The Joy of Dead Projects
The ideas we kill teach us just as much as the ones we keep. A product's afterlife can be its most interesting phase.
We celebrate our ghosts.
Every studio has a graveyard folder — half‑finished apps, broken prototypes, good ideas that didn't survive their own momentum. We keep ours close, not as shame, but as evidence of doing.
The death of a project is rarely dramatic. It's a quiet realization: we learned what we needed to learn.
A dead project isn't wasted effort. It's tuition.
We open those folders once in a while. Sometimes we reuse code, sometimes just the concept. Sometimes we screenshot something weird and archive it on Are.na. It's less nostalgia, more anthropology.
What did we believe then? What were we trying to prove? How has our taste changed since?
A Different Kind of ROI
- Dead work saves alive work. The insight extracted becomes faster instinct next time.
- Dead work ages well. Six months later, what seemed wrong might point to a new right.
- Dead work is permission. It reminds us we can survive impermanence.
The goal isn't immortality. It's evolution.
We treat our dead projects like fossils — each one reveals the layers beneath our taste.
The joy is in knowing you tried, tasted, and moved on.
Written at Right Fast Studio • 2025