I felt at peace with the amount of work that I was getting done and I no longer had the over-bearing desire to frantically get any work done. I’m actually testing this strategy for competitive programming. I’m truly happy for folks if they enjoy coding so much they want to do it for fun/as a hobby in their non day-job hours, but I think positioning one’s hobby (when it happens to coincide with one’s profession) as somehow obligatory if you care about improving/success (“if you don’t care about improving yourself then you’ll never actually succeed”) is wrong. I am now 65 years old and have been working on an application I first started working on in 1978 before most of you guys were born. It works!.. Anyways, at the end of the day, I may spend another 10-20 minutes working on my own stuff but my coder-self feels like I’m good for the day as it is since I get to do cutting-edge tech dev as well as legacy code dev. Totally agree with another poster, in that you should always be looking for a better way, and recognising when there is no better way. And I find each day I get those 10,000 or more steps on the FitBit, the less angst I feel. Building up a weeks-worth of expectations about what I should accomplish during the weekend only ended up leaving me disappointed. Last week, I got back from a ten day trip, and it has been very, very hard to achieve the focus I had during this streak. I created a couple new web sites, re-wrote some frameworks, and created a ton of new node modules. We have a wide variety of projects so it’s actually easy to do a ton of work without feeling burnt out. (It’s really hard to write meaningful code in less time, especially after remembering where you left off the day before.) From time to time you need to take a break to let your subconsciousness take stock and sort-out the overall picture. http://lifehacker.com/5886128/how-seinfelds-productivity-secret-fixed-my-procrastination-problem, http://renewlifebalance.com/?/monthly-goals/, http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=22778322, http://hacksnsnacks.com/hacks/theres-always-room-for-jell-o/. There were a few major problems with how I was working on my side projects. Hattie is put into her crate when they go. That’s when your body is going to most efficiently use that carbohydrate source. Giving an hour or even 30 mins every day will not screw your health. Assumes an eight-hour day/40-hour week. You can also supplement exercise for dogs by playing in a yard if you have one. For you, John. This allowed me to get about 30~60 minutes of quality time into my sketchbooks. Thanks for the post and reaffirming the benefits. It means to figure out what to work on, I need to guess, or gather data from users, or listen to a product manager. Typing code is part of programming. It … An interesting side effect of writing side project code every day is that your current task is frequently running in the back of your mind. Otherwise you get too stressed out. This should be something you enjoy, not something you get anxious about. The very fact you have to ask, might mean you are not ideally matched to writing code. http://ajlopez.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/always-be-coding/. Incredible way out! I need to either be *really* confident I’d find just the doing itself worthwhile (e.g., using fun CS or expanding my limits somehow) or I have a rational hope that my work could actually help the world in some really miniscule way. If you have a question It's the same concept as writers doing NaNoWriMo, or coders doing a 30-day git commit sprint. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could make your “side project” (or hobby project as I call them) your day job? I’ve never had any programming job where even 50% of my day was spent writing software. Was very difficult to train for the ACM-ICPC when I was working as developer, but now that I only study in the University I solve at least a problem a day for maintain my streak in my Github in these are the results in some online judges for competitive competitions: It not only allows me to remain enthused about what I’m doing and provides something to show to friends but also journalises how much has been accomplished. I agree with the coding every day thing. I’m in the same situation as yours before your started your journey. I loved the commit chart. I am always busy at weekends so its hard to get solid hours coding done so I have no choice in doing it throughout the week, but, whilst in my case it is compulsory if I want to learn I’ve always thought it the best way to do. I was immediately struck by how accurately you described the problem. Knowing that I was going to have to work on the project every single day I had to get better at balancing my time. 11. When you have walked for 10 minutes without stopping, your first goal has been reached. I realized that the feeling of making progress is just as important as making actual progress. Keeping count is itself a turn-off for me, so I’ll need the mindset of just counting to two: yesterday and today. I decided to set a couple rules for myself: Some of these rules were arbitrary. But I’ve always tried coding daily, this makes you think about code and fix bugs even in your dream ^_^ Good post thank you. I found small, running pieces add up to actual software faster than you think. Thanks, and excellent illustrations! I’ll never stop coding again! I work at a company called CMN (http://cmn.com). This is how long you really have to make a decision after receiving a job offer Published Wed, Oct 25 2017 2:12 PM EDT Updated Wed, Oct 25 2017 2:12 PM EDT Marguerite Ward @forwardist It’s a daily feedback loop both of incentive, and of productivity. There’s no set formula for how much you should write every day. If you are feeling anxiety about not spending your free time coding, STOP. Code is similar. Instead of writing code, I wind up drawing diagrams, outlining possible approaches, or searching to see if/how others have solved similar problems. Can I ask your permission? One of the most important aspects of this change was in simply learning how to better balance work/life/side project. Oppositely, you also may have heard that you can stick to the usual three meal a day regimen to maintain a healthy weight. Great Post. P.S. I got a 35 days streak, took two days off, and now continue with a new streak. It’s going to use it as fuel for your workout or replenish what your body burned during the workout,” he says. At least to me, because then my “side projects” begin to feel like work, and I do enough of that already ;). It just breaks the chain. In one study on false negative rates after COVID-19 exposure, researchers found that in the four days prior to symptom onset, the probability of a false negative was extremely high on day one. Totally reasonable! Definitely going to try this. I’m extremely pleased with the amount of work that I’ve gotten done. This is a strategy that does not work well for me, as it turns out. – user92912 Oct 6 '15 at 19:10 1 @SimonArsenault They don't need to use the code formatter in the IDE. I found we have the same action,trying to code everyday ! Only then you you can have a break-though idea. Daily work has been quite helpful in this regard as the time period between work is much shorter, making it easier to remember what I was working on. I’ve been trying hard to get time off’s on evenings, but it’s not always possible. Other times, I find I have to get some library or framework that looks promising, setup a build environment, build it and test it. It means yesterday’s work doesn’t help make today’s work any easier. My worst daily bad habit is doing “research” into my domain… a miss a lot of coding in the name of research. There’s always going to be a context switch cost when resuming work on a side project. helloo , abd thanks for this awesome post. But I would reduce this only to working days and have weekend for the family or just to have fun/relax – without even having to touch my computer. Continue to set new goals without overdoing it. 6 min/chart or 80/day ambulatory surgery records. When driving a long distance, you should take breaks amounting to 45 … You should always audit your code and see if you could write it in a more effective way. 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