
Finish one thing today - jacobwyke
http://finishonethingtoday.com/
======
jsherer
Similar comments from a University of Texas, Austin commencement speech by
Adm. McRaven [1]:

"Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were
all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing
they would inspect was your bed.

If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the
pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly
at the foot of the rack—rack—that’s Navy talk for bed.

It was a simple task—mundane at best. But every morning we were required to
make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time,
particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors,
tough battle hardened SEALs—but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven
to me many times over.

If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task
of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you
to do another task and another and another.

By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many
tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little
things in life matter.

If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things
right.

And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that
is made—that you made—and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow
will be better.

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed."

[1]: [http://www.utexas.edu/news/2014/05/16/admiral-mcraven-
commen...](http://www.utexas.edu/news/2014/05/16/admiral-mcraven-commencement-
speech/)

~~~
shas3
I think the flip side of this approach is that one may get bogged down in
doing tasks which give you short term satisfaction but don't do much in
helping you progress on real projects. I faced this problem often as a
graduate student. On certain days, I would get immense satisfaction in
discovering new Latex tricks and packages, tweaking research codes to the
point of diminishing returns, organizing bibliography, etc. while making no
real progress on my dissertation.

I think while taking the approach of 'finish something today', one should
consciously avoid falling into the trap of avoiding consequential tasks.

~~~
jsherer
I agree. "Finish something today" is not an excuse to avoid medium and long-
term goal setting and defining tasks that need to be accomplished to move
forward.

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scarygliders
Welp, I finished one thing today..

My first paid-for application commissioned by a client. I even drummed up a
small manual for them, before sending out the "It's ready." email with the
manual attached and a link to the installer download.

Not bad for a Monday morning!

It wasn't a big application, and did one specific thing. But it'll improve
their (business) life dramatically. Bonus: I get to send them a juicy invoice.
Bonus II: I just discovered I /love/ developing for paying clients B)

~~~
sockgrant
Congrats! That's awesome :)

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exodust
Am I in therapy?

We're evolving, not finishing.

Obsessing over finishing something every day can't be useful or necessary.
Could be distracting.

The haiku-styled self-help thingy here is lacking depth.. it's generic
motivational cliche central. It's corny stuff.

Sounds like a form of OCD. The same people couldn't bare to leave the dirty
dishes til the next morning.

Relax. You don't need to finish something today for the sake of "finishing".

You can subscribe to the journey or the destination, choose one, but don't
push what you choose onto others and call it "Hacker News".

"Ship one thing today".

Ah... nope. And I don't ship. Never understood the obsession with "shipping".
It suggests a commercial operation, a red-button launch, manufacturing and
selling washing machines.

------
baldfat
My significant other really struggles with feeling over whelmed. If she feels
overwhelmed she doesn't do anything. If we end up doing one thing together to
finish it she just eats up the rest. She isn't lazy and she isn't unmotivated.
This idea really could work for some people.

This should actually help a lot of people.

~~~
tohdv1987
I feel the same way your SO does all the time. There's a mountain of work to
be done in front of me and it's demoralizing to even contemplate the amount of
effort it will take to get to the top.

Something stupidly simple that has helped me a lot is to make a list of the
individual to-do's. I like to have a master list for the project I'm working
on, and a daily one I make in the morning, with each point small enough that I
can accomplish one in a matter of minutes or hours.

The act of crossing a single item off - and then over time looking at the list
and seeing a whole bunch of items crossed off - is amazingly effective for me.
I am able to focus on the next 10 feet rather than fainting at the thought of
a 10 mile uphill climb. I can hardly believe something so simple has gotten
such results on such a critical and daily issue. But it has.

Maybe this could help your SO? I don't think it's a stretch to say making
lists has changed my life.

------
aidos
I lived with my girlfriend's parents many years ago and at the time her father
was building a Morris Minor 1000 and a Triumph Bonneville bike (in his spare
time). The final results were showroom condition vehicles; absolute works of
art. I was fortunate enough to be there for most of the duration of the
projects.

