DEV Community: Jake

If only I had...

Jake — Sat, 28 Sep 2019 23:43:33 +0000

What is the biggest thing preventing you from being productive on your side project besides your day job and family?

Game-Changing Books

Jake — Tue, 03 Sep 2019 15:00:00 +0000

If you have a hard time learning new things, don't give up. Learn to learn. Learn to learn better.

A small confession: I was a slow reader until I was 27. This issue was a massive issue for me in high school and just as slow in university. So what changed when I was 27? I realized that I wasn't bad at reading. I was terrible at reading, on paper. I read an article* citing an exciting study about how people who have Dyslexia may read better while using a backlit screen.

This concept was the most obvious thing in the world once I had read it. I read it on my computer without an issue. I had been reading computer screens for quite a while, and I did not have any problems. I had been missing out on reading books because they were paper. But they have them on devices now.

A straightforward idea changed my world. What could I read that might help me to read even better? To learn better? To be better?

* I lost the article, unfortunately.

📚Learn to Read Better

One day while browsing Reddit, I came across a comment about game-changing improvements. One of the references he made was to Remember Everything You Read: The Evelyn Wood 7-Day Speed Reading and Learning Program. I'll admit that all the concepts didn't sink in at first. How do I remember everything I have read about a program that teaches me to remember everything I read?

After reading this book, my Words Per Minute (WPM) of reading immediately climbed from around 130 WPM to 230 WPM. That's an increase of 100 WPM, and I was still comprehending the same amount of content. Not bad.

My challenge goal for that year on Goodreads was ten books. I crushed it at 26. But is reading faster really the same as reading better? Well, technically, no.

While listening to The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, guest Kevin Systrom mentions the book How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. Kevin Systrom mentions how reading from the first word to last is not the correct way to read a book.

I wish that book sooner. How to Read a Book breaks down the ability to read into four levels. The first, "Elementary Reading," most people learn in school. The second, "Inspectional Reading," what Kevin Systrom mentions on “The Tim Ferriss Show” podcast, is the level with which most university students or researchers are familiar. Steps include inspecting the table of contents and summaries.

This book was my introduction to "Analytical Reading." The art of not only reading words but in understanding the content and even questioning and critiquing it.

The most important thing to remember about any practical book is that it can never solve the practical problems with which it is concerned. […] a practical problem can only be solved by action itself. […] Nothing short of the doing solves the problem. - Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

One of the lines that stuck out to me is that practical problems require practical solutions. Obvious, right? Except I had spent a lot of time reading technical books and never actually doing the tasks in it. You're not done reading a book until you've done the actions required to finish it.

🎓Learn to Learn Better

Okay. So you can read to read better. What else can you pick up?

For those of you who are Software Developers, you might know and appreciate The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master* I am a big fan of it, and it's writers.

When I found out Andrew Hunt wrote an entire book on improving your ability to think and learn, I jumped at my chance to read it. Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt is a bit out of date. In a good way. The concepts Andy brings forth are ahead of their time.

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning was released in 2008, when iPhone was a year old. In it, Andy recommends running a Wiki on your palm pilot. He names this his “Exocortex” (Exo meaning External, and Cotext meaning Brain). Now, there are a plethora of apps to do this for free. Evernote (2008), OneNote (2010**), Bear (2016), and Notion (2017) would all eventually follow.

Andy goes into great detail, explaining not only the R- and L-Modes of the brain but also in how to use them. He introduces you to cognitive biases and helps expose "hardware bugs," all while using very software-development oriented metaphors.

One thing that you'll learn quickly from this is that your brain is, unfortunately, a part of your body. If you're like me, you probably forget this often. Treating your body right is of great importance if you want to continue using what you just learned about learning. I'd recommend checking out The Healthy Programmer for more tips on that.

* Congrats to Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt for their new 20th Anniversary Edition, currently in Beta.

** Technically, OneNote was available on Windows CE devices, but who actually used those? Comment below if you remember those things.

Conclusion

Tool Sharpening is a common idiom. If you want to be a better developer, learn more about architecture and design patterns. If you want to be a better programmer, learn more about the programming language and your IDE. Taking a step back, what tools should you learn to learn better?

Being able to learn better is an important step that I feel a lot of people miss. Learning to read better was a game-changing step in my life that led to even more changes. Reading to learn better has allowed me to learn so much more than I would otherwise be able to.

What books have you read that changed your life, professionally or personally? What critical skills did you improve that you didn't think could be improved? I want to hear from you. Comment below or send me an email.

