Finishing projects

Just like many technical enthusiasts, I have racked up my fair amount of unfinished projects and a mountain of new ideas to add to that already pretty stash. I mean.. So many things are just very appealing at the start. They all scratch itches that have been building up (for years sometimes).

And when I start a project, all my enthusiasm will fuel this project along. I can find a lot of small slots where I can work om my project and push it further. Until I hit the first few major bumps, that is. More brain power is needed then, but no slots are available.

The main reason for me is that my days are very fractured. I can work almost any day of the week on my projects But because of life, family and other obligations, the number of slots with multiple hours consecutively available are limited. And during those longer slots I find it hard to actually work on the big items. And I've been struggling with that a lot in the past years. I am to blame for that of course.

But it's something I've been working on fixing this for ages. I've used multiple different task managers, tried Getting Things Done and "researched" countless Youtube videos on the topic.

And now.. Finally things start to resonate.

I recognize now that my problem is not structuring the tasks. And that automatically harvesting all my Github issues and convert them into tasks in my task manager, is not going to give me better overview.

So I started by moving all my tasks from more complex task managers, like ClickUp, to the more focussed but flexible task manager Todoist. Instead of putting everything into projects, I just have active tasks for this week and structure the rest in global projects. Partly inspired by Carl Pulein's videos.

After reading David Cain's article on "Pushing the Fence", and then his book "How to do Things", something else clicked and I use a much more streamlined workflow now. Every evening or morning I physically write down a list of tasks for the (upcoming) day. Whenever I can I work as much as possible in 25 minute blocks. I know, I know, it's Pomodoro with a different jacket. But it finally stuck.

And recently I saw another great post. This one from Tomas Stropus on "The art of Finishing". Tomas thoughtfully analyzes the problem of the Project Hydra. Again, all open doors. I've known about this all for ages. But never before did it click as much as when I read this. It was a very intimate match with the problems I encounter as a solo-dev with loads of projects alive or in planning.

So in order to make sure I don't forget, I've created a poster out of Tomas' post to put on my wall in the office. Feel free to use it.