I learnt _a lot_ about how vehicles work from those days. It was fascinating
working on machines like that from first principals. Every single thing was
stripped down and rebuilt from several dead vehicles. Even every last washer
was cleaned up and reused.

One of my main take aways was actually his approach to working on the
projects. Every day he would complete at least one thing on each project.
Sometimes it was as small making a phone call, or as large as fitting the
engine into the chassis.

It might have taken a couple of years but he got there in the end.

~~~
dceddia
That sounds like an amazing feat from a productivity/finishing projects
standpoint, but I'd be really interested to hear about the organization
process for a thing like that. I'm sure one can't rely on memory alone to
remember which tiny washer goes with each widget. For a smaller project, I'd
sort the screws into cups or something. But for an entire bike? Huh.

~~~
bronson
It's not like every washer needs to be removed simultaneously. Just rebuild
each component one by one.

That said, it's still amazing work. When some friends built a Lemons car
(nowhere near as exacting), I was surprised to find that probably 75% of our
time and communication was inventory management and organization. You think
you're going to be welding and spinning nuts? No, you're going to be heading
back to the store for more acetone and Sterilite boxes while your friend
spends hours sorting parts looking for the !#$*@ headlight switch.

------
qrohlf
> SHIP ONE THING TODAY.

> RELEASE IT TO THE WORLD.

> If you don’t have an idea, imitate something else.

> You will think it’s not important enough.

> You will think nobody will care.

> You will overestimate its importance.

> You will sometimes fail.

Counterpoint: Instead of focusing on quantity ("hack it together and ship it",
"ship it today", "finish it and release it to the world", etc.), let's take a
step back and think about quality. I have personally been bitten from having
to maintain side projects that I shipped prematurely just to "finish them".

I'm not saying you shouldn't finish things, however I do think there's value
in raising standards for what you consider "finished", and that finishing
something every day is a goal that is likely to be at odds with those
standards.

Two articles that I recommend reading:

1\. Generation Javascript by Manuel Bernhardt
([http://manuel.bernhardt.io/2014/12/30/generation-
javascript/](http://manuel.bernhardt.io/2014/12/30/generation-javascript/))

2\. A Generation Lost in the Bazaar by Poul-Henning Kamp
([https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2349257](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2349257))

~~~
geoelectric
I think there's something to be said for getting the habit of getting things
done without getting hung up on their quality, and then moving towards quality
once you have some level of cadence established.

IME, people hit a point where they start introducing quality or breaking down
bigger tasks because their goal requires it. You don't need to encourage that
so much as just getting them doing something in the first place.

Compare to the classic advice to set an egg-timer for 5 minutes if you're
having problems getting started with something. 9 times out of 10 you'll
continue and finish it after the timer goes off, but makes it much less
intimidating to start if you know you can legitimately bail after 5 minutes.

~~~
sfilipov
Also, I am sure most people are aware of it but still worth mentioning - The
Pomodoro Technique:

[http://pomodorotechnique.com/](http://pomodorotechnique.com/)

------
kozhevnikov
Reminds me of a popular /r/bestof "No Zero Days" comment on reddit.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/i_ju...](https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/i_just_dont_care_about_myself/cdah4af)

------
ctb_mg
This really sums up the idea of what I've been trying to express to myself the
past few months on my stagnated side-project. I know if I work iteratively,
the small pieces start to add up quickly.

However for me the trick is to get that initial push to _start_ the work, even
if the effort itself is small and manageable. It's hard for me to get
motivated.

~~~
josefresco
I posted to my blog this weekend. It was a small victory, but one that made me
feel better all weekend, and will make me more motivated to jump back in
again.

Most with creative side-projects suffer the same trouble as you and I: trouble
starting. I try to remind myself of how good I'll feel after, and also limit
my time to 45 minutes on the computer - thereby avoiding sinking an entire
weekend into something that resembles "work".

------
Kiro
I've been using Don't Break The Chain on and off for maybe a year and it has
really helped me battle my procrastination. I now have a clean home and have
finished a lot of side-projects. The challenge is to pick it up again after
you (inevitably) break the chain now and then.

------
sockgrant
Similar to this, at Google they do "snippets". Every week they write a short
e-mail blurb about what they accomplished last week and what they plan to
complete this week.

I gave this method a try and it's been great. It helps me stay on task, have
goals, and feel good about what I've accomplished. It helps me minimize the
"swamped" feeling because I'm actively prioritizing and then knocking those
things off the list.

I'm currently trying to do a weekly snippet e-mail to myself, and additionally
every morning I make a mini, unofficial snippets of what I'd like to
accomplish for the day (generally taking items from the weekly snippets).

