The Best Projects Can Be Done in a Weekend

2.3.2022

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Okay, so maybe that’s not entirely true. I am pretty sure that Netflix was not built in a weekend. Although JavaScript more or less was, so perhaps some of the worst projects are done in a weekend… but I digress.

I long ago recognized that large scale personal projects were simply not My Thing. I had too many grand ideas that led to too many new tombstones in my GitHub repository graveyard. Multi quarter projects at work? Sure, no problem. But spending nights and weekends for months just to see my little side project actually work the way it should? I simply don’t have the focus.

Instead, I drastically scaled down my ambitions. Instead of trying to build difficult things that might be super cool when they’re complete, I focused on simple things that will be moderately-to-pretty cool. And would you believe it – I started finishing projects!

The satisfaction I gain from my hobby-time coding activities has increased dramatically since I started doing smaller projects. At the end of the day, I love making things that work. I’m much happier with a small, silly (and likely redundant) program that does something useful than I am with some unfinished masterpiece.

Of course, many MVPs lend themselves to iteration – that’s kind of the point. Due to this approach, I have scores of small projects that are “done,” but which I can pick up and hack on whenever I feel the itch.

The world needs big, ambitious software. But I’ll save that for the weekdays.