Don't forget to subscribe to the mailing list below, or follow us on Twitter @effectivedev.

Desire Paths: For When Shortcuts Don’t Cut It [macOS]

Jake — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 13:00:00 +0000

Summary: You don’t need expensive keyboards to improve convenience. Complete customizability is excellent, but we can get halfway there with simple soft-hacks. You can use system preferences and software tools to customize your keyboard to make your navigation more comfortable and help prevent errors.

Whether you're on a computer all day or just trying to do something quickly, you've probably realized that switching between the keyboard and mouse can take a moment. Added all together, these moments can eat up a chunk of time. This wasted time is terrible for productivity and gets even worse if you touch type and manage to miss home row.

This latency is a known limitation of most modern operating systems, and as such, there is a solution: keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts present problems as well. Most of them are designed to work for general problems and are not optimized. If you’ve ever typed Command + Tab, Tab, Tab, Tab, Tab, you know what I mean.

Remembering keyboard shortcuts can be a daunting task. Like most things, the key to remembering them is using them. Generic ones like Copy and Paste are usually pretty easy to remember. Creating custom cheat sheets for each app you use can also be quite handy. Then there's the option to customize them.

When is a keyboard shortcut not a shortcut?

Has this scenario ever happened to you? You’re switching between applications and closing them as you go. You think you have iTunes open (Did I connect my phone?!) so you go to close it using Command + Q, nice and simple. Except you just closed a window with 5+ tabs open. Oops.

All of a sudden, that “shortcut” isn’t much of a shortcut anymore. Luckily, there is a way to disable this for specific applications. If you go to System Preferences and click on Keyboard, you’ll see a Shortcuts tab. If you create a shortcut for the "Quit [Application Name]" menu item, any existing shortcut for that menu item is not triggerable. Note that you’re going to want to make sure this matches the menu item, not the name of the application. For example, when you open iTerm, it shows “Close iTerm2”, not “Close iTerm”.

My limited but exceptionally handy tab-savers.

In my case, I added this to Safari and iTerm. I can sit in my iTerm window and press Command + Q or Command + W and nothing happens.

When is a keyboard not just a keyboard?

A few years ago, when I was working at a contact centre, I decided to purchase a mechanical keyboard. Mechanical keyboards quickly grew into a hobby, and after about five keyboards I had found my endgame, the beautiful 40% Planck Keyboard from OLKB. When is a keyboard not just a keyboard? When it is a piece of art.

One of the main benefits of the Planck is that it runs on the QMK firmware which offers endless amounts of customizability including changing the key map. I wrote an article about it, including my keymap. The Planck is a fantastic keyboard, and I learned some of my favourite “desire paths” from it.

My only issue was that I needed to move from my desk to the meeting room. I frequently found that switching between the Planck and the built-in MacBook keyboard became confusing for my hands. However, there was no way to add this functionality to my MacBook keyboard. Or so I thought.

When is a key less than a key?

If you’re a terminal junky like me, you probably use the Control key a lot. As said before, keyboard shortcuts are a great way to avoid switching to the mouse, but in the simplified, often mouse-less environment of a terminal, they become even more critical.

I could write an article on just shortcuts for Bash/Zsh. (That’s not a bad idea. Look forward to that in the future.) The majority of bash shortcuts, along with many used for terminal programs like tmux and Vim use the Control key. The notable exception is the Escape key for Vim to enter “Normal Mode”.

As a side note, Vim’s “Enter Normal Mode” shortcut is generally Escape, but Control + [ also exists which works faster.

So, if the Control key is so important, how come it is such a stretch to reach? If you think you know why, please add a comment below. Terrible placement aside, there is a solution. And a pun, but you’ll get that in a moment. Deep inside of the System Preferences, Apple does let you adjust this.

You may have noticed while using terminal-based apps that the Home Row comes up often. The home row is the position where your hands should be at rest. Being able to put the most critical keys on this row is helpful, which is why Vim loves it so much. The Home Row contains one of the most useful keys for terminal use: the Return key, as well as one of the least useful: the Caps Lock key.

The Caps Lock key is useless in this day and age unless you find yourself in YouTube comments. It’s likely one of the few keys that’s actuated more often by accident than intention. I’m sure you can see where these two areas collide. Let’s convert that prime real-estate Caps Lock into something actually useful.

