Why am I posting every day? Well, I’m actually not. I’m posting every day except for Sunday. Gotta take a break sometime, right?
People popularly attribute to Jerry Seinfeld the notion that if you want to be good at something, you have to do it — at least a little bit — every day.
I’ve put this to the test several times. For example, in the beginning of 2014 I felt like I was losing touch with code. So, I made a goal to check-in new code to GitHub every day.
After 100 days I felt myself going a bit nuts. (“I HAVE TO KEEP THIS GOING!”) I would wake up in the middle of the night, “MWAH! Did I check-in today?” I didn’t set a limit on this crazy goal. Finally, with the troop week-long camp coming I decided that I would end on 128 days of continuous check-ins.
The one-a-day structure was very effective.
- It’s easy to remember something you do every day, even if it’s only for a few months.
- It’s easy to do just a little when that’s all you can muster.
I’m trying to build up ManagerJS. I’m using the one-a-day mantra again. This time I’m taking Sundays off to try and keep the mania in check.
I’m sure I won’t keep this up forever. After a while I plan on paring down to once a week, or so.
My real goals are to
- think clearly by writing,
- give resources to people who want to be (better) web developers — particularly those that interview with me
- give resources to anyone else trying to be a dev manager.
Find something you want to be better at. Give it 10 minutes a day for a few months. See what happens.
