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How to declutter the bunch of stuff you want to do at the same time?

Kevin J. Estevez on February 07, 2019

I've decided to start my journey here on dev.to with this post. Since a few months ago I've been thinking about so many things I'd like to do, bu...
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thefern profile image
Fernando B 🚀

You're not alone in this regard. I see tons of people on Twitter saying I've done x, now, I'm doing, y, now I'm onto z. All within hours. People think they can multi-task by completing so many tasks quickly without giving full attention to a particular task.

At least you recognized that is better to prioritize. One thing that helps me is to mark things in the calendar. Also for big side projects is better to break down into smaller achievable chunks. i.e. I will make a social app. vs Step 1 login, Step 2 Posts, Step 3 Feed, etc.

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kenystev profile image
Kevin J. Estevez

Thanks, Yeah, I realized I'd never finished anything if I continued trying to do everything at the same time.

I started braking the big side projects down into smaller achievable chunks.

Will try to mark things in the calendar too.

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sturzl profile image
Avery

I like to track things I've finished as well, planned or not. We're all doing more than we think and tracking it helps me from feeling lazy and motivates me to keep making progress.

It also helps you when it's time to prepare for an interview, negotiate a raise etc.

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Kevin J. Estevez

you mean adding new features and refactoring code after a project is done?

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Pritesh Usadadiya

The thing works for me is to divide one task into multiple smaller ones and go through them one by one.

Don't try to do everything at once. it never works(not in the long term at-least).

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kenystev profile image
Kevin J. Estevez

sure that's better, so when you divide into multiple smaller ones, what is the common flow you use to get through?

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priteshusadadiya profile image
Pritesh Usadadiya

what is the common flow you use to get through?

Well it's differs form task to task but let me give you a recent example,

Task : I need to create a personal website using Hugo (i had no idea of how this works , never configured sub domains and email forwarding)

Divided into the smaller one :

  1. Get general understanding of framework (high level flow only like project structure)
  2. select Theme
  3. Edit it and customize it with css
  4. Buy domain
    • Configure sub domain
    • Configure Email forwarding
  5. Push project to github
  6. Redirect to the custom domain.

When divided to smaller task, Load becomes much easier to handle and you go from top to bottom one by one without randomly jumping from one to another :)

Hope this helps :)

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kenystev profile image
Kevin J. Estevez

sure, I'll try it

thanks for sharing! :D