Perfectionism doesn't protect you from shipping bad products. It protects you from shipping anything at all.
My best decisions were made on impulse. When I had nothing to lose, I shipped without thinking. Now with everything on the line, I can't.
GTA 6 still isn't out. Delayed again. This always happens. The scope expands, standards rise, fear compounds. "Make it better" becomes "make it perfect." Perfect never ships.
October 2023. I announced Originoid. My users wanted it. Scope creep hit. What started focused became bloated. The waitlist grew to 38,000.
Building in public works when you ship constantly. When delays happen, it becomes performance art. I went dark.
The codebase is ready. I haven't shipped it. It doesn't feel perfect. So I iterate. Rebuild the infrastructure. Change the stack. Optimizing for problems that don't exist yet.
Being solo makes it worse. No one to tell me it's good enough. No revenue to justify the time. 38,000 people waiting. Zero dollars made. Infinite iterations.
I'm writing about perfectionism while paralyzed by it. Perfectionism is fear disguised as standards. The delta between "good enough" and "perfect" takes months. Nobody notices except you.
I know what's causing this. Yet I'm unable to change.
Maybe publishing this will force my hand. Or maybe I'll keep delaying.