My strategy for dealing with the dip/valley of despair are a few simple rules that I have formalised for myself and are helping me a lot.
- Howsoever great the project is in the beginning, it will go through a phase where it’s going to suck for whatever reason. I know it. It doesn’t surprise me. I take it in my stride.
- I have absolute faith during that phase that it will get better on the other side. Absolute. And nothing is going to convince me otherwise.
- It is not a sprint.
- Mantain healthy relationships, mind (meditation) and body (exercise). Do not let them fall below a certain level because gaining these things back and being productive at the sometime is a struggle. From my own personal experience.
Publicly creating anything is an interesting experience. I've spent my life coding, but in my spare time I've created things: magazine articles, apps, presentations, books, and so forth.
When you first start, you're usually in love with yourself. Anybody watch "A Christmas Story"? Most new creators are like little Ralph, amazed at how awesome their work is.
At some point, you move into being a professional. Then you realize that everything you create sucks. It just sucks in various ways and to various degrees. The difference between an artist and an amateur is that the artist is never satisfied with their work.
That's the internal battle. Externally, over and over again, you release some new "incredible" piece of work, tell everybody about it?
Crickets.
Nobody cares. You, if you're an average person, could find a cure to cancer today. Nobody would care. There's a whole universe set up in each genre around who's important, who to listen to, and so forth. The quality of your work and the value of your work have nothing to do with anything. All those years that Google told us that if you wanted to be heard, just publish good content. It was bullshit. Humans don't work that way. We are a social species and we consume based on social cues.
I finished a book last month, Info-Ops. https://leanpub.com/info-ops Took me six years to get through it. At the end, am I happy?
Not so much. Angry is probably a better word for it. Creating something does not immediately cause good feedback to happen. Just the opposite. Now the _real_ work begins: getting people to listen. And that's usually a long, difficult, demoralizing slog. You suck it up and move on. The only people I know who are extremely pleased with creating a major work or either the already-successful -- or the people who don't know any better.
I've heard successful startup founders describe it as going out there with your message and saying it over and over again until you're completely sick of it. Then saying it some more. When we see these successful companies, what we don't realize, as the tweet shows, they all spent time talking to the wall.
My big mistake over the years was not romanticizing the creation part. I moved to professional status fairly quickly. It was romanticizing the curve of despair part, oddly enough. I had to learn that there's no honor or special hero status for moving through this stage. Lots of failed efforts go through it as well. (In fact, the stats say it's more likely that you're on a failed effort. You still have to go through here.) You have to mature and see it as just more work, like the rest of it. The reason I use the word "anger" to describe the feeling is that it's much like taking a shovel and digging a small hole -- then realizing that the job in front of you is to dig an entire trench. There's usually some cursing involved.
You can say that's it's all fun and challenging, or you can say it's all pain and misery. But it's just the work. At the end of the day, it's just the work.
Some people say successful startups are all luck. Some say they're all hard work. The truth is that they're all on this same journey, whether it all ends up well or not. If you stick with it, you might succeed. If you give up, you never will. (Insert Zen/Existentialism discussion here)
> The quality of your work and the value of your work have nothing to do with anything. All those years that Google told us that if you wanted to be heard, just publish good content. It was bullshit. Humans don't work that way. We are a social species and we consume based on social cues.
People believe what they want to believe, and I think you've already made up your mind. From my view, however, you are just going to limit your success with such beliefs, and worse, the cynicism will drain your enthusiasm and energy.
If you want to be heard, the answer is simple: make something that's interesting to people. I know a ton of very talented chiptune artists who are struggling. Why? Well, would you buy a chiptune album? People spend too much time in their own private universes and forget what other people are looking for. I'm not saying you shouldn't make chiptune or mathcore or whatever, but you have to be realistic about it, especially if you want to make money.
And look, I'll be honest -- not trying to be mean here, really -- but I'm not at all surprised your book isn't generating interest. My first reaction to "Info-Ops" is that it's super dry and technical, not to mention I have no idea what it means. So right off the bat I have a bad gut reaction. Did you not get any second opinions about this title? And $40 for an e-book... well, I admittedly don't know anything about pricing books, but if an e-book is too expensive then people will just pirate it, no?
Thank you for your comment. I consider it negative, but that's a good thing! I love negative feedback.
I don't want to get into a slug-fest over the work. After all, you don't even know what it is. You just know what you saw. So really all we could talk about is first impressions.
I would like, however to take issue with your thesis. If you want to be heard, the answer is simple: make something that's interesting to people.
It is necessary to make something that's interesting to people, but it is not sufficient to do so. That was my entire point. The interesting and valuable part is table stakes.
Price? I'd give it away for free. I'm not trying to sell the most books. I'm trying to help the most people. Price is an indicator of commitment. If I get a lot of people paying the money and blowing it off? I might raise the price. If people pirate it? I want it to make a difference.
There are a lot of people who want to sell two-dollar self-help books and such. Wonderful market. That's just not my game.
