Over the years I’ve literally built hundreds of projects. Some with a lof of potential. Others just batshit crazy ideas.

I started noticing a pattern. I’d build a project for several weeks or even months. Working long hours, maybe 12-14 hours a day. Being extremely motivated. I’d then launch the project, do one day of marketing, for example by posting on hackernews, producthunt and reddit.

Then, I’d inevitably lose interest completely. I would go from “this is the best thing I’ve ever built, it’s gonna change the world” to “this is never going to work, why would anyone ever want to use this” in the span of less than a day.

And I’d just give up on that project and move on.

It’s so weird. I tried figuring out why this was happening. I’d think like OK I’m just spending too much time building without validating the market. I just need to work on smaller project or even just landing pages. But every time the result would be the same. I lose interest after launch.

I thought to myself, right, it must be my fear of failure or my fear of rejection. I can’t handle criticism etc. But then I would look at my life and it can’t really be that. Sometimes I’m definitely too proud to take criticism, but even if there were zero reactions, I’d still lose interest. So it couldn’t be that.

Today I think I finally figured out what’s causing it.

I became an information junkie over the years.

That’s right, I’m addicted to information. I get my dopamine from feedback, from new information.

When I’m building something, that information is the thing coming to life in front of my eyes, every new button etc is awesome. I can see the changes in the UI from the code I’m writing.

But then when I launch, I either don’t get much feedback at all, or I get a lot of feedback for a day, which then dies down completely after the launch.

And I can’t find the motivation to get back to work.

The harsh reality is that most products fail and due to so many failed attempts, I kind of internalised that I’m doing effort for nothing.

But then whenever there’s a sale or a positive comment, I get another small jolt of motivation and I can build a bit again.

But I can’t really seem to get over the slog of finding product market fit without this feedback loop.

I think when I was younger, more naive and less information addicted, it was different.

I partly blame the algorithmic feeds a la Twitter/X. It’s a lot easier to get your dopamine from reading than it is from building.