[fuwaishi]

My side projects tend to be small and not see the light of day, but for the last year I've been experimenting with daily microtasks. Each month I work out a list of 10-15 bite-sized tasks I want to do daily (sometimes rest days for exercise). Most of them are 5 minute minimum tasks and some are goal-oriented. A little off topic, but one nice thing about the monthly cycle of daily tasks is that I can adjust based on the previous month (maybe a certain task wasn't worthwhile to me or maybe I need to update the task) and it feels kind of like new years resolutions but achievable because of the shorter time scale.

The one I thought I would hate the most was forcing myself to work on a side project for 5 minutes a day because the bar is so low I wasn't sure I'd be able to meaningfully make an impact on a project. To my surprise, it's actually kind of pleasant. Obviously if you want to ship your project in X days it's not really feasible, but I'd be happy to release anything at all even if it takes months or years. Some days I spend the time planning, researching, or reading documentation (something I usually don't do thoroughly because I'm trying to ship something asap). Other days I'll actually write some code or create some content. Often times, I spend much more than 5 minutes on it, but it's comforting to know that it's okay to stop after 5 and do the other things I want.

As other mentioned, being diligent about keeping track of where you left off is important; otherwise you start doubling back which feels wasteful.

My issue/feature/todo tracking is mostly in an Obsidian Markdown file and in my daily notes where I might put more minute TODOs or scratch notes.

For timing tasks, I use a Time Timer, my phone timer, and the Windows 11 focus timer depending on what's closest to me at the time. The Time Timer is kind of neat because you can turn off the beeping sound so even after 5 minutes passes, you can keep going without being interrupted by the timer or feeling anxious about it.