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...

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.

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.