In System Preferences, open the Keyboard panel and click on the “Modifier Keys…” The modal that opens gives us some customizability. We can select to set the "Caps Lock" option to the value of "Control". Here’s a gif, because it’s not 2005 anymore and static images don’t cut it.

Okay. So we’ve upgraded some dead space. One other thing you may have noticed is that there was another option in there. You can set the pressing of the Caps Lock key to an "Escape" press. Setting the "Caps Lock" setting to the "Escape" value is very tempting. If you have one of Apple’s Touch Bar MacBook Pros, "Escape" may even be a better choice. I did this for a while, and I can recommend it as much as the "Control" option. Of course, we can do one better.

Side note for Apple, if you’re reading this. I love the Touch Bar. It would do well above the function keys on a pro device though.

When is a key more than a key?

It’s about time we introduce the real star of this article, Karabiner Elements. Self-described as “A powerful and stable keyboard customizer for macOS,” I decided to put it to the test. I enjoyed the outcome, and I think you will as well.

Karabiner Elements is very similar to the “Modifier Keys…” prompt in the same way a Formula 1 car is very similar to a bicycle. In its “Simple Modifications” tab, Karabiner allows you to switch any key to act as any key. Did I mention this was the “Simple Modifications” tab?

”With great power there must also come — great responsibility!” RIP, Uncle Ben.

While there are eight tabs total, the first three (Simple Modifications, Function Keys, and Complex Modifications) are the ones we will discuss. If you wanted to, you could easily repeat the same modification, converting the Caps Lock key to a Control key when pressed.

The “Function Keys” tab is quite helpful as it allows you to change what the functions labelled on the keyboard do. Perhaps you don’t like Launchpad and want to have a regular F4 without changing the rest of them?

The “Complex Modifications” tab is where things get crazy. What if a key could do different things based on the context of its use? Here are a few examples:

Application Specific:

Perhaps your IDE forces you to use Shift + F4 but you don’t use F4 for anything. You can have Karabiner force all F4 presses inside of your IDE to be Shift + F4 for you.

Multi-Modifier Keys:

If you’ve read my post on Alfred, you may have noted that you can make advanced workflows start from a keyboard shortcut. If you’ve looked through the keyboard shortcuts in your apps, you’ll notice there aren’t a lot of options left that give you flexibility.

For example, if you cycle through the same five apps regularly, all day, your pinky finger may get tired from tabbing between apps. Let's add our own: introducing the makeshift Hyper key!

The makeshift Hyper key is technically a combination of Control + Option + Command + Shift. Pressing Control + Option + Command + Shift + C to open Slack would be kind of annoying. Well, let’s change a key to be the Hyper key. In this case, let’s set the right Command key to be our Hyper key. After updating Alfred to open apps using keyboard shortcuts, I have set the following:

Hyper + C to open my Slack _C_hat.
Hyper + K to open my _K_anban board.
Hyper + G to open my _G_itlab.
Hyper + M to open my Spark _M_ail.

Realistically, your memory is the soft limit for this.

Differentiate between modifier and lone key presses:

This customization is elegant, and probably my favourite part of Karabiner. A key can be a key when pressed by itself, but another key when used as a modifier. For example, let’s set our ill-suited Caps Lock key to be Escape when pressed alone, but count as Control when pressed with another key.

So now pressing the Caps Lock key is equivocal to pressing the Escape key. However, pressing Caps Lock + P is equivocal to pressing Control + P. Just think of the Vim possibilities!

To do this:

Open the “Complex Modifications” tab in Karabiner.
Click on "Add Rule".
Click on "Import more rules from the Internet (open a web browser)".
When the browser opens, search for "Change caps_lock key (rev 4)".
Click "Import" for the option listed. Once imported, it’ll show you all the available rules to select.
Find "Change caps_lock to control if pressed with other keys, to escape if pressed alone" and click "Enable" next to that.

Done!

Even More Craziness

There are even more things you can do, as well. Here are some examples:

Double-press a key to result in an event.
Press-and-hold a key to result in an event.
Use multiple non-modifier keys to result in an event.

The Ugly Side of Karabiner

One thing I’ve found difficult about Karabiner is that it’s documentation for Complex Modifiers is hidden under the karabiner.json reference manual menu item. Once you have created a complex modifier JSON file, you need to import it. At the time of this article, there is no way to import JSON files directly. To import the file, you need to use the URL karabiner://karabiner/assets/complex\_modifications/import?url={URL} where the {URL} is the full path to the JSON file starting with file:///, URL-encoded.

