Maker Life

The Struggle To Finish A Side Project

Keenen Charles

Jan 25, 2019 — 2 min read

After a lot of technical and design work in the past month to get Wave Radio ready for launch, I'm finally launching the beta today.

I started working on this project in August 2018 but progress completely stalled when I found some technical issues with the stack I'd chosen (more on this in another post). Fixing it would require rewriting a lot of existing code, and there was no guarantee anyone would be interested. The biggest demotivator for me was my inability to choose a name. I had a list of ideas but none stuck with me.

stack of jigsaw puzzle pieces — Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster / Unsplash

By December, I hadn't made any progress, but the idea was always in my mind. Every idea I had for a new project lead my thoughts back to this one. After some research and revisiting what I'd already built I realised fixing it wasn't as big an issue as I thought.

Still, I couldn't pick a name, and that nagging thought that the idea wouldn't work was always there. I loved it because of my own passion for music but would others feel the same? I wrote about this in my 2nd post on 200WordsADay.com and some wise words from the creator, Basile, gave me the push I needed.

My indecision over the name stemmed more from my concerns if it'd be successful. I was so worried it'd fail I was just finding reasons not to get it done.

The truth is that if it fails, the name won't be the deciding factor. There are tons of successful products with meh names. No project is guaranteed to be a success so you might as well take a risk with one your passionate about, right?

Getting It Done

My aim was to launch in two weeks, but I realised that wasn't the ideal strategy. I didn't want to get stuck in decision paralysis again, but there was no point launching completely unprepared.

I spent January fixing issues, redesigning pages, and designing a logo. A couple weeks ago I launched a signup page, and now I think it's ready to show to the world. It's not perfect, but I think it's at the minimum presentable product state for a beta.

What's Next?

In the following weeks, my aim is to polish the site, add missing functionality, and gather as much feedback as I can before a hard launch. Now the scary part begins but I'm glad I got it done.

🎶 If you love discovering and sharing new music you can join the Wave Radio community at waveradio.co

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