Development Hell

Vaporware, development hell, call it what you may.  Only bad things happen when you do not ship products on time when you overpromise and under deliver. At best you develop a reputation, slow, tardy, lazy, incompetent. At worst you go out of business, no matter what happens, you do not achieve your goals.

Half of success is showing up – Unknown

We hear about the 10000-hour rule of Mastery from Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers) and Robert Greene (Mastery) this is discipline, it takes discipline to reach goals, discipline to ship the product at all, discipline to ship the product on time and with quality.
Yet, all around us we see instances of poor discipline, the 787 Dreamliner that was years late, the software build that ran over by 200 percent time, the goals that are never met, courses never completed, tasks not accomplished, the excuses made, and the endless mediocrity in building software, doing our jobs, raising our families, loving our companions.

Why? The practitioner only cares about what is important. Whatever you do, how you do it is a testament to what you care about. Whatever you care about you will do often, what you do often you will get better at. What you get better at, If you do not stop, you will master it.
We fool ourselves, if as a software development company, we think that expertise in making lasagna translates to expertise at making software, we will fail. One can only have deep knowledge in a handful of subjects, there is a real opportunity cost. A deep dedication to shipping software on time will ensure that other learnings will not occur.
Great knowledge of software development does not translate to a great knowledge of philosophy. Yet most experts in one field believe they are experts in other fields. What you care about, is what you practice, and what you master.
Most companies die, this is the churn rate. Most companies do not master their area of expertise, they are mediocre. Then they fail or wonder why they struggle. They don’t ship. They do not focus on what they deliver, they do not track, they fail.
Relentless focus on executing is the only way to master your discipline, and the price is other things. Focus only on what you care about, that may mean you are in the wrong discipline, if you do not care for it, you can never master it.