I'm a serial over committer
swanson.github.com
I'm a serial over committer
1–10 of 49 posts
Re: I'm a serial over committer
#2At first when I saw this headline and that the source was github I thought it meant making too many commits in git. I couldn't figure out why that would be such a bad thing.
Re: I'm a serial over committer
#3Fellow "serial over committer" here. I find it preferable to accept all new opportunities, but make sure stakeholders/I understand my availability. After prioritizing, nobody's surprised when some projects complete and others don't gain momentum. If you're letting others down, they probably overestimated your time/resources.
Re: I'm a serial over committer
#4[deleted]
Re: I'm a serial over committer
#5I have the same problem: 'yes' is so much easier to say than 'no,' but the quantity of my projects is affecting the quality, and I don't like it.
Derek Sivers has a suggested approach for over-committers: "Hell yeah, or no." It's helped me cut down on my projects (and leaves me with more awesome things to work on, on average). Give it a read: http://sivers.org/hellyeah
Re: I'm a serial over committer
#6There is a cost in overcommitting as there is the opportunity cost.
But I believe there is a way to overcommit with the "under commit, over deliver" line of thought. That will allow you to still look at the new opportunities and present an option ("sure - let's talk first"..."could get done by xx".."too late? well next time perhaps").
One thing I've found - while handling many side-projects is to know each one has a priority based on how much I'm invested in one of them and the benefits that one will bring. If you have the priorities set upfront, it'll be easier to make decisions in case something gotta give. But if you "under commit" to a lot of different commitments, you'd still have some space :)
Re: I'm a serial over committer
#7At first when I saw this headline and that the source was github I thought it meant making too many commits in git. I couldn't figure out why that would be such a bad thing.
All I could think of was making it difficult to find exactly what commit fixed/introduced what bugs.
Re: I'm a serial over committer
#8I have the same problem: 'yes' is so much easier to say than 'no,' but the quantity of my projects is affecting the quality, and I don't like it. Derek Sivers has a suggested approach for over-committers: "Hell yeah, or no." It's helped me cut down on my projects (and leaves me with more awesome things to work on, on average). Give it a read: http://sivers.org/hellyeah
Wow, thanks for that link - that's a really good post.
Re: I'm a serial over committer
#9At first when I saw this headline and that the source was github I thought it meant making too many commits in git. I couldn't figure out why that would be such a bad thing.
And if it is, you can just do some squashing and rebasing later on to fix it.
Re: I'm a serial over committer
#10I have the same problem: 'yes' is so much easier to say than 'no,' but the quantity of my projects is affecting the quality, and I don't like it. Derek Sivers has a suggested approach for over-committers: "Hell yeah, or no." It's helped me cut down on my projects (and leaves me with more awesome things to work on, on average). Give it a read: http://sivers.org/hellyeah
There's a related video too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICKlhVMzE_c