It’s been nearly five months since I confessed my dirty little secret and I thought it might be worth looking back to see how things worked out.
The first thing to note is that while I did finish my project management system, I never ever use it. I think that Craig was right – judging time is too difficult and since that was integral to the whole point I’ve not developed the system beyond a simple to-do list. I’d be as well to use my whiteboard (if the missus hadn’t taken it over for her own to-do list!).
I do think that I’ve been a lot more productive in these last five months, though. There’s still a lot that I don’t get done that I probably should, but I am working and learning and producing code. I think the biggest thing that drives this is just inertia: once I start working on stuff it’s easier to keep working on stuff. I’m on to my third significant Rails project, with each one building on the last in terms of complexity and (hopefully!) utility.
I feel like I’m in a computer game, levelling up my skills with each project – and like most games, I can look ahead to see what the future levelling-up tasks will be. I have a modest list of applications I want to make, each one different but building on what’s required for the one before. I harbour delusions that the last two on my mental list might even be worth people paying money to use.
Even if nothing I write directly makes me money, if I can produce everything on my list this year I should have both the skills and the confidence to write ‘Rails developer’ on my CV so that recruitment consultants can offer me jobs hacking on PHP or Java apps.
The biggest success is that I am ‘levelling up’ – I am keeping working on things and not just doing nothing. I think I owe a lot of this inertia to my little MacBook Mini and using git. Having my stuff available all the time makes it far easier to get stuck in to projects instead of wasting time, and despite the slightly cramped keyboard and tiny little screen I’ve been just as productive on the NC10 as I have on my 24″ iMac. The plan to ‘defeat failure’ by skipping TV and working instead has mutated into watching TV with the laptop and doing both at the same time. (Well, there was no way I could miss the last season of Deep Space 9, arguably the best Star Trek ever made!)
It’s odd – I thought that a software tool would be what ‘saved’ me, when it turns out to have been hardware. With a low enough barrier to entry, I’ll happily work on things without having a project management app tell me what to do next. Ultimately, the actual solution doesn’t matter – what matters is that I’m working around my worst habits and working on stuff.
Post a Comment