Lately I have been interested in changing the way I schedule my daily tasks. I love programming and reading, and I have come to acknowledge that more often than I like to admit, it seems I have insufficient time to do these activities.
I used to get home from work and pick up any of my side projects, whenever I could, even if I felt too tired to only grasp a few lines of code, and ultimately my projects didn’t get too far. Or I would grab a book from the pile of books I want to read, even if I have to read it during nightime, which I don’t like that much. If I could, I would read only during the day as I get tired really quickly with the artificial lightning during the night.
This week I read two great articles on changing the way we schedule our daily activities to “have the time” once again to complete our side projects and not feel stressed by not doing what we like, leaving time to do family activities as well or what we prefer to do on your free time.
Write Code Everyday by John Resig
This is a most-read article on how John changed its daily habits to write his side projects code while dealing with his work and maintaining a healthy balance. John’s github page shows the impact on his contributions chart.
500 Day Commit Streak by David Leonard
Inspired by John Resig’s post, David Leonard writes on how he started writing code each day to improve himself as a developer and as a thinker. He achieved a 500 commit streak on his github page this way. Impressive!
I am starting to make same changes in my daily routine, hoping it will make me a better person and developer. I leave some time in the morning or after lunch to code my side projects and push it to my github repos, and I take a book to work and put aside a maximum of 20 minutes to read a few pages everyday. This way I enjoy the sunlight and get to finish the books I want to read.
How about you? Do you have any advices or a different way to work? Please leave a comment!
Until next time, have a lot of coding fun!