Reminds me of the book atomic habits. It emphasizes the compounding gains of small wins.
The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
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Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#22I don't have a side project, but this is basically the approach I take at work. Try to do one useful thing each day. Doesn't even have to be a big useful thing. It adds up.
I guess that's really the whole point of the tortoise and the hare, now that I think of it.
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Side note: It is depressing that the question winds up being asked this way (EDIT: while ignoring how depressing it is that it is an existing question in the first place) ! Instead it should be: "Is it generally easy for employers to get permission from their employees to be assigned all rights for code they write in private?"
This is just as depressing. Employers should have zero rights to code their employees write on their own time unless the employee is using employer specific IP / resources or creating a direct competitor. Needing to get permission should not even be a thing.
You're absolutely right, I had left this out for simplicity.
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#24Is it generally easy for people to get permission from their day job to code on the side, without assigning all rights to the employer?
Generally, your company only has rights to that if you've signed away your rights in your employment agreement. People have found success negotiating that out of the agreement by bringing it up.
Haven't tried it, but I'd be interested to try the argument that the company doesn't want to own my side projects, because liability. If I infringe someone else's copyrights on accident, but the company owns the work, then the company is liable, not me. Sweet protections of corporatization. :)
Or if I make a decisions on a side project that others want to "cancel" on twitter - that'll look bad to the company because legally theyre the owners, right? Wouldn't want the company being to blame for something I did.
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#25Is it generally easy for people to get permission from their day job to code on the side, without assigning all rights to the employer?
Depends on jurisdiction. In places with reasonable copyright laws, you'd have to do weird things to end up in the “employer takes rights” situation in the first place.
I live and work in NY. It was standard in my contract with my former employer.
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#26Joel Spolsky said something similar. Paraphrasing: You find motivation by just committing a little bit every day: 10 minutes, 30 minutes. Once you get into it, you'll most likely do more.
This works for me with workout. I commit to workout 10min everyday. Sometimes I and up doing more like 40m, sometimes only 10m, and it's ok.
And of course, I reduced the start energy for it. If it's only 10m, probably I will do it at home with some equipment.
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#27I'm taking a course on how to build and grow a YouTube channel. The main advice they give is "just commit to making a video once a week, every week, for 2 years, and you're life will change." It's a tautology, no guarantees on how well your channel will do, but it's such a simple idea, and nice motivator to build momentum and keep going.
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#28It’s a way better mindset to just expect to work on something a few hours each day than to try to set milestones and deadlines because you won’t burn yourself out moonlighting
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#29This is excellent advice. Just by doing something, the habit gets created and the longer it gets, the easier it is to get started.
This has literally never worked for me with any habits I've tried intentionally cultivating. I'll pick something and do it every day for several weeks. Then I stop. Am I doing it wrong? Am I just weird that I can't seem to form good habits? I sincerely think I wouldn't remember to brush my teeth in the morning if my mouth didn't feel so gross, and I've been doing that every morning for over 30 years!
Have you considered you might have some disorder that affects your executive function capacity like ADHD and therefore requires alternative strategies to organize and cultivate habits?
Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
#30I like the advice but it always seems to backfire for me.
I started jogging everyday. Maybe 2 or 3km. But recently I struggle to do 500m a day.
Same with programming. I'll start with a few good days but then it devolves to opening an editor, writing a comment or one line then closing it straight after.