Number One

August 19, 2009 at 11:50 am · Filed under news, planning

We won TipJoy’s API Contest. The prize is the sexy MacBook Air I’m typing on. At first we divided it up between the three of us. I got the right hand keys excluding numbers, functions and enter. At least I got spacebar, but no ctrl or meta.

Now that I’ve bought the full keyboard from my teammates, what’s the plan? We received plenty of help from our heroic alpha testers (thanks for sending us emails and using our feedback forum!).

Bubble List

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead” –Mark Twain

I’ve personally and professionally tried a variety of project and time management software over the years. From simple todo lists to software specifically crafted to address agile development.

I’m currently swinging back around to the simplicity of todo lists. I like the simplicity of working in priority order. I struggle with actually prioritizing tasks.

[Edit: also with keeping just one list...and looking at the list regularly instead of getting buried in some obscure, pretty corner...or else looking at the list too often and reorganizing it... check out a later post on an excellent project management tool.]

I’m calling 2-dimension todo lists Bubble Diagrams. The second dimension allows me to cluster modules without taking away from module prioritization. Higher modules have higher priority, but the clustering is useful for fudging priority as necessary.

Self Control

For some reason, I did not feel compelled to add unnecessary dimensions, such as bubble size and color to indicate importance and development time. It’s like the story of how “I had to write my thesis so first I installed the right operating system. Then I had to download and compile LaTeX and find the appropriate user interface. Then I had to build a few additional emacs extensions and write my own LaTeX templates…” and so on. It’s easy to trick oneself into doing work without making progress on what actually needs to get done.

I’m not a procrastinator by nature, which might be why I’m susceptible to these tricks. I tend to work with immense focus on whatever I’m currently creating…which is good as long as I’m not supposed to be doing homework, writing a thesis or working for someone else instead. I particularly like to create order, which is why working on a startup means that my room is a mess but my* code is the Awesome.

Proudly ProcrasDonating,

Lucy.

* I stand on the shoulders of giants

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