Working on a substantial project without real external pressure — deadlines, financial run rates, etc. — comes with a huge risk: you can easily run out of steam.
When your only driver is your own motivation, you have to manage that resource wisely. Case in point: when I started tinkering with poketto.me, I thought I’d just replicate Pocket’s feature set and be done within four weeks. Initial success came quickly — things worked the way I’d hoped, the UI kept getting better, AI coding tools helped kick-start the boilerplate work on infrastructure… But then I started slacking off. I kept postponing work on the Chrome extension, the website, or the GTM strategy, and turned my attention to other side hustles instead. The initial drive I’d had simply faded.
I got back on track by taking a page from endurance sports. As a runner, I know I can’t start a 30k run at my 10k race pace — I’d crash by kilometer 15. And I definitely can’t run 20k every day for several weeks in a row. In the same vein, I began planning what a sustainable work pace for poketto.me would look like. To my delight, Greg McKeown’s Effortless echoed the exact same idea:
👟 Commit to a minimum amount of work each day. For poketto.me, I settled on: at least one bug fix, one small enhancement, or a similar small task every day.
👟 But also: Commit to a maximum amount of work per day so you don’t burn out. I decided on no more than three hours a day, no matter how motivated I felt.
👟 Take time to plan and reflect. It’s easy to rush past your wins when you’re always chasing the next challenge. That’s why I spend about 30 minutes every week reflecting on what I accomplished — shipped features, new user sign-ups, wins and misses on the GTM side — and jotting down ideas for the week ahead.