A wise man gets it done

Sometimes, no matter how much you whine about something, it just won’t go away until you roll up your sleeves and work on it.

I’ve been feeling like whining about how all of these cool programs and games are getting released by everybody these days, and I haven’t been able to get squat done. But every time I started to think about it, I kept remembering that I have a small pile of unfinished projects that could use some attention. Some need a little bit, others need a lot.

I’m a big fan of the “pick something small, get it working, and use that as inspiration to move onto something bigger” philosophy. I use that technique all the time at work to try and get around logjams (be they mental, or load based). For the most part its pretty effective, the feeling of accomplishment builds quickly as small tasks disappear off the old to-do list.

So I decided to apply this to a python project I’ve been twiddling with for over a year. I ran one of the tests for it, and saw an error. I spent about a half hour or so playing around fixing the error and in the process managed to improve the code flow, pretty print my output messages, and uncover a potential problem before it had a chance to bite me. And you know what? It feels good to have gotten that done. A few more sessions like this one and I might actually finish this project up before the end of the year…

As a side thought on this topic: It is really important to use tools that allow you to have a maximum amount of productivity. In a situation where you are time constrained (i.e. a deadline is looming, you only have an hour to play, etc.) every second counts. If you are fighting you IDE, you are not solving your core problems. I thought about using TextMate to try and work with my python code last night, but I kept running into situations where using Eclipse was easier. So despite the “niceness” of TextMate, I had to abandon it for this project and keep on using Eclipse (and the wonderful PyDev plugin). Less twidiling, more working.