Doing the thing is doing the thing

Posted by prakhar897 1/27/2026

Doing the thing is doing the thing(www.softwaredesign.ing)

585 points | 187 commentspage 2

HPsquared 1/27/2026|

On the other hand.. planning, preparation and mise-en-place can help with doing the thing.

ninju 1/27/2026||

But only if you end up doing the thing (and avoid analysis paralysis)

thunfischtoast 1/27/2026||

I think the point is people mistaking planning, preparation, talking about the thing... for doing the thing.

wanderingmind 1/27/2026||

My nitpick is that thinking and dreaming about solving the problem is part of doing. Its the planning phase. Skipping This planning phase in Software engineering is the root cause of most Day 2 operations issues. However I agree that thinking or announcing about outcome is not doing.

llbbdd 1/27/2026|

There's probably some fuzziness here. I have notes upon notes going back ugh, 20 years (idk how old I am anymore?) that I could count as planning. At some point I need a kick in the ass to do it. Mike Tyson said everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Sometimes getting to prod feels like that.

MrGilbert 1/27/2026||

"Failing while doing the thing is doing the thing."

I needed this today. Currently questioning my career choices, as I hit my first wall where people are involved. Gave me quite the headache.

dondraper36 1/27/2026||

As a person with ADHD, I feel personally attacked.

zahlman 1/27/2026||

I guess you understand this and are making a joke, but that "attack" would appear to be intentional (and motivating).

I find that I don't have major issues doing a thing once I get started on it. The main problem is choosing from among many things that I could reasonably consider "the thing", and then feeling confident enough in that choice to start.

drivers99 1/27/2026|||

What about doing the thing intently for a week and then realizing later you haven't touched the project in 6 months?

dylan604 1/27/2026|||

This sounds not too dissimilar to the release the POC to prod mentality.

There are times where you obviously need to do the thing to understand the thing to see the process of doing the thing. This allows for breaking the process down into better steps. Just writing code to do things you think is doing thing but prove not to do the thing when actually doing the thing is common.

zahlman 1/27/2026||

I'm talking about having completely different, unstarted, overall projects in mind.

dylan604 1/27/2026||

that sounds like paralysis by analysis. just pick a project and go.

llbbdd 1/27/2026|||

Same. I'm tempted to print this post out and hang it for inspiration. But I guess that would also not be doing the thing.

code_biologist 1/27/2026||

I have bad ADHD and printed the strangestloop.io blog post out and put it on the wall by my work desk in Oct 2023 according to the printout timestamp. I still haven't done the thing in some meaningful areas, and the print has honestly kind of been dispiriting. I'm going to take this post as the prompt to take it down.

llbbdd 1/27/2026|||

I'm going to consider this with the same weight I would if my future grey-bearded self popped out of a portal to say it, thank you. I've had a sticky note on my monitor for a few years that just says "SHIP SHIP SHIP SHIP SHIP SHIP"; it might be time for that to go before it becomes much more depressing.

dijksterhuis 1/27/2026|||

sometimes i find that being okay with not doing the thing is exactly the thing i need to do to be okay with getting around to doing the thing

myst 1/27/2026||

Coming up with excuses is not doing the thing.

leoc 1/28/2026||

Who claimed it was?

rdsubhas 1/28/2026||

The article was great — for solopreneurs.

There are things that humans have to unfortunately do when working as a group of people. That's why we became the alpha predator. Not because we were the strongest ape. That includes:

- Filling in timesheets, quarterly, half yearly cycles, company meetings, team meetings is not doing the thing — as a solopreneur. But not as a member of a group.

- Writing tickets, reviewing PRs is not doing the thing — as a solopreneur.

- Commuting to work and back is not doing the thing — If I'm a solopreneur this doesn't even matter.

- Answering technical questions, analyzing data, attending to bugs is not doing the thing — If I'm a solopreneur especially on a greenfield stuff, I have zero baggage.

- Writing test cases and putting up alerts is not doing the thing — if it's only me judging me, I have nothing to judge.

hahahahhaah 1/28/2026||

I dont take the post too literally.

I take it to mean: if you can just do the thing now (you are in the right place, healthy, with tools and prerequisites) and you choose not to because of (procrastination reasons) then you could be doing the task but you choose not to.

For corps: timesheets is one of the things.

jjmarr 1/28/2026||

"Filling in timesheets" sucks until you want to qualify for R&D credits.

zikani_03 1/28/2026||

> "Buying tools for the thing is not doing the thing."

This one hit me right in the feels, I have been buying more woodworking/DIY tools than the projects I've worked on with them.

dakiol 1/27/2026||

I kinda agree, but I also gain pleasure from doing all those things that are not supposed to be "the thing". The thinking, the dreaming, the visualizing... I just like that. I do it a lot when working on personal projects (which some of them I never ship). I think it's fine, and I wouldn't go as far as saying that those things are "not doing the thing"; in many ways those things are "the thing", at least for me.

munificent 1/27/2026|

That's OK. It's totally fine to not doing the thing. Find joy however you want.

But it's not good to lie to yourself about doing the thing while not doing the thing. If your joy comes from the result of doing the thing, but you're putting time into other things that aren't doing the thing, that joy is not getting any closer.

ge96 1/28/2026||

This is something I ran into, ego satisfaction, where you tell people/show things like concepts, talk about it, get the "that sounds cool" but yeah it's not real. I now try to build something real like a hardware project before showing it.

rkangel 1/28/2026|

I split activities at work into "Engineering" and "Talking about Engineering". We're a consultancy so there's a certain amount of "Talking about Engineering" that is required and good, but I try not to lose sight of what is actually engineering and what isn't.

What I am still on the fence about is when "design" or "architecture" type work counts as Engineering. There's a certain amount of design work that is valuable to do before coding and is part of the thinking process. But sometimes you get into a lot of abstract talking that is "not doing the thing".

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