N.A.N.Y. and the Too Many Projects Phenomenon

[Tuxman]

As some of you may know, I usually have a dozen unfinished projects in my pipeline. So many ideas, but only such a limited time!

When I started participating in the N.A.N.Y. contests, it motivated me to get some of these projects done instead of just having them float around as a rough TODO list. Now some of these projects take too much time, so I publish them early in the next year. That leads to a certain feeling that I should probably write more code until the end of the year is approaching fast, because it feels wrong to submit projects twice.

Now my increased productivity - or, at least, I hope that's what it is - has an interesting side effect: When I'm working on a project and I am stuck, I start another one for the time being. I usually choose a different toolset for each, so I'm not stuck in the same place in more than one project at a time.

So I am currently trying to finish one COBOL, one Pascal and one Perl project until Dec 31, and I am mostly sure that only the Perl project will be done within the time frame (because it is already "done", I only need to adjust the GUI and tweak the performance before I consider it release-ready). One of the big problems with projects which have no paid deadline is that you just don't care enough anymore...

[superboyac]

As some of you may know, I usually have a dozen unfinished projects in my pipeline. So many ideas, but only such a limited time!

When I started participating in the N.A.N.Y. contests, it motivated me to get some of these projects done instead of just having them float around as a rough TODO list. Now some of these projects take too much time, so I publish them early in the next year. That leads to a certain feeling that I should probably write more code until the end of the year is approaching fast, because it feels wrong to submit projects twice.

Now my increased productivity - or, at least, I hope that's what it is - has an interesting side effect: When I'm working on a project and I am stuck, I start another one for the time being. I usually choose a different toolset for each, so I'm not stuck in the same place in more than one project at a time.

So I am currently trying to finish one COBOL, one Pascal and one Perl project until Dec 31, and I am mostly sure that only the Perl project will be done within the time frame (because it is already "done", I only need to adjust the GUI and tweak the performance before I consider it release-ready). One of the big problems with projects which have no paid deadline is that you just don't care enough anymore...

-Tuxman (August 13, 2019, 07:07 AM)

You must keep the momentum going! Always Finish! It's good for the soul.

[ewemoa]

When I'm working on a project and I am stuck, I start another one for the time being.

-Tuxman (August 13, 2019, 07:07 AM)

Have been trying this with varying degrees of success.

I usually choose a different toolset for each, so I'm not stuck in the same place in more than one project at a time.

Hadn't considered this.  Thanks for the idea

[wraith808]

That is actually a good idea and can get you working in many different languages.  I've been defaulting to C# because it is comfortable, but need to brush up on my Python also.