Finally, you have to consider that a landing page, if you're honest, isn't just to sell books. One of the most important things you can do is turn away people that might be wasting their money. I know that goes against all that is good and holy on HN, but really. I don't want people reading it that are wasting their time. That's awful.
So it's all good. Thank you for the first impressions. I haven't really already decided about much of anything aside from there's a lot of work left to do -- and that considering as much work as I've been through so far, that pisses me off somewhat. So what? I've been angry before. It sounds like a lot of work has to do with the landing page. Cool. Time to get started.
ADD: You know, there is a huge hunk of money spent every year on books that have great first impressions -- and don't make a positive difference in people's lives. Billions. So coming at this from "But your first impression sucks!" is kinda backwards, at least the way I see it. You want value, then creativity and interest, then honesty .... somewhere down the line you work on turning people on with a web page.
> I don't want to get into a slug-fest over the work.
That wasn't my intention at all. I just thought I'd share my first impression because, as a newcomer to your work, I probably see it much differently than you do.
I read through your whole post, and -- sorry, this is going to be another first impression, made over the internet, so take it with a grain of salt -- you seem to be very emotionally involved with your work. I would be, too, if I spent that much time on something. I think you would benefit from seeking advice from an unbiased third party. I don't know who that would be -- a publisher? an agent? I know nothing about the book world.
> Finally, you have to consider that a landing page, if you're honest, isn't just to sell books. One of the most important things you can do is turn away people that might be wasting their money. I know that goes against all that is good and holy on HN, but really. I don't want people reading it that are wasting their time. That's awful.
I think a good, professional publisher (or whoever) would berate you for saying this. How can you possibly know who will benefit from your work and who won't ahead of time? I also don't like deceptive advertising but I think you can make your work attractive while also being honest and true to yourself.
For the record, I share a lot of your frustrations with regards to generating publicity. I really resonated with this:
> Creating something does not immediately cause good feedback to happen. Just the opposite. Now the _real_ work begins: getting people to listen. And that's usually a long, difficult, demoralizing slog. You suck it up and move on.
However, I don't think that viewing this as long, difficult, or demoralizing is productive or even rational reaction to have, which is why I'm working on trying to see this differently, myself.
I believe you're reading this as much more negative and confrontative than it was meant to be. The post was about how there was an emotional journey to creating great things. My comment simply relayed a personal experience that agreed with the tweet. That's it. It's an emotional journey. Creating things of value can be deeply emotional.
More to the point, recognize the sucky parts and continue on anyway.
"I think you would benefit from seeking advice from an unbiased third party." -- sure thing. I've ran more than 50 beta readers through the book. And I plan on seeking editing services. A trusted third-party is always a good thing. Why wouldn't it be?
"How can you possibly know who will benefit from your work and who won't ahead of time?" Well you can't, which is why you use beta readers. I know my work. I know my work helps people. And I know the people I help would also be helped from this book. That's just a starting place, mind you, but it's a pretty strong one. Then, and only then, do you start looking at tone, product-market fit and the rest of it.
I decided not to go the professional publishing route, even though I probably could have made it work. Why? Because I am purposefully doing this upside-down. That doesn't mean a professional publisher or editor wouldn't be great. Self-publishing is a ton of work. But so is ditch-digging. So is anything of this nature.
Yes, I can certainly make my work attractive while also being honest. I have work to do. Yay!
The purpose of the tweet was to tell people that there's an emotional trough you have to go through. That was also my purpose. It's normal -- and whether you need to get angry, happy, sad, or whatnot to make your way through it, it's quite an emotional ride! Don't lie to yourself about what's ahead and prepare yourself.
> I believe you're reading this as much more negative and confrontative than it was meant to be.
Absolutely not. I found your posts really interesting, it's a perspective I hadn't considered and you articulate it well. And no confrontation was intended from my end.
> Don't lie to yourself about what's ahead and prepare yourself.
"What's ahead" is unpredictable and unknown. You should certainly be prepared, but just avoid self-fulfilling prophecies like saying "it's difficult" etc. That can also put some people off of ever creating anything in the first place.
I'm so tired of fluffy, easy, popsci books. Give me dry and technical any day. Info-Ops grabbed my attention, at least. There's always a market somewhere.
(On a related note, I'm trying to learn more about sales and marketing. Every book I've seen recommended so far has been written like a lowest-common-denominator self-help manual, even the supposed classics. I am taking recommendations if anyone has any, especially for books that describe the history and development of each field in detail. Preferably available as an audiobook).
I disagree that having doubts and/or bad impressions alone have a causal relationship to 'limiting success' for countless reasons. (1) success is over-determined and we can't identify such specific causal relationships to it. (2) plenty of people are successful for airing doubts and bad impressions. (3) plenty of people that aren't successful for airing these things, also still display a capacity for having and airing them. I'm interested to see what happens with Musks's Pravduh.com
I don't think should be a reason to stop creative expression. I never had much interest in reading others' poetry but for about a year and a half I found it to be a tremendous boon to my own self-exploration and personal growth. An outlet is an outlet :)
As someone who is just starting to head "up the other side" this is a difficult comment to read, but a necessary one. Thanks for writing it.
