Stop Waiting for the Perfect Project

Sometimes I catch myself doing this thing.

I’ll sit there, spinning on what to build next—some side project, tool, creative idea, whatever—and I’ll feel like I need to get it exactly right. Not just a decent idea, but something clever. Sustainable. Scalable. Something with a nice arc to it. Something that has a shot at success—or at the very least, won’t waste my time.

And then I realize I’ve been in that loop for two hours and I’ve built nothing.

This is the trap of optimizing for an outcome before you’ve done any actual work.

The Illusion of the Perfect Idea

There’s a weird pressure to make sure our time is being spent on the “right” thing. Sometimes that’s economic—especially if you’re someone who likes to tinker with ideas that could become a product or business. But sometimes it’s ego. Or maybe it’s just a learned instinct from having too many half-finished projects that felt like a waste in hindsight.

The catch is: this hunt for the perfect idea feels productive. You’re thinking. You’re evaluating. You’re aligning your interests with your goals. All good stuff in theory. But in practice? It’s procrastination in a clean shirt.

You’re stuck on step zero.

You Don’t Know Yet

Here’s the thing: you don’t know what’s going to hold your attention until you start. You don’t know what a project is going to teach you until you’re knee-deep in the part where it breaks. You don’t know if something will turn into a real opportunity, or just a really good warm-up for the thing after it.

And that’s okay.

Too many people talk themselves out of momentum because they’re trying to mentally simulate a dozen steps into the future—before they’ve even made a Git repo, opened a blank Figma board, or bought a domain they’ll regret in three weeks.

Sometimes the win is just doing anything. Shipping something small. Tinkering with something dumb. Following a hunch and letting it lead you somewhere slightly more interesting than you were yesterday.

The Real ROI Is the Doing

If you’re wired like me, you probably want your time to “matter.” That’s fine. But ironically, the stuff that ends up mattering is often the stuff