I’ve become an insufferable list-maker. I’ve been meaning to start a blog, largely to improve my ability to organize and effectively communicate challenging concepts. Every time I sit down to “start work on the blog,” I find myself ending up with a stack of lists—what needs to be done, topic ideas, features of the website design, people to partner/affiliate/guest blog with, hooks for a viral video blog, and so on. Rinse and repeat—a new stack of lists every time.
Something similar happens to me too, though with a shorter list. (I need a responsive design, Atom/RSS feed or even better a few of them, navigable directory structure, links between multilingual versions of the same article, better admin part, support for JQuery and other libraries, syntax highlighting in code examples; and then articles about Java programming, rationality, education; buttons for social networks, a twitter feed… that’s what I remember at this moment, without looking at notes.)
Technically, the solution is iterative programming: Add one feature and make it all work. Add another feature and make it work. When the basic framework is ready, ask yourself which feature would be most useful to add next.
Psychologically, I realized that I am afraid of failure. Often when I start a project, it grows too big in my imagination, and I don’t finish it. It helped me to remind myself that I have also completed many projects; and that if I had to the make a similar project in my work, I would do it without problems and actually would consider it an easy project. -- It does not mean my web is finished yet, but it helped me to do some progress yesterday, instead of just avoiding the work.
I’ve become an insufferable list-maker. I’ve been meaning to start a blog, largely to improve my ability to organize and effectively communicate challenging concepts. Every time I sit down to “start work on the blog,” I find myself ending up with a stack of lists—what needs to be done, topic ideas, features of the website design, people to partner/affiliate/guest blog with, hooks for a viral video blog, and so on. Rinse and repeat—a new stack of lists every time.
Something similar happens to me too, though with a shorter list. (I need a responsive design, Atom/RSS feed or even better a few of them, navigable directory structure, links between multilingual versions of the same article, better admin part, support for JQuery and other libraries, syntax highlighting in code examples; and then articles about Java programming, rationality, education; buttons for social networks, a twitter feed… that’s what I remember at this moment, without looking at notes.)
Technically, the solution is iterative programming: Add one feature and make it all work. Add another feature and make it work. When the basic framework is ready, ask yourself which feature would be most useful to add next.
Psychologically, I realized that I am afraid of failure. Often when I start a project, it grows too big in my imagination, and I don’t finish it. It helped me to remind myself that I have also completed many projects; and that if I had to the make a similar project in my work, I would do it without problems and actually would consider it an easy project. -- It does not mean my web is finished yet, but it helped me to do some progress yesterday, instead of just avoiding the work.