I suppose you could generalise the curve by saying "One curve for creating a product, another curve for creating a company/following" etc. With a great product in hand, things seem rosy, so you say "Let's get famous!" and quickly realise it's more work than you anticipated.
Maybe. That seems like a healthier conclusion than the simply dispiriting "fame is a catch-22".
Thanks for this. I've brought projects through to the "crickets" stage. I've got another project now that I just realized is reaching the far shore of that pit despair (after 2-3 years of "I don't know WTF I'm doing and the more I read the more I realize I don't know in this subject I picked").
Not only does the technical merit of a project have little to do with whether it is successful, but also I think you "don't get to choose": my projects with the longest legacy (measured in the 10s of users) were not the ones I thought would be taken up.
I'll always remember an ex-HS teacher I met. He had worked out a whole year's worth of chemistry experiments - worthy stuff with a lot of learning value - all neatly organized in one little, inexpensive box. A little modest masterpiece.
( Many small schools can't afford a big, fancy HS lab full of glassware and bunsens and labware and a closet full of chemicals. And/or the teacher didn't have the time or experience to integrate that well. )
And the result was that he couldn't get anyone to really look at it and see the advantages ... except other teachers, sometimes.
I found that there is no valley of despair if I'm working on something that has absolutely no chance of turning a profit. Open source or pure research or hackery with a non-commercial horizon never stresses me out. If on the other hand I hope that this will make me money, despaaaaaair.
Yet, the non-financially viable journeys don't necessarily mean 'not great'.
Money does seem to have a way of draining all the pleasure from an activity. I'm getting close to retirement and I am hoping that doing some non-commercial work will bring it back.
It's called traversing a valley of the fitness landscape. The comfortable strategy is to just stay where you are, with everyone else mediocre, at the current local population maxima. The uncomfortable strategy is to dare execute on your visions; which often means passing through states of lower energy before reaching the great. You think you see a hill higher than the one you and everyone else is standing on right now, but you're not sure because it's far away. What posts like these rarely mention, however, is just how many ants die far out in the low-energy desert plains; we only hear about the successes.
Within the last 10 hours that you posted this, I went out to buy the book and read it (it's pretty brief).
It's a really great read particularly if you've been in a dip and / or a cul de sac (as Godin refers to projects that dip but won't turn back up). Being able to identify the dip and its characteristics allows one to prepare for it, and to have a strategy for not just enduring it, but for making it as much of an advantage as is possible.
Of course the first half of this graph is the same as the journey to creating something that fails :). Persistence is required either way. But it's important to consider cutting your losses at some point too.
That's why you shouldn't put too much value into advice from successful people that came back from the brink of failure. For every one that turned almost failure into success there are probably dozens who did the same thing and just failed.
Those are the best available people to ask, though. You wouldn't want to ask people who entirely failed, or never tried. People who claim they never experienced near-failures on their way to success are either lying, or attempted something unambitious, or were so lucky that their experience isn't representative.
And despite the great story this image tells, it also isn't universally true - most of the successful products I've worked on never went that deep into despair. We fixed a problem, built something that worked, got customers, and went fairly quickly from idea to the "OK, but it still sucks" point. Maybe we never hit the height of the image, but we built respectable products that were profitable and fun to work on.
Sometimes that valley of despair is something to work through... but just as often, the idea just isn't that great. Telling the difference between the two is the key.
One hard part is putting aside the stuff you wanted to get in there, but then you remembered you only have one lifetime.
Worse yet, you keep finding more and more great details, which you wouldn't even have noticed when you started, but now have the experience to appreciate. Then spend more time wondering whether anyone else would care about them.
Either "Great artists SHIP!" eventually overrides, or else ... the quicksand wins.
(Read earlier today that Tolsoy originally published 'War and Peace' serially, then heavily rewrote -that whole thing-. Ay yay.)
I always tell people that for any worthwhile project there will be phase of deep regret "why did I ever start this?". It's a little sad that a lot of management and project planning methodologies don't allow for this and want to convert work into simple linear steps.
In all seriousness, in my experience, all things worthwhile are not started as an “official” project. They start either as a skunkworks project or something someone does on the side.
- Howsoever great the project is in the beginning, it will go through a phase where it’s going to suck for whatever reason. I know it. It doesn’t surprise me. I take it in my stride.
- I have absolute faith during that phase that it will get better on the other side. Absolute. And nothing is going to convince me otherwise.
- It is not a sprint.
- Mantain healthy relationships, mind (meditation) and body (exercise). Do not let them fall below a certain level because gaining these things back and being productive at the sometime is a struggle. From my own personal experience.