The Big Picture

Looking around here it isn’t hard to see that I have a passion for programming.  One may even be able to gather that I am also interested in racing.  For years I have been wanting to develop my own racing simulator, much like Live For Speed or iRacing, and have started to

do so a few times.  My arcade game project, 

RacerX, didn’t make get very far, but I was fresh out of college.

Improving the quality of my coding habits has been the theme of the past few years, and in the next few years more steps will be taken towards the development of this Racing Simulator.  The scope of a racing simulator is huge.  By far the largest project I will tackle, probably ever.  If successful it will fund my living expenses, allowing me to work on it full time.

Planning vs. Doing

For all those years I’ve only been planning.  This would be awesome, make sure to add that!  But planning only goes so far, it doesn’t actually accomplish anything.  Last month I changed gears and made a goal to complete one hour per day towards “the big picture”.  After each successful day a tally is added to the whiteboard, the longest streak so far has been 11 days.  It doesn’t matter how small the task is, as long as the progress moves forward.  Momentum will build from there.

It is important not to let an unsuccessful day, such as yesterday, ruin everything.  Instead of beating myself up over not meeting the big picture goal for a single day it is important to keep at it, start over and attempt to beat the longest streak.  These bite-sized goals will add up over time, this I know from walking one step at a time to walk 2187 miles from GA to ME in 2009.

If you have a project that seems too big to tackle, break it up into tiny pieces and do a little bit each day – you will get there sooner than you realize.