I'm starting to realize that this article was probably written by generative AI. The evidence is the rate of new articles by this particular Medium account [1]. The author has posted whooping eight articles within last 24 hours, and about 80 articles within a week. Is it humanly possible? Yes, but only with multiple authors and there is no indication of the existence of such authors. This is also possibly why the "latest" versions were not actually latest at the presumed time point. Not only a bs, but probably a generative bs.
That profile picture appears on dozens of websites under different names lol.
At least you're actually doing the "I code for 3 all-nighters" step!
I've stopped too many projects at the "I buy a domain name" stage, and added an intermediate "I create a Trello board" step between that and starting to write code. No need to pull all-nighters, which are hard to do with family and a full-time job, if all I need to do is add a card to a feature wishlist. Maybe prototype a few key functions to see how they work, wireframe a unique piece of UI, or follow the tutorial to create "hello world" in a new framework, but it turns out that those steps are also optional.
The problem seems to be that my brain gives me a dopamine buzz for merely _imagining_ accomplishing the project, whether or not I eventually implement, publish, and get users for the it. I can give myself a similar cognitive reward for simply reading on HN about other people completing projects, and even (at my lowest) passively watching YouTube videos of other people building cool stuff. It's all the mental rewards of participating in a group project where the tribe accomplished something great, except I'm barely in a parasocial relationship with a dude on Patreon or Discord a thousand miles away who actually performed 100% of the work. Maybe he likes my comment "Nice work! I really liked how you did [thing], have you considered [alternative strategy]?". Maybe he even comments back. Bang! Neurotransmitter pump engaged, dopamine boost received.
It's a scary thing to realize that you're doing this, and very, very hard to train yourself out of those bad habits. I find it's important to write down and consciously review my daily/weekly/monthly/yearly goals, my productive and unproductive activity towards those goals, and my actual accomplishments. It's too easy to get addicted to fake reward loops, whether because they're engineered by social media companies who make money off my attention span or because brains are just vulnerable to low-effort high-reward stimuli. What did I do in July? X hours of Reddit, Y hours of HN, Z hours of Youtube... and a half dozen things I'm actually proud of.
(Note to self: Don't get too excited about upvotes or replies to this comment, acquiring HN or Reddit fake Internet points are not part of my actual goals and should not be considered real accomplishments.)