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I had a similar problem in the past. I did some soul-searching, and realized that the projects that I undertook were huge, and would take at least a month of wo

I had a similar problem in the past. I did some soul-searching, and realized that the projects that I undertook were huge, and would take at least a month of work in order to "finish." During this time, it was completely unusable up until the very end. Not having anything to show for hard work was demotivational. The solution for me was to partition my work into hilariously small pieces. When I start a project from scratch, my first few tasks are "create the directory hierarchy," "create a repository," "Hello World," and "create exception-throwing stubs for the basic functionality." The idea is to finish early and finish often. If you can't commit a working version every day or two, you may be working on chunks that are too large. It'll even sound better to your boss! Instead of saying, "no, I am not done," you can say, "I finished X,Y,Z, and W, and I am having trouble with S and R."

DEinspanjer 17y ago
If you need help coming up with a good plan for this, there are methodologies around it. Two that I like a lot are: The Pomodoro Technique - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique Getting Things Done - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done
nostrademons 17y ago
We have daily stand-up meetings at work for this purpose. Oftentimes my only report is "I moved chunk of code from X to Y", which of course required touching 20 files (ah, legacy codebases). That's fine - the point is that you make some progress, not that you make huge amounts of progress. Also, stand-ups are for your (the worker's) benefit, not your boss's. It's perfectly fine to say "I did nothing this past day" - your boss doesn't care (well, mine doesn't). But if you say "I did nothing this past day" for a week, you'll begin to feel like you're missing out on something, which is an incentive to look at what you're doing and bite off a smaller chunk of it.
- Andys 17y ago
  This is a good attitude, and sounds like you work at a place with a good culture. The emphasis is on sustainability - if you can make some small forward progress every day over a long period, the project is more likely to succeed and every one wins.

DEinspanjer 17y ago

If you need help coming up with a good plan for this, there are methodologies around it. Two that I like a lot are: The Pomodoro Technique - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique Getting Things Done - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done

nostrademons 17y ago

We have daily stand-up meetings at work for this purpose. Oftentimes my only report is "I moved chunk of code from X to Y", which of course required touching 20 files (ah, legacy codebases). That's fine - the point is that you make some progress, not that you make huge amounts of progress. Also, stand-ups are for your (the worker's) benefit, not your boss's. It's perfectly fine to say "I did nothing this past day" - your boss doesn't care (well, mine doesn't). But if you say "I did nothing this past day" for a week, you'll begin to feel like you're missing out on something, which is an incentive to look at what you're doing and bite off a smaller chunk of it.

Andys 17y ago
This is a good attitude, and sounds like you work at a place with a good culture. The emphasis is on sustainability - if you can make some small forward progress every day over a long period, the project is more likely to succeed and every one wins.