Why start building, and why continue?
One of the journal entries I wrote at a low point, about quitting my app. This one came 5 years in and just 2 wks before Revere was featured on the App Store for the first time
There were a couple reasons I started building my app: I needed an app like it for myself, and I enjoyed designing apps. I didn’t think much more than that. I figured I would take the idea, design it, and within 6 months build it and watch it become successful, making money in the process.
Those were optimistic times with optimistic motivations, before I had set out and experienced reality – those were my “basecamp fantasies” of how this adventure would go. Looking up at this beautiful mountain from the security and warmth of camp was easy and enjoyable. It’s when things got difficult, and I had to decide whether to quit or continue, did I realize the real reasons I needed to build this thing, and those were the reasons that kept me going.
When things are going badly, the optimistic reasons disappear. You’re left deciding between suffering through or suffering the failure. I thought about quitting a lot, even up to a couple weeks before the app got featured in the App Store for the first time. Each time though, I kept going; at first because I was stubborn, but later for other reasons. I started to see that this wasn’t about an app at all, it was about whether I could overcome the weaknesses in my character holding me back. The app was just the stage this was playing out on. To give up on Revere was to give up on a life I imagined for myself, and to get it I knew deep down that I needed to deal with things I’d been avoiding for a long time.
In many ways, Revere is (figuratively only) a matter of life and death for me. It forces me to face fears and deal with things that have held me back. One of those things, for example, is the fear of putting myself and my ideas out there. (Putting up these posts is actually a really big deal for me.) This ‘life and death’ realization has been the main thing that’s kept me from quitting. Quitting would mean giving in to those fears and effectively giving up on my life. Seeing this bigger challenge changed my approach and gave me more motivation.
It turned out that "Why start?" wasn't the most interesting question at all. It was "Why continue?" That was what was really behind that original need to make something.