This is a good response. One of the things that has helped me temper myself is to explicitly consider the ROI of my work. If I do this, will I save more time in the long term than I expend doing it? Depressingly often, the answer is "no".
Software engineering has the potential to earn a lot of money with relatively little effort.
This is both a blessing and a curse: if I just do anything that I feel like, maybe only 5% of what I do would actually carry a profit – but that profit would be big enough to compensate for the other 95% of the time when I only do things that make me feel good without getting any real return from it.
If your goal is to produce maximum value, you have to think very long and hard about what projects you take on. It is worth taking the time to consider projects and research their viability, because very many of them won't pay off in the long run. You'll have to get used to saying "no" to anything that doesn't have an obvious route to profit.
On the other hand, if your goal is to have a little fun along the way and not only to produce maximum value, you can use this fact to your advantage! If you know you've rejected a bunch of low-value projects recently, you can afford to take on some low-value (but fun!) projects and still sit firm in the knowledge that you're still producing net value in total. Because the 40% of projects you've done that do produce a lot of value will easily pay for the other 60% that aren't obviously profitable. Or whatever ratio you settle at.
Software engineering has the potential to earn a lot of money with relatively little effort.
This is both a blessing and a curse: if I just do anything that I feel like, maybe only 5% of what I do would actually carry a profit – but that profit would be big enough to compensate for the other 95% of the time when I only do things that make me feel good without getting any real return from it.
If your goal is to produce maximum value, you have to think very long and hard about what projects you take on. It is worth taking the time to consider projects and research their viability, because very many of them won't pay off in the long run. You'll have to get used to saying "no" to anything that doesn't have an obvious route to profit.
On the other hand, if your goal is to have a little fun along the way and not only to produce maximum value, you can use this fact to your advantage! If you know you've rejected a bunch of low-value projects recently, you can afford to take on some low-value (but fun!) projects and still sit firm in the knowledge that you're still producing net value in total. Because the 40% of projects you've done that do produce a lot of value will easily pay for the other 60% that aren't obviously profitable. Or whatever ratio you settle at.