I’ve felt this. I post my project on HN or Reddit and then I spend the rest of the day looking at analytics and refreshing my email for new comments. But external validation like usage and opinions are not in my control so it feels like an emotional roller coaster ride.

Instead of upvotes and likes, I now focus on optimizing things I can control like render time and amount of network bytes downloaded or adding a new feature. The reward from this feels more enjoyable/consistent than my DAUs