The Last 10%

Every time I go running, it's begins and ends in exactly the same way. I start out bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, confident that I'm stronger than last time. Faster than last time. Know exactly what route I'm going to run and about how long it will take me. About midway through, I'm a bit tired, but determined. I think ahead to the end and it doesn't seem so far away. I mean, that first half flew by, so will the second half. Right?

Then, with a mile to go, I hit the wall. Suddenly I'm slower, arguing with myself over whether to stop and walk for a minute, checking my armband for any sign of progress (and with how frequently I check it, I'm not making much). I'm exhausted, but still have at least ten minutes more to run. Can I even make it that far? Do I even want to?

Every large product or feature I've ever worked on experiences the exact same thing. We start out full of ideas and vision for this thing we're making. The first half literally flies by as we're ripping out old code, replacing it with shiny, new, faster stuff. We laugh at the pre-existing complexity or how hard we thought something was going to be and wasn't. We realize we were wrong about a particular direction, change our path and shrug off the mistake.

Later on, we're working hard and determined. We see the release date we set for ourselves approaching and are stoked to get V1 out the door, to get real people using it. To learn and adjust and tweak and experiment some more. We can taste the glory of the blog post when we launch (which we've already written), the post in the forums to our most engaged users, the tweets from the company account heralding our achievement.

But it doesn't happen quickly. At least not as quickly as the first bit went by. We're slogging a bit. Polishing. Killing those annoying bugs and adding the final small tweaks to parts of the product that are affected by our release. We've got two weeks of polish left, but it may as well be ten in our minds.

I love that part. I love the end of the run. When I'm tired and the finish line seems far away. I love the exhaustion and having to convince myself not to just throw my hands up and walk the rest of the way.

I love the last 10%. I love it because that's when real work gets done. It's where we grow the most, when we realize we're not just doing this for fun or for the glory, but because we believe in what we're doing. We believe our work will make the product better. And that feeling mentally tired is simply a sign of how much we care about what we've built. We put everything into it and just need to put a little more. Just need to push it a little further until we can release it and celebrate together.

Enjoy the last 10%. It's really the best part.