands. In it, I try to impart whatever I’ve learned, for better or worse, doing the same thing badly.
