If you missed John Resig’s recent post about writing code everyday I highly recommend it.

He is a busy guy with a full time job (at Khan Academy), a few open source side projects (the author of jQuery), a wife, and a few hobbies. How to sustainably get stuff done on his open source side projects without his wife leaving him? He decided to start writing (non work) code for 30 minutes every day. This by itself is not a revolutionary idea. What blew my mind out of my nose and on to the table are the benefits he encountered:

  • Minimum viable code - No time for more than that.
  • Small but continuous progress - No anxiety about not getting stuff done.
  • Free time on the weekends - Instead of working all weekend to catch up from doing nothing during the week.
  • Lowered cost of context switching - Compared to resuming work on a side project just on the weekends.
  • Brain solves side project issues in the background

Wow, I need to do this too. So this is another experiment and here are the rules.

  1. I will write code for a minimum of 30 minutes each day.
  2. I must push working code every day.
  3. I will write for a minimum of 10 minutes each day.
  4. I must publish a blog post at least once a week.