Updates on 1 commit/day challenge

Two more weeks to complete my goal of at least 1 Github commit/day till end-2023.

Before this, making a small copy or style edit and calling it a commit feels embarrassing and lame. It’s so easy to look down on small tweaks and think they don’t move the needle in terms of the big picture. It’s like, you got an ocean of grand ambition to fill, but 1 commit a day feels like use an eye dropper drop by drop to fill up to an ocean.

Yes, it’s easy to get snobbish about small efforts like that.

But surprise surprise… my experience in the past months had been anything but. It’s been surprisingly helpful for my motivation and momentum, to see a tiny incremental but visible change every day for your project. I think the impact of that visual feedback is easy to underestimate. I definitely did. But when I come back to my project every day and something new I made greets me, it feels… nudging. And with enough small nudges, it compounds into a big push.

It’s also easy to underestimate 1 small commit a day on your best days, when your motivation is high. Those days, you don’t need any hacks or tricks. You show up and you do a high volume of great work. Streak mechanisms like 1 commit a day truly shines through on your worst days. Because trust me, no man is a machine and if you do this long enough, there WILL be days when you feel tired, off, distracted, lacking sleep, or just plain unable sit down to even code for one minute. You can say, what’s wrong with taking a day off to rest? Sure, but a day off becomes two, then three, then in a flash, a month had passed and you made zero progress on your project. One day’s rest turns into a new habit after two days. Then you try to start again, feel motivated for a few days, a week, then drop off again due to other more important commitments. Start stop start stop, ad infinitum ad nauseam. Actually, I just described my life in most of 2023… until I started this challenge.

The funny thing is I’m no stranger to keeping streaks. My writing streak on Lifelog is 1081 days, and my maker streak on Makerlog is 1822. Everything I just shared, all the surprises and lessons from my 1 commit/day challenge aren’t really ground-breaking stuff. Yet when applied to a new arena, I feel like a beginner all over again.

I guess that’s a good thing.

Onwards to two more weeks… and beyond!