That moment you hit the wall and everything goes blank in your head about a website you are building. You question yourself about everything in it…how on earth do you deal with it to get your head back into the game?
Go and get something to eat. Take some time away from your screen and let your mind just drift around the scenario. For me, overnight usually sorts it all.
Haha been over a week for me and still can’t get back into the game
Go for a bike ride, run or gym (if you are COVID allowed) more oxygen to your brain works wonders!
First, welcome to the Wappler community!
Usually for it’s a matter of just sitting back, breathing and having a couple
Things then generally go a little smoother.
Hi Peter! First, I think every comment above is valid. I do not have much experience as a developer, but I am experienced on project managing. I would say this issue you are referring to is quite common not just in the development world.
I would give you the following tips for any project you have:
1.- Validate your ideas: a common mistake is to rush into execution because you have some amazing idea, but after investing time and effort on it, you may realize that it won’t solve the problem you intended to solve or even worse the problem that you are trying to address is not as important as you believe. That is why Proof of concept is so important, after you have validated the problem and the idea then it is time to start planning.
2.- Plan everything you will do: Having a plan is important to keep your project on track, if you do not plan then you will improvise, here is where the trouble begins. Is ok to improvise time to time, mostly because you can’t plan every aspect of the project beforehand and also there are some aspect that you didn’t know of or you had some bad luck, but you can’t improvise everything or you will find out that your solution is not consistent and your productivity will be very slow.
3.- Stick to the plan, but also don’t be afraid of pivot: You must find balance between following the plan and change aspects of you project, and the best way to do this is to have a master plan and make weekly basis planning/sprints, launch the earliest possible and get feedback. You can use the data you get to make an informed decision vs just following your guts, believe me the first one is always the better choice, if you have a feeling that there is something that could be improved or should be changed, get into it a find it out, ask questions, maybe interview some people you think that would eventually visit your website, collect data and then make a decision. During sprints don’t overthink, just do, during planning and meetings you can raise all the questions, doubts and ideas you have, but after planning the next couple of weeks don’t discourage yourself with doubts, you created that plan for a reason.
4.- Just launch, don’t seek perfection: There will be times that you may believe that your product is not perfect and if it’s not perfect then it doesn’t make sense to launch it at all. Well you couldn’t be further from truth, the main reason to launch early (a MVP for instance) is to test if your product is in good track and if it’s solving the problems that it is intended to, you can improve after, also try to recover data from users usage, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. REMEMBER if it’s not perfect, but your clients or users still use it, then is good enough .
Just a note
@Peter and @gunnery are the same person
Anyway I’d recommend you to take a break, grab a beer (West End?) and things will be better. Beer always helps
Bike ride always helps me. I will ride to lunch and a lot of time I will figure out what my issue is when I’m not even thinking about it. Bike riding increases the oxygen flow to the brain.
@teodor For some reason when I logged in with my email address it opened a new account, so went back to my user name and it’s back to normal…west end beer (it’s nasty) lol but agreed beer always does help,
That’s sound advice. Thanks
Ah @brad not my first post buddy, for some reason when I logged in with my email it gave a different account than when I log in with my user name. But thanks anyway
lol, the advice still stands.
Thanks for that @brad , I think stress over the past few weeks has caught up on me. Literally every time I sit at the keyboard and blam the mind has gone blank.
I think I need to start planning more instead of flying into a project (especially when it’s a big one) or working on multiple projects.
It’s certainly interesting to see the responses, perhaps I may also need to join a gym.
Would be interesting to see how people plan their projects and what software (if any) they use.
Still today’s another day…so will try again.
Good old pen and paper. Maybe a whiteboard on complicated ones.
Yep that’s a good point…
I’m working on a membership portal which is getting a little confusing and frustrating. Does not help as the client has just changed the way they do things, so literally months of work is now out of the window.
As I know the clients and I’m pet of the club there has been very little input from them and it’s been left up to me.
If you are not used to it and a pantser and not a usual planner then I wouldn't overdo it because you probably will get into it for the first week then you will let it fall of the end of the desk never to be seen again and adds more stress.
Pen and paper is good but paper can be messy. I would advise just start using a simple tool like Microsoft's todo, "Your request has been blocked. This could be due to several reasons." Not sure if you used or remember Wunderlist but it was acquired by Microsoft and turned into Microsoft's todo.
Create a project folder and just add in your tasks for the next week, what you need to get done not what you would like to do - add some dates and times. Then when you get it done tick the box, there is nothing more satisfying and it will help change your planning behavior. After a week look back on what you have achieved - there is nothing more satisfying. Reward yourself with a beer, ice-cream, cigar or what ever makes you happy
Stick with it for 30 days and see how you feel
If you are working on your own, then I would recommend you to not use any particular platform for planning, but it could be useful to draw some mind maps and wireframes before rushing into the code. Take a look at this app: https://whimsical.com/ you can use it for free and it's very useful for design and low prototyping, with it you can create a visual backlogs of the features you want to add to your webpage or describe the relationships between the different entities (DB tables) at a conceptual level.
If you are working with people, I believe it is all about good communication, so I would recommend you use Slack. Also, you can check jira: Jira | Issue & Project Tracking Software | Atlassian This is for project managing, but at a more complex level and it may be to much for your use case.
Either way, I believe it is crucial to define which features your MVP (or next versions) will include, write them down and develop, if you have more ideas while you are working, GREAT! Take note of them, BUT don't interfere the current sprint, finish your work, plan the next sprint bringing the new ideas to the table if you want, but after you are done planning, just execute.
I didn’t know that the Dutch actually have a word for it. Uitwaaien
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-simple-dutch-cure-for-stress?utm_source=pocket-newtab