Embrace the quick wins for motivation

#motivation #careeradvice #productivity

This week at work I have been doing a lot of frontend stories. I work full stack as I mentioned the other week, which means I get to work on all areas of the system.

Generally I prefer working on the backend, I am quite a logical person and I enjoy solving problems that aren't, “Why on Earth is this button 1 px higher than it should be?!!”.

Apart from the obvious frustrations, it was nice to have something to show the team at the end of the week that they could actually interact with. The best thing with these stories is that they were all quite small, at most taking 2 days to complete.

There is something about completing the quick wins that gives you a motivation boost that got me thinking if I can use this in other areas of my life as well.

The Magic of Quick Wins #

A lot of the work I do in the backend is either infrastructure changes to save money or to make something more efficient. Without the backend the application would be useless, but it doesn't always get the same fan fair as the frontend work. Especially when you have been working on the same task for a couple of weeks, and you have nothing that you can demo.

I managed to get 4 frontend stories completed last week. Each of them had a small backend part to them, but most of the time was spent on getting the UI correct.

Being able to put something up on the development environment and get instant feedback was great. Each story was fairly small to complete, but provided a much-needed feature for customers.

It is this balance between something that can be completed quickly and something that is actually useful that is the key indicators of a good quick win.

Quick wins have a few other benefits as well:

Visibility = Validation — Everybody enjoys a bit of recognition for their work. Unfortunately when you are hacking away at the backend the kudos can be infrequent. Being able to get some small visible tasks done can give you a much-needed confidence boost.
Build up momentum — Admittedly it is probably the recognition more than the quick win that gives you momentum. You get a rush from completing something and getting recognition, and you are keen to jump onto the next task.

Quick Wins in Life #

This week got me thinking. Is there anywhere else in my life that I could be embracing quick wins to gain some motivation and momentum?

I am sure like me, you have tasks or goals on your to-do list that are intimidatingly big. Is there anything you can do to help you get started?

Here are some of my examples:

Fitness — I have been struggling for a while to keep up a decent fitness regime. I am geek at heart, and it is never been in my nature. To be fair, it has been far too hot in the UK for the last month. Instead of putting it off I should just start with some yoga or walking more. Feeling healthier in myself will hopefully give me the motivation I need to continue it on.
Decluttering — I wouldn't call myself a hoarder, but I have 3 boxes of computer cables in my office. God forbid I chuck a cable away and have to buy a new one when I need it (which has happened before). I probably don't need to go all Marie Kondo and work out which cables “bring me joy” but I could sort just one of the boxes out.
Guitar — I have been playing guitar on and off since I was 15. I am completely self-taught which likely means I probably missed a lot of theory and picked up bad habits. When I do get around to playing, I jump between songs with no motivation to actually stick to anything. To combat this I have signed up for guitar lessons. At least that way there will be a curriculum to follow and some social embarrassment if I haven't practised all week.
Decorating — We are trying to make our garden a nicer outside space. Our patio doesn't look great though, and we considered building out decking. It is a big expensive job though so we have been putting it off. We went to Ikea today though and found they have these little panels you can put together which would be perfect for our patio. The job just became a lot smaller, so there is a chance it might get finished this year.

Not all projects can be broken into quick wins, but it is important to mix them in where you can to keep your motivation up so you can keep the momentum going.

❤️ Picks of the Week #

📝 Article — CEOs are running companies from afar even as workers return to office — One rule for them and another for us. Shortly before I left my last company, the C-team were telling everyone that they need to return to the office. Naturally they were doing it while working from home. The message doesn't quite have the same impact, does it?

📺 Videos — If YouTube had actual channels — I watch everything on demand these days, but you do miss out on the discovery. There is nothing quite like watching a random film on a late night channel that you never would have picked otherwise. This tries to bring that back with YouTube.

📝 Article — Examples of Great URL Design — I have never thought about using URLs in this way. When creating APIs I always follow REST, but it doesn't have to be this way on my personal website.

📰 News — Disney Seeking Dismissal Death Lawsuit Because Victim Was Disney+ Subscriber — This is atrocious, and I am sure Disney is going to try to cover it up. It is tempting to just boycott Disney because of this.

📝 Article — Sort, sweep, and prune: Collision detection algorithms — This is a fantastic visual walkthrough in how to implement a collision detection algorithm. Maybe I will get round to creating a game one day.

📝 Article — I Put a Toaster in the Dishwasher — Kids, don't try this at home! I love it when something goes against conventional wisdom. I am pretty sure my water has enough impurities to permanently wreck my toaster, so I won't be trying this, but it is pretty cool. Don't stop questioning conventional wisdom and try not to get electrocuted in the process!

📝 Article — Binary search finds things fast — I made up my own binary search at University for my final year Physics project. I think I called it search and destroy or something equally immature. I didn't know anything about binary search so it is easy enough to teach yourself.

🛠️ Tool — SponsorBlock - Skip over YouTube Sponsors — You would think as a fellow YouTuber I wouldn't recommend something like this. However, I personally turn down all sponsorships for my channel as I find them annoying. If you feel the same there is now a solution!

📝 Article — A wonderful coincidence or an expected connection: why π² ≈ g — This might just be the Physics geek in me, but I found this fascinating and was a fun read.

📝 Article — Building a highly-available web service without a database — This makes a lot of sense given how fast technology is. Yes for high traffic systems that need to store data you probably still need a database. If you are automatically deploying services per customer this makes a lot of sense.

🛠️ Tool — Okay, I really like WezTerm — I am using ZSH at the moment but WezTerm looks interesting. I might have to try it next time I want a change.

📝 Article — Go is my hammer, and everything is a nail — I have been meaning to try out Go for a while. At the moment I use JavaScript/Typescript for Frontend, C#/Typescript for the Backend and Bash/Python for my various automation scripts. I could probably do all these things with just one of these languages, but it just doesn't feel write. Maybe with Go it would feel right.

📝 Article — You should make a new programming language — I have never tried to make a programming language before. You might not ever use what you make, but I bet you would learn a lot from doing it.