Ship something every day

I always enjoy the satisfaction of picking up a small, well-defined task and being able to complete a solution within a few hours.

But work is not always so tidy. Real-world apps are full of complex features that take days or weeks to complete. But if you shift your mindset a little, you can still get that same dopamine hit that comes from regularly finishing a task. Instead of waiting until the whole feature is done, pick a portion of it that can be completed in isolation.

Maybe you're building a list view with pagination, searching, sorting, export, etc. Just build the view first, with maybe simple pagination, and complete that. Then layer additional functionality on in small chunks. This doesn't mean you should submit something that's broken or incomplete, but you can often find smaller slices within a feature that can stand on their own.

In some ways it does add a little extra friction, getting something to a working, functional state before the whole feature is 100% complete. But in other ways, I think it helps the quality of the code and architecture.

You maintain better communication with the team, your PRs are easier to review, and you generate earlier opportunities to course correct. And if your team doesn't like the idea of more frequent reviews, you can still follow the process in your own feature branch.

Give it a try on your work this week and let me know how you like it.

Here to help,

Joel

P.S. Aaron and I are available to work on your project at a flat monthly price.