Comment by hire_charts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hire_charts | Hacker News Reader

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Edit: As I posted below, my reasoning for this comment is perhaps better summarized by Zach Holman's discussion on the topic of github "streaks" and how he found himself burned out after a long series of streaks. Worth reading if you haven't already:

https://zachholman.com/posts/streaks/

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Honest feedback--and this is a bit out of left field--but I think that the author of this project needs to SLOW DOWN.

Here is his Github contribution chart:

http://i.imgur.com/d1IA1if.png

This... does not look like a sustainable level of work. 100 straight days of coding since last December? Yikes.

This sounds like an interesting project, founded on good ideas, but sustaining this level of work will do no good if you burn out before there are other contributors to pick up the slack. I know that a lot of people can keep working this hard for much longer, but quality will inevitably start to suffer, well before you actually burn out. And, at the very least, you need to take the time to step back and validate your ideas. This is something you'll never do if you're always heads-down coding.

I'm not saying that taking more breaks (weekends off, etc) works for everyone, but I just thought something needed to be said. I've seen friends and former colleagues fall into the trap of working on a project so deeply that it becomes a crazy obsession that they cannot escape. It's all they talk about and it can kind of scare people away. Not saying that this is such an extreme case, but it's something that can happen if you're not careful.

Hey, thanks for the feedback. I agree that going all out 100% is not sustainable. Don't be fooled by the GitHub streak. Some days its a bug fix, a test or some documentation. At some point I got addicted to maintaining the streak and actually made a conscious decision to stop at 100. What it represents though is consistency. Even a little bit of progress everyday is something. The comment about taking a step back to evaluate, it's true. The reason the project has gotten so far is because I've been very thoughtful about the interfaces, sometimes spending 4-5 days thinking about adding a feature before getting to it, evaluating all the scenarios of use.

Appreciate the comments.

Good to hear. I actually think that maintaining the streak is pretty cool -- even if it seems like an alarming pace at first glance. Sounds like you're taking a healthy approach to the project. Best of luck!

I couldn't disagree with this more. Just because you have 100 days of "coding" straight, doesn't mean it's just coding. It could be docs or anything else that's required. And most of those days look light. This is more like getting a habbit formed, then actually working 7 days a week. I mean look at my commit log: https://github.com/timothycrosley/, I plan on doing this the rest of my life. In reality, I've been coding every single day since I was 8. I'm now 26.

That's great -- and I'm glad you disagree. It's awesome to find a sustainable level of work that can be repeated like that, indefinitely.

I felt the need to speak up because I've seen contribution graphs EXACTLY like the author's and yours, except where the end result was not so happy. Take Zach Holman's for example:

https://zachholman.com/posts/streaks/ (chart is 2/3 down the post)

Zach's streak was great for him. Until suddenly it wasn't, and far too late he realized he was burnt out. He's been amazingly public about the whole experience (his subsequent sabbatical, then his being fired from Github, then his year of soul-searching), and for every public story like this I suspect there are many, many private examples that go unheard.

I think it's great when you can reach such a peak of productivity, like in your case. But it's important to recognize that you're kind of an outlier. The endless contribution "streak" doesn't work for everyone, at least not always and indefinitely.

I don't want to generalize about what is always a good level of work and what isn't. What I DO want to communicate is that it's important to be introspective and take periodic steps back to evaluate the sustainability.

After all, a level of work that seems unsustainable might turn out to be quite manageable, and vice versa.

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