Variation Venus

I often jump into a new hobby without much planning. I get so enthusiastic about an idea or a new hobby that I just jump in. Like recently with learning how to make my own personal cloud. Because I’m so excited, I jump right in, but then I realize I don’t know enough about the technical side, so I spend more time learning and planning than doing. And when that happens, my brain stresses out about how much time I have to spend on my hobby or lack thereof, so that I eventually make no progress in the planning that I spend so much time on.

But what if I just thought of changing that? What would happen if I only did things in stages or chapters? There is a reason why textbooks, or at least the well-written books, disseminate information in parts or chapters. It’s so that there is time to enjoy and learn about the subject. When starting a hobby or learning something new, every new aspect seems like its own special little project, and as a result, so many little projects lead to overwhelm, and very little gets done. So recently I’ve tried to incorporate more structure into what I am learning based on clear goals that I want to accomplish with a hobby. My main goal with this blog, for example, was to just write better and feel better about it. It was a simple goal. I hadn’t been to school in years, so I forgot how to write down my ideas. I had to become comfortable with the editing part of writing being the most time-intensive part of writing.

This post is a stream of consciousness post to remind myself not to edit while I write. Either way, managing big parts of a project through phases or chapters makes sense.

• Quick Implementation (45 s)
• Define End Goal
• Split into 3–5 phases/chapters
• Set a deadline per phase or know what the end looks like.
• Track on a simple list or board
• Review & adjust after each phase

With my new hobby, I just told myself that I had at minimum an hour a week to plan out a server that will house all of my digital comics and ebooks so I could read my books remotely or share the library with whoever I want. It involves a research phase, an execution phase, and an experimentation and execution phase. It’s simple for me. I don’t really assign much of a deadline since this is just a fun hobby. But I do know that the end looks like a simple solution that is self-hosted on my home server, and that is it.

This post was written for Stream of Consciousness Saturday with the word chapter.