Have you been thinking about building something for ages? You keep waiting for the right moment. Then, one day, someone ships a version of your idea and you start to believe that everything worth creating has already been created.
You are a builder at heart for whom creating is a way of feeling alive, and you have this growing hole in your chest because it’s easier to start a project than to finish it.
I was in that situation back in 2024, feeling like every day I was farther away from my calling. I was waiting for the perfect moment. I was doing the courses, I was saving the money. Then one day I saw how 100+ colleagues took a leap of faith into the unknown. I told myself that taking the same jump would put my immigration process and my family’s future at risk. So I just doubled down on my original plan: keep polishing the skills and saving money.
Six months later, life looked at me and said: “You’re never gonna do it, are you? There’s always something.” Here’s a push. And just like that Life acted as my Zen Teacher.
Fast-forward to 2026: I learned to dance with uncertainty, made mistakes, but most importantly built a system that fits my needs inspired by the Creativity Flywheel.
Turns out creative freedom and a stable job can co-exist. You can have both if you polish your habits and systems.
Having habits and systems won’t make it easy, but will make it possible.
Somebody like you built that
What if you could start shipping your ideas little by little? Recently, it hit me that I solve most problems just for myself. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s the default. But what if I were to make these solutions available to other people? What would that look like?
It’s easy to get tired at the thought of shipping something: building the idea is only 20% of the work. Then you need to make it usable by someone who isn’t you, set a decent monetization strategy, create a website, and so on.
Think about the last course you took or app you used. What if the creator had been happy fixing the issue only for themselves?
I recently set up a Coolify Cloud account, and this idea struck: I purchased this service on a Saturday afternoon. I gave them money while they were probably resting. Coolify started as a one-person project.
Then n8n came to my mind. Jan, the creator of n8n, wasn’t satisfied with the existing automation tools. He had experienced automation in a different way given his background as a visual FX artist. He could have just worked around the existing solutions, but instead he started something everyone can use!
Most people assume that successful product creators were born special. But I would argue they had clarity, this kind of clarity:
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.”
—Steve Jobs
A flip of a coin
Now, let’s say that your chances of success when putting something out in the world are a flip of a coin: 50/50. Sounds like a lot of work for a flip of a coin!
But what if you start with the single smallest most annoying problem you have right now? Package it and put it out there. Then repeat. This becomes a flywheel where each rotation is easier than the previous one.
The more solutions you ship, the better you get at it and the better your chances of solving a problem for a decently big audience.
If you build and ship for the creative act alone, then I invite you to experiment rather than overthink it. Experiment many times for the longest time you can.
Ship because it changes you
Creating is not easy, but every action I take makes it worth it. Including this essay. Recognizing myself as a builder is what keeps me going. I still have a long way ahead, many things I want to do, starting with my app. But the more I think about these problems the more solutions I notice.
If you are a builder you don’t ship for the odds in the flip of a coin, you ship because it changes who you are. It expands you. And suddenly you are not wishing you were creating something, but you are wondering how to improve what you already created and what to create next. Whatever you put out there, it doesn’t have to be big, it only needs to be genuinely yours for it to count.
Photo by Dima Dimax from Pexels
Leave a Reply