Write Code Every Day
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Write Code Every Day
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Re: Write Code Every Day
#2This "don't break the chain" approach has worked extremely well for me, particularly during busy periods of high stress. I first learned about it in my college writing classes, where you're supposed to write something, anything, meaningless jibberish even, every single morning. Recently I read about Seinfeld using this approach to great successs. Every day he works on material, and puts a big, fat, "X" on the calendar.
Re: Write Code Every Day
#3This "don't break the chain" approach has worked extremely well for me, particularly during busy periods of high stress. I first learned about it in my college writing classes, where you're supposed to write something, anything, meaningless jibberish even, every single morning. Recently I read about Seinfeld using this approach to great successs. Every day he works on material, and puts a big, fat, "X" on the calenda…
An important change that I made, compared with these techniques, is that I require myself to write meaningful code. It's certainly much harder to do that but as a result I find myself developing good time management skills. Knowing that I have to be mentally "present" for my work forces myself to schedule and plan my days better, resulting in higher quality work all around!
Re: Write Code Every Day
#4The best code is no code.
Re: Write Code Every Day
#5"No more zero days" is a good quote to live by. No matter how busy I get, I try to code something everyday.
Re: Write Code Every Day
#6This "don't break the chain" approach has worked extremely well for me, particularly during busy periods of high stress. I first learned about it in my college writing classes, where you're supposed to write something, anything, meaningless jibberish even, every single morning. Recently I read about Seinfeld using this approach to great successs. Every day he works on material, and puts a big, fat, "X" on the calenda…
An important change that I made, compared with these techniques, is that I require myself to write meaningful code. It's certainly much harder to do that but as a result I find myself developing good time management skills. Knowing that I have to be mentally "present" for my work forces myself to schedule and plan my days better, resulting in higher quality work all around!
When did you find yourself getting most of your coding done? Mornings? I'd love to try something like this, but it will probably mean writing code at like 6 am..
Re: Write Code Every Day
#7The real problem with "don't break the chain" is that once it does, things collapse.
See my graph: https://github.com/steveklabnik
As you can see, I'm about to lose a ton of green. I'm at 87 days as my longest, but July 6, 2013 was brutal for me. I was actually flying, and had saved a small bit of work to do during a layover, but then I totally forgot.
Once that chain was broken, it was super easy to justify taking some time off...
Re: Write Code Every Day
#8That was a beautiful post.
Currently I'm in the complete opposite modus operandi. I don't do a lick of side-project work during the week, and on weekends I take a modafinil(wakefullness promoting medication) and stay up nights on end to crack out as much as I can.
I get an INSANE amount done on the weekends that I have the energy to pull this off, but it's horrible for my health. The rest of the week I have anxiety about the coming weekend, and it completely throws of my circadian rhythm. Not to mention that I'm only able to pull this off perhaps once or twice a month.
I'll definitely be changing my work schedule to be more in-line with a daily habit. Being able to look back and see a lot of consistent work being done sounds way preferable to being able to look back at a few weekends of consistent insanity.
Re: Write Code Every Day
#9I know for some people, TDD is the kind of friction-causing mechanism that kills the desire for everyday coding...but I've found it extremely helpful, even for small personal projects.
On nights when I absolutely cannot write a piece of working code, I scaffold out the tests. When I wake up the next morning and have 5 minutes with my coffee, I pass a test. Not much gets done, but by building the habit and ability to "jump into coding", no matter the time, place, or circumstance...that's how I've been able to build the coding-zen-mentality needed to write "real" code when the time comes.
Re: Write Code Every Day
#10Great post! A similar approach has been working really well for me. I'm on target to hit a year of consecutive days of coding this weekend. GitHub: https://github.com/zachlatta
I had a bit lower baseline than the author. My rules are as follows:
1. Commit something, anything. Even if it's just fixing a typo in a readme or phrasing some documentation better.
2. You must commit every day.
3. Every contribution must be useful.