The One-Woman Dev Team Diaries #176

At a dinner with Saron and Rob during Saron's Speaking Tour, I found myself saying at one point: "I honestly don't know what's wrong with me. I must be delusional about myself and my abilities. I set up the most ambitious monthly and weekly goals, and most of the time I don't get close to completing them...but the new week or month will be starting, and I'll say this time will be different. I'm gonna complete allll of my goals...and I won't...but I'll still think the next time will be the time I do! And I've been doing this for years! And despite repeated evidence to the contrary, I don't stop doing it. I don't lower my expectations. I honestly have the utmost faith that this time will be different." 😅

I thought Saron might laugh or say "that's interesting!" But no, she said: "I honestly think that's your superpower. I think that's something that's special about you and a key to your success. You don't really get disheartened when you don't reach your goals. Instead, this trait is what keeps you driving and pushing week in and week out."

And I thought to myself, this is true! And something I shouldn't forget is that, whether big or small, I always make some progress. 

Anyway, coming into this week, I was reminded of that conversation because...
 

...all those things I said I was gonna do last time?

Yeah, well, I hardly made any progress on them. Nowhere near as much as I expected to. A lot of life admin and other StoryGraph stuff got in the way! 

So yeah, the same items are on my radar for the next couple of weeks.

However, there will be a change. I love experimenting with my work routine. Sometimes just the novelty of a different structure can work wonders. My current pain point is that I'm not getting focused blocks of coding time that are long enough to really get stuck in and make meaningful progress.

So, here's what I'm going to try on weekdays: 6am-10am will be dedicated to my morning routine, emails, life admin, etc. And for 10am to 10pm (when I go offline to get ready for bed) any StoryGraph work I do, bar any time-sensitive actions, critical bugs or outages, or urgent customer issues, will be dedicated to coding. I'll take breaks for exercise, reading, and pre-arranged work meetings and social commitments. But when I'm working, it has to be coding. 

I'll report back on how this goes next time.

In the meantime, if you class yourself as a productive person, hit "Reply" and let me know how you organise your time and structure your day! I'm curious!
 

I still released a new feature since last time though, of course! 💁🏾‍♀️

It was a long-awaited stat showing the average time in any given time period a user takes to finish a book, previously only shown on the end-of-year wrap-up:

The release of this stat has definitely put the pressure on the upcoming Paused feature. Luckily it's on the roadmap for this year!
 

I'm returning to Tomi Adeyemi's Legacy of Orïsha trilogy, after a five-year gap, to prepare for the new final instalment. I'm doing a buddy read with my sister!

Have a great week,

Nadia

P.S. Know somebody who's an avid reader or would enjoy following along with this journey? Please do forward this email to them! Thank you. :-)
 

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