There's a really important distinction that should be made between personal "fun" projects and professional "work" projects.
Yes, you should definitely learn what's involved in finishing a work project and how difficult this actually is. The old I'm 80% through and I just need to finish off the last 80% is something that can only be learned by experience.
But honestly, why ruin your fun projects by turning them into work.
In professional settings, being known as someone who starts things but doesn’t finish them can be detrimental to your career.
I would also take issue with this. It may hurt your career, but it may also be your career. Being someone who can break new ground and start a project from nothing can be incredibly valuable and is often a very different skill from putting something into production.
>There's a really important distinction that should be made between personal "fun" projects and professional "work" projects.
I can't support this enough. And it took me years to realize this (again). I often had the same struggles as the blog post states. With my master thesis (and just out of pure curiosity) I built a risc-v CPU as a proof-of-concept (to show that my DDR- and Cache-Controller inteded for a ARMv4 core is somehow portable to a different CPU). Somehow I kept working on it every now and then, because i wanted to make it "perfect" (64 bit, FPU, linux, you name it). That ended in much frustration and it still hasn't evolved.
But then suddenly I got reminded that in august this year was a sports event that friends of us arrange. For years I wanted to build a kind-of big display which shows the score and remaining time and is visible outside (from like 10m). My perfectionism always ruined. But this time I was determined to do it and get it done. My RISC-V CPU on an FPGA was the perfect fit for this. So I built a co-processor which drives these common RGB LED matrices and shows time and score. The timing itself and a remote where realized with arduino.
The code looks utter garbage, it barely works, but I had fun and my friends loved it. And most importantly: I "finished" it, as in it worked. I had to force myself really hard to do it. But I enjoyed it and it's fine that it ain't perfect. I also learned a bunch. Now I am determined to improve it for next year and I don't even think about different projects atm.
Edit: it was so imperfect, that you couldn't really take pictures of it, because something is wrong with the refresh rate (it looked fine for the human eye): https://litter.catbox.moe/193vp5.jpg
> But honestly, why ruin your fun projects by turning them into work.
Agreed! For fun, it is completely fine to not finish things if you enjoy the process more than the actual result. You achieved your goal of having fun and likely still learned a lot from it. Of course if it bothers you then sure, improve on your ability to close things, but first evaluate if this truly an issue coming internally from yourself, or some imagined external pressure that your work is worthless if you don't finish it (in the hobby context). Is it important to show it to others for example, or is this a solitary activity purely for yourself? In some hobbies I strive to finish, because I want to show it to others, in others, I don't care at all.
Yes, you should definitely learn what's involved in finishing a work project and how difficult this actually is. The old I'm 80% through and I just need to finish off the last 80% is something that can only be learned by experience.
But honestly, why ruin your fun projects by turning them into work.
I would also take issue with this. It may hurt your career, but it may also be your career. Being someone who can break new ground and start a project from nothing can be incredibly valuable and is often a very different skill from putting something into production.