For example, assuming the file is at /Users/username/Documents/Modifier.json, we change it to file:///Users/username/Documents/Modifier.json, and then encode it as file%3A%2F%2F%2FUsers%2Fusername%2FDocuments%2FModifier.json and prefix it with the rest of the URL as karabiner://karabiner/assets/complex\_modifications/import?url=file%3A%2F%2F%2FUsers%2Fusername%2FDocuments%2FModifier.json.

Example karabiner.json file

Wrapping It All Up

These changes represent my own needs. So now we have:

Removed keyboard shortcuts that cause more harm than good;
Single keyboard shortcuts to open apps and web pages;
Moved some of our most commonly used keys into better locations; and
Set up our environment to be able to do even more.

I hope that this article has given you the confidence to create your shortcuts and help speed up your work. If you have created some shortcuts, let me know in the comments below!

If you liked this content, please subscribe to the email newsletter. Also, be sure to follow @EffectiveDev on Twitter to get helpful links and tips. Thank you so much for reading, and have a wonderful week!

Let's Get Social

Jake — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 13:00:00 +0000

Hey all! Effective Dev is now on Twitter as @EffectiveDev! Follow us for news and tips.

Looking to set up a new project? Maybe you just want to get your project up to date? Check out tons of resources for almost any programming language, tools and concepts: https://t.co/BmWRJO5HJ9

— EffectiveDev (@EffectiveDev) August 21, 2019

Alfred: Not Just For Batman

Jake — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 13:00:00 +0000

Summary: Alfred is a neat macOS app at first but crazy powerful once you understand it.

Sometimes the hardest part about getting work done isn’t the challenging bits. It’s the boring parts. You know the ones. Writing up a pull request, or navigating to tickets, etc. Sometimes it’s hard to get rid of these things. If you can, that’s great. If you can’t, there’s Alfred.

After using Shortcuts on iOS and discovering my new love of making workflows to automate my busy work, I decided to have a search for a comparable tool for macOS. Automator on macOS is an excellent start but lacks the ease of use of Shortcuts. For years I was convinced that Alfred was a moderately improved Spotlight search and therefore not worth the money.

🤵First Servings

After installing Alfred and starting to configure it, I knew that I was wrong. Where Spotlight does a decent job of searching files, Alfred is a tool for performing actions of many different types, one of which happens to be an ultra-fast search for files. Alfred is highly configurable and going through its exhausting preference panel helps tell you something about the number of actions available.

Here are some of my favourites. These are built-in by default, and I use them almost daily:

Clipboard History: If you’ve ever had to deal with copy-and-pasting two things at once, this solves that problem elegantly. After typing in the keyword (default of clipboard, I switched mine to pb), or pressing the keyboard shortcut (Alt + Command + C), you get a list of the most recent things you’ve copied. Command + 3 pastes the second most recently copied. Alfred is even smart enough not to store passwords from 1Password or Keychain in the clipboard history.

Snippets: The reason that Command + 3 returns your second copy is because of snippets. They’re the first result. If you’ve ever had to copy and paste a template before filling out the specific details, you know how annoying it is to do it again. Snippets are the solution to that. You can paste the template into a snippet and then use the keyword snip to search for it. An example of this would be using “Merge Request” templates. I can open Alfred Command + Space and then type snip merge and press enter. The field populates.

Web Search: By default, Alfred has searches for many popular websites setup. You can easily search IMDb Avengers to find out more about the Avengers movie. Where this gets really good is that you can add your own custom searches. For example, I have my work Wiki setup using wiki issue login fails on error to search for any issues containing that text. You can make this even more powerful, but we’ll get into that below.

Want to add a new web search? Just go to the site you want to search, type in {query} and do a search. Replace the part of the URL on the results page that says %7Bquery%7D with {query} and then add the URL as a new entry to the table of searches. Here’s an example where I added in a Python search in about a minute:

The query and title added in for a py keyword to search Python documentation.

If you have or plan to add your own search, what will it be for? Comment at the bottom. I’d love to hear about it!

Web Bookmarks: Similar to Web Search, Alfred can search for and open your bookmarks. Even better than that, it can open them in the browser in which the bookmark exists. If you deal with terrible intranet sites that should have been purged a decade ago, this is amazing. A quick search for (or if you have it set, a keyword followed by) þe olde SVN opens an instance of Chrome when one is warranted. Unfortunately, the bookmark search only works in Safari and Chrome. You can have pages open using Firefox, but we’ll get into that below. (Is the suspense killing you yet?)

