The Bights Plan

Yard by yard, it's hard.  Inch by inch it's a cinch.--Anon

by small and simple things are great things brought to pass--Alma 37:6

Yesterday I felt like I was throwing myself in every direction and getting little done.  I have a monolithic task to work on, and it seems to grow and divide as I stare at it.  So in the evening I went to sleep after praying for help in figuring out how to work effectively.  This morning I couldn't sleep and finally went on a walk a little before 5:00 am. It was truly beautiful, with sweet cool air and a dark sky with stars.  The result of all this is the beginning of a plan, which I will refer to as my bights plan.

Basically, bights are very small and concrete accomplishments.  You want to get in a lot of bights in a day, perhaps 15.  An idea for a bight might be to learn something.  But learning something doesn't produce a concrete result.  And it doesn't, in and of itself, make the world any better.  So if your bight is to be to learn something, then you can give it a concrete output by documenting what you have learned.

A bight has to have an objective output, and you have to determine what that output will be before you begin working on the bight.  The objective should be simple to describe and you should try for bights that don't take longer than 20 minutes to achieve.

Another bight might be to write tests for a function.  The concrete result is that you have tests.  You commit them and describe them.

The more people a bight can potentially help, the better the bight.  The more you learn or grow in capability from taking the bight, the better the bight.

Often when I'm working I face a decision or I need to answer a question.  Sometimes, these decisions and questions are too large for a single bight and need to be broken down.  But usually what I've done in the past is I have researched the question and learned what I needed and then acted accordingly.  This has had two problems.  One is that in acting this way I only really helped myself.  The other is that I myself can easily forget what I learn.  So it was clear to me as I was walking this morning that I needed to start documenting what I learn.  And that it would be even better if I were to publish the things that I learn so that other people can benefit.

So that's the plan.