Many of you will know that I tend to have multiple projects going in parallel. Some time back, I explained how I keep track of the tasks I have planned. One thing I feel like I'm still missing is a way to keep an eye on the overall vision.

There are only so many hours in a day, so I tend to rotate between projects, either taking care of what's needed first, or whatever strikes my fancy at the moment. For example, a Minecraft game update will definitely need some work and takes priority. Last month, I had to update my Android apps to stay compliant with Google's store policies, so that had a deadline attached. Beyond that, it's whatever I feel would be the most useful and/or the most interesting at the moment.

To try to stay on track, I'd just check the main TODO list and the various items inside. That grew to be too much, though. Since most items now have several targets and ideas listed under them, the display gets too busy just to glance at everything at once.

Something I played with was using post-it notes on the side of my desk to only list the main ongoing projects, as a sort of main TODO: add a note when planning something, remove it when done, so it would be a constantly changing board. It worked for a bit, then reality set in where some projets move slower than I want to while other get put on hold, so the display is more static than I wanted.

I'm planning to try something new, by drafting a document that only lists the big picture instead of drilling down into the details. I'll check in later to tell you how this went!

#tools #projects #planning

– Doctacosa

For many reasons, I'm not a big fan of doing strict planning for an upcoming year. The fact that I'm handling these projects part-time plays a big part into this: since I only have so many hours available, I need to make some tough choices at times. Plus, I don't control everything! As an example, some Minecraft updates can be more complicated to handle and those are released on Mojang's schedule. Still, after the holidays rush, I find myself in a planning mood, so here are some things I'm hoping to focus on in the upcoming months!

Something I want to make more of an effort on is to test out different technologies and build up more prototypes. It's a way to feed the curiosity beast, plus it lets me get a clearer picture on what is and isn't possible. Sometimes, these come in useful later. For example, the procedure to link Interordi Accounts with Discord that went live last week is based off a prototype I built over two years ago!

I've made an effort over time to make more of my projects and code available to other developers and server owners, especially my Minecraft plugins, and I want to do more of this. Some elements are simple to release since they stand alone, others are more complex since they're tied to Interordi internals. That Discord integration opened up a door, though: since I introduced a new bot to make it work, I can move the Interordi-specific features there and keep the chat bot itself dedicated to its own tasks. This way, I keep one while the other can be reused elsewhere!

Online communities are often at the center of my thoughts, as I've covered before. I still don't really know what I want to do there, but I've been actively doing research on the various options that are available out there, both on chat and social media. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear from you!

In the middle of all the regular maintenance and upkeep, I've been developing a new thing that's getting closer to being unveiled. While I'm not going into specifics yet, I have high hopes for this one!

And this is just the expected – I didn't plan for the second half of 2022 to be as busy as it got, there's all the stuff I have no control over, plus I want to jump at opportunities that might present themselves, so none of the above is on the strict schedule. I'm aware of some of what I want to do, so I'm keeping at it... while still letting myself unwind with a game or book once in a while. :–)

#2023 #planning #personal #recap

– Doctacosa