The Rest: Calculator, Dictionary and Contacts are all improved over Spotlight. Alfred also includes actions for controlling iTunes, the entire macOS system and even the ability to run terminal (Terminal.app, iTerm or Hyper, theoretically more) commands directly, opening a new window with the result. Pretty neat, eh? Let’s get to the cool part though: Workflows.

If you have used Alfred before, what was your favourite feature? Was it one of the ones I listed or something I may have missed? Comment at the bottom. I want to hear from you!

🏗 Workflows

Everything up to this point has been pretty neat. Workflows, though, take this app from nice-to-have to productivity-enhancing-drug. Workflows, as the name implies, are a way of performing one or more actions as easily as possible.

There are five parts: Triggers, Inputs, Actions, Utilities and Outputs. Triggers and Inputs start a workflow before handing off to Actions or Utilities (which may also trigger other Actions or Utilities), finally ending in an optional Output.

It seems simple enough. So why all of the fuss? All five of these parts offer a lot of different options.

🚦 Triggers can be hotkeys, other Alfred features, or an external trigger (which generally means using AppleScript. Expect more on that in another article!). Think hitting Command + Alt + V or running a Bash command. These don’t even need to be you running the trigger, either. You can use tools like fswatch to run it whenever a file is updated.

⛽️ Inputs are keyword-based actions that may have a query. Use these when you’re trying to use Alfred similar to Spotlight. “Keyword” works for simple actions like typing in keyword [query...]. For example, I have one set up so git jakew/dotfiles opens github.com/jakew/dotfiles, which makes getting to the project on Github super easy.

Another significant option for Inputs is a Script Filter. This one allows you to run a script and return the results directly in the Alfred window. It can run Python, PHP, Ruby, Perl, AppleScript or even just a Bash function. Returning JSON or XML in the proper format allows Alfred to show a custom list of results. For example, I have a Python wrapper that returns all of the tickets I own in my organization's issue tracker. By typing issues, the list is populated and selecting an option opens the issue in my browser. (Unfortunately, my issue workflow uses proprietary software so I can’t release it. 😫 Just know that it would have blown your mind.)

🏃‍♀️ Actions are generally the doing part of the workflow. For example, they might open a specific app, file or URL, or run a system command. An Action can also run an AppleScript script for automation purposes. You can combine it with applications that use x-callback-urls as well (which is itself a topic for another article.)

🧰 Utilities are the logic of the workflow. If query is this, then do that. Split arguments. Convert X to Y. Stuff like that. One extra utility available is “Debug,” which shows you the current values in your workflow objects.

📺 Lastly, Outputs are how you get the content or notification out of the workflow. It can be as simple as a macOS Notification or sound, or it can itself trigger a key combination. Outputs may also write text where your cursor is currently waiting, or put its result in your clipboard, ready for you to paste. To get even crazier: an output may also call an “External Trigger”! Remember when we mentioned those above? Yea, you can have workflows calling workflows. 😱

❤️ Sharing is Caring; Sharing Automation is Doubly So.

“Okay, you’ve convinced me,” you might be thinking, “but do I want to sit down and make all of these workflows?” The simple answer is: you don’t need to. A large community of people are already making a lot of them and are eager to share! You can join in on the Alfred Forum and even share the workflows you’ve made.

You can also get workflows from the Alfred Blog or even in future articles on Effective Dev. Here is an example of one I’ve already made:

Paste as Code Block: When “pasted,” the contents of your clipboard paste with three grave-accents ( ````` ) surrounding them to create a code block. Pasting like this is helpful in Markdown on Github/Gitlab, and in Slack.

If this article has convinced you to get Alfred or if you already have it, and you have made some workflows of your own that you’d like to share, I’d love to see them in the comments below.

🏁 Conclusion

Alfred has been amazing for increasing my productivity. As long as I don't spend my entire day making workflows instead of doing work. Alfred can get many things done, so you don’t have to. Its community is vibrant and offers a ton of resources that you should check out. Of course, your workflows are your own, so dig in and give it a try.

What Does Being an Effective Developer Mean to You?

Jake — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 12:24:00 +0000

You're never going to finish that side project, are you? Life keeps you busy. Maybe you have a full time (or more) job? Perhaps you have a kid that won't let you sit still for 10 minutes? Maybe your dog needs to go for a walk? Or maybe your significant other would like to stay in and watch Netflix? I have had all of these come up before and more.

