I’ll launch my project tomorrow

But tomorrow never comes. And when tomorrow does come, the above statement will still be true: I’ll launch my project tomorrow.

I have a few ideas. Actually probably a lot more, but only a few comes to mind. Some are available:

• funct.app, in case you want to send a single file to someone who can only download it if they have a password to it. It’s only available to download once. And only for 24 hours.
• A way for gym members to report maintenance issues about the machines, without having to summon a staff member, or describe in excruciating detail where and what is broken
• A community thing you can sign up and share rideouts and maps and whatnot. Kinda like strava, but without the mess.
• An invoice generator. You send me a json, you get a pdf back.

And so on...

This is on top of me wanting to freelance. I certainly have the skills and the experience.

So why do all these start tomorrow? Besides the obvious that they need my time and energy to actually work on them, most of these would need additional administrative steps as well. A new project specific company created. Contracts drawn up and customized so I can be actually protected rather than using templates. Domains bought, hosting done, etc. Most of these need to involve either money, or people (which also costs money).

Spending money starts a countdown: how much money am I willing to spend without any income? What’s my runway, to use startup lingo. Once I involve other humans, they’ll expect me to move somewhat fast, answer emails after I did the work, which means deadlines, which means I commit myself to even more work on top of my full time day job.

Oh, I almost forgot the intellectual property, conflict of interest, and non-compete clauses of my contract at work, all of which I do not want to even seem like I may break.

As long as I don’t start any of my projects, none of the commitments trigger. None of the deadlines materialise, none of the money needs to be paid, none of the legal things need to be clarified.

The pain of not starting my projects is smaller than the pain of having to go through all of those above.

So I’ll start my projects tomorrow.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash