What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.
This is the world that you know. The world as it was at the end of the twentieth century. It exists now only as part of a neural-interactive simulation that we call the Matrix. You’ve been living in a dream world.
This is the world as it exists today… Welcome… to the desert… of the real.
We have only bits and pieces of information but what we know for certain is that at some point in the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.

AI? You mean artificial intelligence?

A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines. We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we know that it was us that scorched the sky. At the time they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun. Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. The human body generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTUs of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion, the machines have found all the energy they would ever need. There are fields, endless fields, where human beings are no longer born. We are grown. For the longest time I wouldn’t believe it, and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watch them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living. And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth.
What is the Matrix?
Control.
The Matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into battery.

“If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

Reid Hoffman’s legendary quote hit me like a ton of bricks—unfortunately, a little too late. 😅

There’s a special kind of demoralization that creeps in when you’re building, building, building… and still have nothing to show for it. It’s the silent killer of side projects, the motivation drain that leaves brilliant ideas gathering digital dust.

Sound familiar?

As engineers, we’re wired for quality. We have this “sixth sense”—an almost compulsive need to ship polished, feature-rich, bug-free masterpieces. And because of this noble pursuit of perfection, we often refuse to launch, paralyzed by thoughts like:

• “It’s missing too many features…”
• “What if users hate it?”
• “What if it breaks?”

But here’s the liberating truth I learned the hard way:

Nobody cares about your app when it doesn’t exist. And that’s your superpower.

The Cost of Waiting for “Perfect”

I once fell into the “ideal solution” trap—tweaking, refining, over-engineering—and it cost me almost a year before I launched. A year of lost feedback, momentum, and opportunity. 🤦‍♂️

The lesson? Speed beats perfection.

• ✅ Done fuels motivation. Small wins keep you excited.
• ✅ Feedback > Assumptions. Real users reveal what actually matters.
• ✅ Progress compounds. A working v1 today beats a “perfect” v1 that never ships.

This Applies Everywhere

Even in coding interviews, a brute-force solution that works is better than freezing for the “optimal” one. Progress > polish.

My New Rule: Launch in 1-2 Weeks

Now, I force myself to ship fast—even if it’s imperfect. The faster you launch, the faster you learn (and the sooner success finds you).

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What about you?

• Do you struggle with over-polishing before launching?
• What’s the smallest version of your project you could ship this week?

Drop your thoughts below—I’d love to hear your take! 👇