~~~
chuckcode
Seems like there is something important socially about being able to tell
others what you plan to do and then after the fact share what you
accomplished. As a software engineer it can be difficult when the work is so
technical that I can't really share it with anybody easily. Trying to friends
and family about how the new code using AVX instructions runs a lot faster in
a critical section of the code ends up being underwhelming.

Sites like "finish one thing today" calls out again that constant struggle
between curiosity and focus. My natural curiosity has been a huge benefit in
my life but it certainly gets in the way sometimes when I need it to turn off
so I can just focus on the problem at hand.

------
Swizec
A few weeks ago my girlfriend almost chewed my head off because my insistence
on finishing _something_ that day almost made us late to a dinner. We didn't
end up being late. But she didn't understand why I cared more about finishing
at least something in an otherwise crappy day than I did about inconveniencing
two people. (her and her friend)

Life's funny that way.

------
alanfalcon
Genuine question: Is this a good excercise to help built the Grit
characteristic?

[http://rrhs.schoolwires.net/cms/lib7/WI01001304/Centricity/D...](http://rrhs.schoolwires.net/cms/lib7/WI01001304/Centricity/Domain/187/Grit%20JPSP.pdf)

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kieranajp
tl;dr :p

(to clarify because internet + downvotes: this is a joke about not finishing
the article about finishing things - I did actually read it!)

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lurkylurk
This reminds me of Ze Frank's An Invocation for Beginnings [1] which is all
about starting something and the fear and anxiety that comes along with that.
Definitely worth a watch.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYlCVwxoL_g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYlCVwxoL_g)

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mrbig4545
I finished at least 3 things today. 4 if you count making the bed...

why is this site trying to make me lazy?

and if I don't want to finish something, then I won't. I'm not a machine, I
want to have some days off, usually not enough.

but when I can, I enjoy spending a whole day on the sofa doing nothing. you
should try it, it's nice

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motoboi
I think this is a great motivational site for procrastinators (not only those
involved in software development). Doing One Thing Today can be the beginning
of a new habit, the habit of not procrastinating.

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simoneau
"Write Code Every Day", John Resig:

[http://ejohn.org/blog/write-code-every-day/](http://ejohn.org/blog/write-
code-every-day/)

He set himself similar rules.

~~~
ar_turnbull
Also see Stephen King's memoir "On Writing" : [http://www.amazon.ca/On-
Writing-Anniversary-Edition-Memoir/d...](http://www.amazon.ca/On-Writing-
Anniversary-Edition-Memoir/dp/1439156816)

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muhammadusman
After reading this, it helped me write a blog post I had just been thinking
about. Nothing big, it was just a blog post but I feel so much better about
getting it off my chest!

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sheepmullet
Counterpoint: I spend 8+ hours a day at work focused on shipping. I need to
spend time learning, experimenting, and "playing".

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pknerd
_Eat that Frog_ talks about similar concept.

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vishalzone2002
This is one of the principle that can be applied to multiple facets of life
like body building or learning a new instrument.

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CmonDev
They need a more unique hashtag though.

~~~
davidw
Amongst other things, "fott" is the stem of a vulgar verb in Italian.

~~~
jacobwyke
Ooops. My fault for not speaking Italian :S

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criveros
Today I will clean up my room. Does that count?

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bhhaskin
I love the concept of finish one thing today.

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ozh
I see there's still a market for stating the obvious... I was expecting
something more disruptive or innovative or helpful, to be honest.

