Getting ‘er done?

In the past months, I’ve dropped the amount of side-projects I do apart from my 40hr. This weekend however, I decided to put some real effort into a project I’ve been waving off for about 6+ months. So, Saturday morning I get an iced mocha from the Starbucks, and at home made a few cups of an Asian/African blend. While hopped up on some quality Java, I ‘plowed’ through some yard work — those 3 hours went by fast.

Afterwards, I sat down and set my sites on getting some real dev work done. For the next 2 days, I moved with purpose. With the Pareto principle (you may know it as the 80/20 rule) in mind, I aimed for real progress; something my biz partner could see and demo. No excuses. It was a very different feeling. In the past I’ve allowed myself to be distracted by ancillary things like line heights, table cell alignment; basically rubbish. This time around, when a minor thing would come up, I tried to fix it for a consciously set amount of time: 5 minutes. If I could not solve it, I’d put it aside, and come back to it later.

This has never been my M.O. If I see a problem, I want… No, I need to know the answer. It’s been a burden. It takes away from the main issue, which is completion of the overall task. This self-imposed time limit really helped. Also, aiming to at least reach 80% completion had a positive affect. I was able to take the project from its existing 25%, to a nice 85%. It’s a great feeling, but now I need to keep that fire going. Once I actually get the version 1.0 complete, I’ll know I’ve done something. It’s in sight and now I have to rely on my biz partner’s responsiveness. Well, so far, so good.