I know the stress of wanting to create but not having the time to do it. I know the crushing blow of cleaning up such promising projects that once consumed hours of your day (or night). I don't have all the answers, but I'm looking for them, and when I find them, I’ll be here to share them with you.

I've been practicing techniques for effectiveness at work for a few years now. I love my job writing software, but I do wish I had more time for my projects. My time is limited as I am a husband, father, dog owner and homeowner on top of working 40 hours a week. By using what I've learned to maximize my effectiveness in my projects, I aim to create more time and be more productive with the time I have.

Of course, the first thing we need to do is define our terms. The title of the blog, Effective Developer, hints at what we aim to become.

✅ Defining Effective

Successful in producing a desired or intended result - My iPhone

That sums it up nicely, but it is vague. Assuming we know what all of those words mean, there's still more to define. You can't be successful unless you define what success means to you. You have to determine what the desired or intended result is to be able to reach it successfully.

The desired or intended result will vary from person to person. My goal is different from yours unless your goal is to create a Database app primarily for iOS Siri Shortcuts. If it is, then we have a problem. I digress. What you are looking to do in your spare time will have a significant impact on if it gets done or not. Doing something you hate is even less effective as a hobby than it is as a job!

Your goal should be modest. If it takes a full-time job, on top of your full-time job, then you're going to burn out and desert the project before completion. It should be specific, though. It should be S.M.A.R.T. This goal can then be broken down into smaller ones.

Once you know what needs doing, the next step (and this one is a doozy) is to get it done. The thing to keep in mind is that we want the MVP — minimum viable product. The least amount of work on the project that needs doing for it to be considered a success. Why? Because you have a life. You have other obligations, and if you try to do more, chances are you'll come up short.

Being effective means knowing what is important in your project, and knowing what is busy work. Being effective is knowing how to focus on that critical work and getting it done. Being effective means using tools that are available to you to do more of that vital, mission-critical work than would otherwise be possible.

A quick interjection on tools: One of my biggest distractions in life is finding new tools. In search of the best tool for a job, I would get distracted from the task at hand. Don't be like me—or at least past me.

If you're still with me, and I believe you are, you probably understand what it means to be effective. Obviously, besides being Batman/Ironman levels of filthy rich, we are going to need to work at it.

We made it halfway through this definition thing. Let's keep going!

👨‍💻 Defining Developer

Okay, let's move on to the second word. Shall we see what the iPhone dictionary says? I think we shall:

a person or thing that develops something - My iPhone

Assuming the robot apocalypse has not occurred, you're likely a person. Actually, who knows. If corporations get to be people, why not robots? That leaves us with “that develops something.” That leaves it pretty cut and dry. “Something.”

In the context of this blog, that something is likely software but could be anything. If you have a different hobby, stick around as you may learn a few new tips for being effective at work, at home and on your time. Finding time for your hobby is universal.

Although you can expect some aspects specific to software developers, nearly all will be computer or technology-based due to my main hobbies being software development and blogging. Most of the content of this blog could relate just as well to writing a book or running a side business.

What development does not mean is abandoning things. The point may come when you need to cut a project loose. Cutting a project free can be quite easy when the alternative—completing the project—starts to seem complicated. It's hard to continue knowing it's an uphill battle. I know this because I’m terrible at it. Exhibit A: my long laundry list of things I've abandoned. It reads like the obituary of someone with the attention span of a goldfish.

👻 Exhibit Me: The Project Graveyard

My graveyard of projects. I've been an avid and passionate programmer for over 16 years. In that time I have given up on:

Websites: Zelda fan pages (I was 14…)
Wedding Website (Actually, this one worked out well)
Web Forums: RPG, Software Developer
Blogs: Personal x ~10 and one on writing
iPhone and Mac Apps: x 20-30 since 2008
Writing a book: Fiction x 2 and Technical x 1

I could keep going, but I don't feel like being sad. I tend to give up quickly. I’ve attempted to create an app for either iOS or macOS since 2008. I have yet to launch an app successfully. I have a lot of great ideas. Where I fail is that I find it hard to get things done, manage the project and still maintain motivation.

The good news is this: I'm going to get through it, and when I do, I'm hoping to publish it here, first.

🤖 Exhibit You: What Is Your Project?

What is your current personal-time work? Is it hard for you to find time to work on it? Are you having problems making progress, or are you getting stuck in busy work? I want to hear from you! Post a comment below and let me know. We are in this together!

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