The Newsletter That Never Was
Three months ago, I killed my weekly newsletter after exactly four issues. Not because of low subscriber count or technical problems, but because I realized I was building the wrong thing entirely. I had spent two weeks setting up ConvertKit automations, designing a header in Canva, and writing launch copy about “authentic productivity insights.” The first issue got decent engagement. By issue three, I was already dreading Tuesday mornings.
Here’s what I learned from that dead project: sometimes the most valuable outcome isn’t the thing you ship, but the clarity you gain about what you actually want to create. That newsletter failure became the foundation for this blog, which feels infinitely more sustainable because I’m writing for myself first, then sharing the process with you.
Why I Keep a Project Morgue
I started tracking failed projects in a simple Notion database after my third abandoned side project in 2022. Each entry gets a brief description, the date I stopped working on it, and most importantly, a “What I Learned” section written within 48 hours of calling it quits. The timing matters because that’s when the insights are still raw and honest, before I start romanticizing the failure or forgetting the real reasons it didn’t work.
My current morgue has 11 projects: two apps that never made it past wireframes, a podcast that lasted three episodes, four different course ideas, and several client projects that taught me exactly what kind of work I don’t want to do. The app failures taught me I love designing user experiences more than debugging React components. The podcast showed me I prefer writing to speaking. The course ideas revealed I’m not ready to teach what I’m still learning myself.
The most surprising pattern in my morgue? My best ideas often come from combining elements of previous failures. This blog’s format emerged from mixing the structured learning approach of my failed course with the personal voice I was trying to develop in that dead newsletter.
The Difference Between Quitting and Pivoting
Not every project death is a failure worth learning from. Some projects deserve to die quickly and quietly. I spent six weeks last year building a habit-tracking app before realizing I was basically recreating Streaks with worse design. That wasn’t a meaningful failure; it was just poor market research dressed up as product development.
The projects worth analyzing are the ones where you had genuine conviction but something fundamental didn’t work. My newsletter failed because I was trying to create content that felt “professional” rather than useful. I was writing for an imaginary audience of productivity experts instead of for people like me who are still figuring things out. The failure taught me the difference between expertise and experience-sharing.
Here’s my simple test: if I can write more than three specific lessons learned from a dead project, it was worth the time investment. If I can only come up with vague insights like “I should have validated the market better,” then it was probably just procrastination with extra steps.
Learning to Fail Forward Instead of Failing Up
The startup world loves talking about “failing fast,” but that advice often translates into launching minimum viable products with maximum viable excuses for why they don’t work. Real learning happens when you push a project far enough to discover its fundamental constraints, not when you abandon it at the first sign of difficulty.
My most instructive failure was a client project where I spent three months building a content management system that perfectly solved the wrong problem. The client wanted easier blog publishing; I built a complex workflow tool because I assumed their process needed optimization. I learned more about user research from that mismatch than from any successful project, because I had to trace backwards through every assumption that led me astray.
The key insight: failed projects teach you about your own blind spots in ways successful ones never can. When something works, you can attribute success to any number of factors. When something fails, you’re forced to examine each decision point with uncomfortable precision.
Building a Practice Around Project Retrospectives
I do formal retrospectives on every project now, successful or not, using a simple framework adapted from software development. Three questions: What worked better than expected? What worked worse than expected? What did I learn about my own preferences and capabilities? The last question is usually the most valuable, especially for failed projects.
For my dead newsletter, the answers were: better than expected was how much I enjoyed the actual writing process; worse than expected was how much I hated the pressure to be consistently insightful; learned about myself was that I prefer exploring ideas in public rather than presenting conclusions.
These retrospectives go into a separate document from my project morgue, one I review every few months when I’m considering new projects. It’s become my most reliable tool for avoiding repeated mistakes and recognizing patterns in what actually energizes me versus what I think should energize me.
What Failed Projects Really Teach
The most valuable lessons from project failures aren’t usually about project management or execution tactics. They’re about self-knowledge. My failed projects have taught me that I prefer building systems to managing people, that I work better with constraints than with complete creative freedom, and that I’m much more motivated by solving my own problems than by addressing market opportunities.
Your project morgue becomes a map of your actual interests and capabilities, distinct from your aspirational ones. Every failed project is data about what kinds of problems you’re willing to wrestle with long enough to solve, what kinds of work feel energizing versus draining, and where your skills and interests genuinely overlap.
What patterns are hiding in your own abandoned projects? What would you learn if you wrote honest retrospectives on the things you started but never finished?