Write Code Every Day

Resig describes shifting his side projects from weekend-heavy work to coding every day. He says the new routine helped him keep making progress without sacrificing his work at Khan Academy, and it reduced the stress of trying to finish everything on weekends.

Reading notes

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• He had been making too little progress on side projects while trying to do them on weekends and in evenings.
• Week-long gaps made it easy to lose track of where a project had stopped, and missing a weekend could turn into a two-week gap.
• He was inspired by Jennifer Dewalt’s daily-building approach.
• His rules were to write code every day, make it useful code, finish it before midnight, and keep it open source on GitHub.
• The daily habit pushed him toward minimum viable code, usually at least 30 minutes a day.
• He says the change mattered more as a habit than as a GitHub chart.
• Consistent progress reduced anxiety about not doing enough.
• Weekends stopped being the main source of momentum, which made it easier to keep some weekends for other activities.
• Daily coding kept the project in his head during walks, showers, and other idle time.
• Shorter gaps made context switching easier.
• He had to balance work, life, and side projects more carefully, sometimes coding early or returning home late to finish.
• The habit also made it easier to explain his schedule to his partner and others.
• He says he produced a large amount of code, including new websites, rewritten frameworks, and many Node modules.