Aaron Swartz: Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit)

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/perfectionism

by abstractbill • 19 years ago

48 102 19 years ago

palish6• 19 years ago

Like Artix, Chain would have failed in its current form no matter how smooth it was polished. It was very important that we failed fast so that we could focus on morphing it into something that works. You lose that with perfectionism.

So you'd better be a Steve Jobs.

aston• 19 years ago

Steve Jobs releases with less than perfection all the time. If you need evidence, look no further than giving AT&T an exclusive with the iPhone.

The key is accepting that people prefer products to promises, and just going ahead with something that's good enough without it being perfect.

palish6• 19 years ago

Being a perfectionist doesn't mean you make perfect things. However, perfectionism requires perfect taste for success.

It feels like there are two forms of design: "release early and release often" and "release it perfectly". Very few people have the taste necessary to find success in the latter.

omouse4• 19 years ago

Don't you dare say Chain is failing. I'm still using the site!

Just make it look a tiny bit nicer, get a few mentions on various blogs and you'll be fine. A PayPal donate link may help too?

palish6• 19 years ago

Aw, thanks mouse! I love creating something that at least one person likes.

We're just refocusing the site. I'll toss you an email with the outline of the redesign so you can approve or disapprove it.

Edit: Email away

gscott3• 19 years ago

> So you'd better be a Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs is a huge perfectionist. However he will make you work 70+ hours a week to achieve his perfection and he will ride you every step of the way to get the best out of you. http://www.folklore.org

steve6• 19 years ago

I think you have set a new record for deciding defeat the fastest:)

palish6• 19 years ago

Depends what you mean by defeat. It seems like one is only defeated when they stop trying new things, which is never going to be the case for us. But one can simply fail by making something only 2 people want.

nickb• 19 years ago

I notice a lot of animosity towards PG in Aaron's writings...

brlewis• 19 years ago

Aaron did know PG personally; maybe he's right. Tell you what, anybody in a YC-funded startup who, like Aaron, tires of weekly+ email exchanges with this humorless nudzh, just redirect him to me. PG can pester me about my project, and you can work undisturbed. Sound good? I'd be happy to do you that favor.

mattmaroon5• 19 years ago

A lot of people have a strong dislike of Aaron. I've certainly had unpleasant experiences.

morris3• 19 years ago

Such as?

euccastro10• 19 years ago

I only notice disagreement, but maybe I missed something.

whacked_new• 19 years ago

I have reservations about that name.

natrius• 19 years ago

No, it's fine. The site's going to let you list famous people who you want to sign various body parts. It'll make for an interesting tag cloud.

far33d2• 19 years ago

The problem w/ perfectionism is that it's only perfect in the eyes of one person...

twism• 19 years ago

this statement is so true

zach2• 19 years ago

Yes, I'm coining a new term - "pefectionism." Don't know what it means, I'll let the audience decide.

marketer• 19 years ago

That open library project didn't last too long...

henning3• 19 years ago

didn't you see that other post? he finished it!

dottertrotter• 19 years ago

Personally I used to be like this. I would never launch anything, because nothing I did was ever good enough for me. However, recently I learned my lesson. I launched hackrtrackr with only one feature, and without and going back and rethinking what I had done. The result an insanely simple website that has taken off very well. Also by launching with only one feature and minimal code it allowed me to quickly add the features I received requests for, because I didn't have to wade through a bunch of lines.

gscott3• 19 years ago

> Personally I used to be like this. I would never launch anything, because nothing I did was ever good enough for me.

Sounds like practice coding to me, I am sure the experience you gained helped you write what you decided was worthy of releasing.

jey2• 19 years ago

http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/windows/2007/02/07/jottit ?

joe2• 19 years ago

No, that's Jott.com. Not sure why the author refers to it as "JottIt".

jey2• 19 years ago

Thanks for the clarification.

omouse4• 19 years ago

"There is something to this, of course. But I have a contrary proposal: users love perfectionism."

Wrong. I would love to see more new features on reddit rather than waiting for them to re-write everything. The search function is still somewhat broken!

There is even competition of sorts: http://redditmedia.com/ That site displays thumbnails for stories...why doesn't reddit.com have an extra section or option/setting for that? So many good things could be done if not for this perfectionism bullshit.

Another good story: 37signals took a long time fixing Backpack and finally released a new version. Too late, I had already switched to Simple GTD. I don't get why they didn't incrementally improve things...I bet they've lost many more users due to their slowness.

Perfectionism is paralyzing.

steve6• 19 years ago

Almost,

Success is paralyzing.

staunch• 19 years ago

"Once a product gets past the stage where it has glaring flaws, you start to get used to it, and gradually whatever features it happens to have become its identity." -- Hardest Lessons #2

Reddit certainly fell into that one big time. Digg has done a much better job at maintaining a fast development pace.

champion• 19 years ago

Funny, since Aaron had exactly the opposite strategy when he launched Infogami, blogging about launching a new feature everyday and taking a very incremental approach. I don't think that lasted very long though. Everyone is free to change their mind, of course...

steve6• 19 years ago

It is good that he chose an extreme though. Publicity tends to like extremes, regardless of which extreme it is.

zach2• 19 years ago

Certain personalities tend to like extremes in that way as well.

oditogre6• 19 years ago

What's Jottit going to be, then?

axod2• 19 years ago

Apart from a failed startup?

ecuzzillo3• 19 years ago

Watching this get abandoned will be enormously humorous.

euccastro10• 19 years ago

Why? Perfectionists do that all the time.

rms5• 19 years ago

http://beta.jottit.com/

nirs2• 19 years ago

Looks a lot like infogami, just more broken :-)

joshwa• 19 years ago

or like backpack, but with the default permissions reversed (he even stole some copy from backpack)

omouse4• 19 years ago

Yeah, I don't get why he would want to try with this again. Why doesn't he focus on web.py and promoting it? That would be much more fulfilling than creating a wiki/note-jotting site.

oditogre6• 19 years ago

http://beta.jottit.com/8dw3p/

http://HowDoesJottitFormattingWork.jottit.com (same site in theory...doesn't seem to be working, though.)

