In the last 6 months, I have had many opportunities come my way. I'm trying to start my own business. A former coworker presented me with another potential business. I've had contract work come up. And just recently I've decided to do a series of apps on my own.
While all of these opportunities are great, there is only so much time in the day. I can only do so much work in a week, and that means picking and choosing what I work on. If I don't do that, I'll try to do everything, and finish nothing.
With that in mind, I recently had to go back on a commitment I made. I had to back out of the potential business with my former coworker. She had a great idea, I just didn't have the time to commit to it. When you're trying to start a new business, you're trading your time for a future payoff. In order to stay motivated, I feel that you need to have a great amount of confidence in the idea. Unfortunately, the long term potential I saw in the project didn't give me enough faith that it would pay off to the degree the other work I had would.
The contract work I'm getting involved in has much more potential than some of my past contracts. The business I'm starting up has real potential to not just make money, but help promote every skill I have. The app series I want to build should not only provide some income, but actually help people.
The feeling of charity, prominence, publicity, and boundary pushing makes me feel better about these projects than hers. The project she had while a great idea, would not have been as fulfilling to me. I would not have pushed any of my skills.
With that in mind, I hope she can find someone that can fill my role. I hope that she can find someone that is as excited for her project as I am for some of mine. I hope she finds a developer that is able to push their own skills to the next level through the project.
It is hard to turn people down, but sometimes it must be done.