Action.. ACtion.. ACTion.
I’ve been debating for a while what my next solo project will be. I’ve thought about making a few clones of popular apps / websites. I’ve thought about making some simple games. I’ve thought about just refactoring a project I already have. You’ll notice something similar in all of those sentences: “thought”. I haven’t actually done anything in those sentences.
As someone still new to the coding world, it’s often hard for me to decide what project to work on to best further my knowledge base. I’m trying to.. in a way min-max my learning. Yes, I’m a gamer… ^_^
In reality, if I had spent all of that time thinking about what project to do next, I could have had multiple projects done and or in progress by now. However, I’m doing what I feel many people do in all aspects of life: THINK TOO MUCH. Instead of thinking about which would be best, it would be best to just work on something.
One thing that I’ve learned from my life before becoming a software developer, has been completely forgotten as of recent. It’s something that I feel many people can apply to their life, not only in the coding world.
“It’s not dumb if it works.” Is something my WFR (Wilderness First Responder) instructor told my class. Being in the wilderness and having a medical emergency isn’t a good thing, clearly. And often times, that emergency can be very time sensitive. So I was taught to think of a plan before acting, but not to spend forever trying to think of the perfect plan. In short, if it works, it works. There is no sense in wasting another 30 minutes trying to come up with a plan that will save you 5 minutes.
That’s a lesson I’ve sadly forgotten until recent, and one that I intend on implementing back into my life. While the apps that I build might not be as worked out as they could be, they’ll be built. And by building those, i’ll have inevitably learned in the process. Of course I’m not saying that quality doesn’t matter. It does, and in fact it matters a whole lot. However in the realm of learning, quality is something that becomes more important when it’s applied to the learning and not the project. I’d rather have learned more and built a CLI, then learned nothing and built a full stack application.
What should you take away from this? STOP spending so much time thinking about what you’re going to build. Instead, ACT upon a thought, no matter how simple and just build it.