Anybody know of where you can get more instructions on how to use it?

Handy for throwing together a random anonymous blog, I guess. Ad-supported, I assume?

rms5• 19 years ago

Right, I'm sorry, I deleted your site. Why the hell could I delete your site?

edit: It's still there in history to be reverted.

joe2• 19 years ago

So, basically, a pastebin without syntax highlighting?

nirs2• 19 years ago

This beta is amusing - while he talk about perfectionism, he is releasing a beta with severe XSS issues.

oditogre6• 19 years ago

For whatever reason I can't edit my comment above (is there a time limit?), but if anybody changes the above linked site so a big pic covers the 'edit' and 'history' buttons, or it redirects to another site, or whatever, you can get to the edit and history by going to http://beta.jottit.com/8dw3p/?m=edit or http://beta.jottit.com/8dw3p/?m=history.

budu3• 19 years ago

Infogami reloaded. It's pretty cool though. It's horribly broken in IE. It would be cool to create more complex page hierarchies.

drusenko• 19 years ago

http://beta.jottit.com/62yhc/

aaronsw4• 19 years ago

FWIW, this wasn't an actual beta. I'd mapped *.jottit.com to the test server so we could test picking particular domains and forgot to password-protect it.

rms5• 19 years ago

thanks Aaron, don't let the naysayers get you down, news.yc really loves you.

gscott3• 19 years ago

A previous company I worked for split in two, one half took on an online training site project and my half built an online website development system. The half that did the training site all hated me because I code by the seat of my pants, sometimes put out work that needed a tweak or two and I wasn't there because I was just up for 24 hours writing it. They took 6 months designing and mapping out there project, they took another 6 months to build it and by the time they were done they had 3 months of money left to make it successful and thus went out of business while my side is still going strong 6 years later. I don't exactly advocate treating users like beta testers, but if you can`t find any more errors put it out, fix anything you didn't find that gets reported by the users, then move on.

ph0rque• 19 years ago

hmm... how about a compromise: release early, release often, keep things as simple as possible, but get those details perfect.

philh• 19 years ago

What's the difference between "adding a feature" and "improving the site"?

I always took them to be the same thing. In that sense, you're either adding a feature or you're stagnating. (Or, I suppose, going backwards.)

benhoyt• 19 years ago

"Getting Real" has the answer to that: https://gettingreal.37signals.com/

In short, having fewer features is often the best feature.

steve6• 19 years ago

..unless it isn't.

(points to all the billion dollar networking sites on the news)

eusman• 19 years ago

looks like so 1999. come on this is 2007. and the name is like a hit train got over it ...g(j)ot it?

axod2• 19 years ago

I disagree... users love seeing new features. If they don't work so well, they don't care. Most likely they'll enjoy them and feel privileged they are getting to use them before they are really ready. They'll see the potential. They'll start imagining what it'll be like once it's finished. If it's a cool, innovative feature they haven't seen before, they'll see it as proof you're a cool place to be. Even if half of it doesn't work.

Get features out often. Of course make sure they don't break anything else, or reduce the users experience, but users love to see a site evolving and changing with them on board.

vikram• 19 years ago

people seem to confuse adding features to additions in the interface. Most of the times users are either subconsciously frustrated by a problem or that there isn't a solution for it yet (i.e. why someone else hasn't solved it yet).

perfection??? I think most software sucks so much that it doesn't do anything useful. It would be better to try and get your product to do just one thing that is useful for one person.

Aiming for perfection is just an excuse for not building something useful.

bluishgreen• 19 years ago

If aaron wants to indulge let him please go ahed. But this post is so insincere when it gives the bit about users loving perfectionism that it makes me dizzy. Its either insincere or is delusional.I don't want to have anything to do with either.

PG wants to indulge with arc, he went ahed. But I don't remember him giving some insincere explanation.

I am now a strong believer in motherfucker's theory of insincerity http://atomicwang.org/motherfucker/Index/E06C66BF-E7D5-48FF-... (sorry, but that what he calls himself)

mattmaroon5• 19 years ago

That post about sincerity is interesting but exactly, completely wrong. He's completely reversed the entire cause effect relationship. I'll write a blog post as to why.

henning3• 19 years ago

quick! to the INTERNET, in order to correct the misconceptions of others!

it never stops being tempting.

soundsop• 19 years ago

I played around a little bit on beta.jottit.com. In editing mode, I like the live rendering alongside the marked up text. I haven't seen that before.

kashif• 19 years ago

Wow this discussion has invoked a lot of participation, unfortunately this is useless discussion. Don't you guys have to hack?

andyn• 19 years ago

What ... and miss the two minute hate?

Aaron Swartz: Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit)

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