Doing Weekend Projects

I’ve just finished a weekend project – placecodr.com.

Walking in this morning I was thinking about what a succesful weekend project looks like. Here, for what it’s worth, are my thoughts:

1. Have a idea. Know what you want to do. It should be a fairly fully-formed idea, rather than “I’m going to build an awesome website”.
2. Keep it simple. Know your limitations. 2 days is not a long time. You can always add functionality to something later, but try and make the simplest thing first and build on it.
3. Finish it. Try really hard to produce something complete. It can be simple (see above) but you’ll feel a lot better on Sunday evening if you can wrap it up, add the Google Analytics codes, then post it on Facebook and Twitter. That brings a good closure to the project.
4. Do other stuff. It is your weekend, after all. Try not to spend the entire 48 hours on the computer. Get out and do other things between the working time. You’ll feel better for it on Monday morning. Also, during your off-time, you’ll still be thinking about your project and working out problems in your head, and you’re much more likely to come up with decent solutions that way as opposed to trying to implement the first thing that comes into your head.

That’s just my thoughts. If it helps, good. If not, never mind. 🙂