I end up making myself finish it so that it is at least done
I used to not finish most of my projects not feeling fun or important anymore, and felt bad about it.
Then I had a car modification project that I felt I had to finish to earn my self-respect, no matter the suffering.
I damaged my health with the dusts and vapors involved, and had to redefine finished (not like I wanted, just MOT-tested and saleable) to get out of the project.
Now I take only important projects seriously and avoid side projects. I do easy side projects to relax.
You guys are finishing projects…
The road to success is paved initially with failures.
My road is paved with inattention caused by ADHD and hyper focusing on the wrong thing.
I’m shooting for done enough. I just want to move on to New things and I need my project dept lighter to do so.
Why is done better than not?
Because I often work on things and software used by others in the community.
Also I don’t like leaving a trail of unfinished work
The first thing requires more explanation - why is something used by others, (in which community?), important to be “done”? If they use it, it means even in an unfinished state it’s fine to use already. You can almost always work more on something, add more stuff, but at one point it always stops, so why does it matter if it’s earlier or later?
And the second thing is a tautology… “Why is it bad? Because I don’t like it”, yes, I got that already, but why don’t you like it :D
I can’t really go into to much detail without getting too public about my identity.
As far as always wanting to finish goes I mostly follow the advise of a family friend who died when I was fairly young. He said that he rarely managed to get anything done because he jumped from interest to interest. His estate was full of tons of random things and a few decades worth of side projects that he always said he would come back to.
It sounds like the family friend got to experience dozens of different things that excited him, and didn’t let a self-punishing sense of obligation force him to waste his precious time on the earth, choosing (whether he realised it or not) to move onto learning and enjoying more.
The problem was that we was trying to lots of different things all at the same time. There is nothing wrong with trying new things. You just need to move on with the old projects. It is totally fine to have a few long term things but it can get out of control.
I guess then no further conversation can be had. For me it’s mostly fine to not finish things.
