I can feel the excitement already, ideas bombing my mind, dreaming with the features this new project can provide and the problems it can solve, and… I confess, dreaming with the many possible outcomes of it on my personal life and the life of my family. Still, out of the many personal projects that I previously started, none have been fully concluded or reach some sort of measurable success.
Disclaimer: this post will mostly be a personal critique to myself, and attempt to dig deeper into my own conscious or unconscious idiosyncrasy that lead me to abandon all those personal projects I’ve mentioned already, and hopefully, change or modify the way I address a new one.
I tend to believe that most software engineers have their own pet projects, although I don’t have any data to support such claim; it is certainly my case, and the case of my close friends and colegues. I also believe that this is a good indicator; it means, that I’m still somehow motivated, interested, and excited about my line of work, the moment I stop thinking on new projects, could it mean that I’m getting bored of my career? or at least getting way too comfortable on my fulltime job? to the point where I’m no longer actively seeking self improvement?
Taking courses is a good way, not only to learn what those curses are teaching, but also to keep yourself fresh and up to date with new programming languages, frameworks, technologies, trends, etc, and you can find many courses which are either free or don’t cost much, they do require one thing though, that can’t be bought, which is discipline. I confess that I haven’t finish all of the courses I took, or projects I started, sometimes because of lack of interest as I advance with the course, but in many cases for me, it’s also due to a lack of discipline; at some point something interupts the schedule I’ve set up for myself, and then it becomes harder for me to go back to where I left off. Aside from discipline, another key factor that I believe also deviates my attention from a particular course, is the lack of a specific goal; what is it that I want to get out of a particular course or project?
I don’t want to overwhelm myself by having too many objectives to tackle, since I believe that would inevitable lead me to abandon my attempt to not abandon my projects, so, I’m going to start with those two traits mentioned on the previous paragraph: discipline and specific goals. I hope this is also a good starting point for anyone reading this post and identifying with its content.
Discipline
I have a regular 9 to 5 fulltime job, and while I could easily stay in front of my computer way past 5:00 pm, I’m usually more tired by then, so, what I think could work best for me is:
- Take advantage of my mornings, attempt to get something done before 9:00 am, or at least aim to resolve the hard problems early in the morning.
- Continue with less demanding tasks after 5:00 pm, I’ll be tired by then, but if everything went well in the morning, I should be able to face simpler tasks in the afternoon.
- Regulate my sleep schedule; something that has always been a problem for me, but the more I research about it, the more convinced I am about the importance of a good night sleep.
Specific Goals
This objective is a bit less clear for me, but I’ll start with small goals and see how it goes.
- I don’t know how to measure a small goal yet, but I’ll try to keep it simple, and say that small is something that can be done in 1 or 2 days (considering my schedule mentioned above).
- I would need to keep track of those goals, and their states, otherwise it would be hard to know how I’m doing, and also it should help on reaching a standard measure for a small goal.
- I won’t complicate my self with tools, spreadsheets or something like that, for now, I’ll just keep a to do text file.
Moving forward
I’ll use this blog to keep me honest, either with posts where I describe how things are going, or better yet, with posts related on a new personal project.