Hello, world

I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions, since they tend to fall by the wayside within a month or two. It’s hard to make big changes all at once, and even harder to stick with them. But I think there is a special freshness to the New Year that invites reflection, and it’s a good time to look back, think of the general direction I want to go in the new year, and introduce systems to guide me there.

In this spirit, I propose, in place of “resolutions”, a New Year’s “theme”. No big achievement I hope to reach, no progress to hold myself to, just a general feeling that I can reflect on as I start each day.

This year, my theme is “incremental progress”. There are so many things I want to do and try and build. Too often I spend so much energy thinking and planning about how to do something perfectly that I end up not doing anything at all. But there’s so much time in a year, or a decade, or a lifetime, that if I just focus on forward progress, of any size, it will eventually result in large advances.

This is not a new idea; it’s succinctly captured in well-worn phrases like “perfect is the enemy of good”. But despite its ubiquity, it’s an idea that I’ve struggled to adopt for most of my adult life. I will continue to struggle with it, but I will be more aware of it, and try to notice when I find myself paralyzed at the starting line. The key, I think, is to find pride and satisfaction in the act of doing, rather than the act of completing.

This site, and this first post, are manifestations of this theme. The UI is not perfect. This post is not my best writing. But by taking this first step, I lay a foundation that will bring me closer to the unattainable “perfect”. The site exists and I can deploy changes to it. Future posts will be easier to create, future incremental UI changes less daunting. And I do feel a sense of satisfaction when I recognize that.

Happy New Year everyone.