A piece of advice I would've definitely ignored 5 years ago

I’m 2700 hours into working on my app over approximately 5 years. I originally expected this to be a six-month project – which was obviously a huge miscalculation – but has shown me something else. It’s forced me to appreciate that things worth doing take time, and a lot longer than I thought.

I was recently thinking about what single thing or insight most surprised me about the last 5 years, and it’s how long things take. I thought about how I would frame that as advice to my past self and it would go something like:

“When you think you’ve done enough, you have 10 times more to do.”

Past me would have certainly ignored this advice – it wouldn’t have matched my world-view. Six months felt like a long time, apps seemed simple, and I thought I knew what I was doing. Nope, nope, and nope.

Month by month I learned that I was wrong and it put me in my place. There was no fast-track to proficiency and no topic so shallow that I could pick it up quickly. There was only putting in the work. Way more than I thought too.