Change in how I allocate time for the Indie Python project

[KennedyRichard]

Hello, everyone!

I'm writing this post just to share with you a new way to allocate my time in the Indie Python project that I've been thinking of lately.

I'm always looking for ways to improve my work on the Indie Python project. Things like:

• how can I be more efficient?
• what can I do to reach more people?
• how should I allocate my time and effort?

From different experiences throughout my life, in many different roles (as a student, worker, developer), I learned that it isn't effective/productive to switch between multiple tasks often. You can see this in the way I schedule my development work for the Indie Python project: a few months dedicated to Nodezator, then a month or so to the Bionic Blue game. That is, I don't switch often between the main software projects. Instead, I set a large amount of time to work on each of them, one at a time. Let's call this strategy "a few months per project".

And, as expected, this strategy is working fine for the Indie Python project: development work on both projects is progressing. This is a great result in comparison to many open-source projects maintained by multiple people which sometimes are abandoned. The Indie Python project, in contrast, despite receiving occasional code contributions from other people, is mostly maintained by me. And still the project is alive and evolving.

So, since this strategy is working, why then I want to reallocate my time? And how do I intend to do it?

Why (do I want to reallocate my time)?

The reason is that although allocating my time a few months per project is great for productivity, it is not so great for things like content production, promoting awareness of the Indie Python project and keeping it fresh on people's minds.

For instance, in the months I'm working on Nodezator, I produce a lot of content in the form of video demos, posts, twitter threads, etc. All of these materials give us different opportunities to reach more and more people on social networks and online communities. However, during all those months the Bionic Blue game get no work at all, so there's no content produced for it as well. In other words, several months in which people are not even reminded that the project exists. As a result, it's no wonder the project is much less known than Nodezator. Of course, other factors are at play here, but still, the lack of news regarding the game certainly contributes for its absence on people's minds.

I once read/heard somewhere that in the future every business will be an IT business. I didn't doubt it at the time, but now I can see why even more clearly and how this affects the Indie Python project. Some stores where I live have apps or at least channels in popular messaging apps where they share news like new products or discounts, etc. They need to keep promoting awareness of their business and attracting people in order for their business to thrive and so they are not swallowed by the competition.

Simply put, the "a few months per project" strategy doesn't take into account the need to retain people's attention and keep reminding and informing them. Looking at this problem from a different angle, we must take into account that people

• have busy lives
• witness cool projects come to life and die constantly, vanishing from their radar without warning

So, even though they may like and want to follow the Indie Python project, when they don't often see news about the node editor they like (Nodezator) or game they are curious to see finished (Bionic Blue), it is no wonder they'll just move on.

Out of sight, out of mind.

How (my time will be allocated from now on)?

I'm actually not 100% sure yet about how I'll reallocate my time for the Indie Python project. Thus, I'll be doing some experimentation, adjusting my new strategy as I go in order to keep a good balance between productivity and keeping people interested and informed.

I intend to begin by switching between the main projects more often. So, instead of working a few months per project, I'll begin by trying to work a couple weeks per project. If this doesn't work, I'll try increasing such time a bit, but I don't intend to go lower than that because as I argued at the beginning of this post, effective/productive work requires generous amounts of time.

I'm actually excited to try this, because I think that, although switching tasks too often is bad, switching in appropriate intervals is great: it allows us to rest our minds a bit by switching to new contexts/problems/challenges.

I'll switch from the current strategy (a few months per project) to the new one (a couple weeks per project) gradually though, since this is all experimental. And I don't want to harm the scheduled development work for Nodezator, that is set to finish at the end of May. For now, I'll probably just pick a few days to work a bit on the Bionic Blue (maybe next week) and see if I can work on it enough to produce new content, then get back to my work on Nodezator right away.

Speaking of my work on Nodezator, once the new time allocation strategy is fully adopted, I'll still keep scheduling the development work of Nodezator in a similar manner as what we do now. That is, we'll still have 02 main features set to be implement in a relatively short amount of time (02 months or so, depending on the complexity of the features).

I think this new "a couple weeks per project" strategy will be even more important in the future, since, as I've been saying repeatedly since last year, I intend to set the same amount of time of development work for Nodezator and Bionic Blue. In other words, if I were to keep the a few months per project strategy, Nodezator too would suffer from lack of new content published when it is time to work for a few months on the Bionic Blue game.

I presented my reasons for working the same amount of time on both projects (regardless of the time allocation strategy) before, in other materials/communications, but I'll repeat here: although Bionic Blue isn't a tool with many applications like Nodezator, it is still important to the Indie Python project for the things it provides. That is, the goal of the Indie Python project is to promote fun and learning by publishing and maintaining apps and games and related content. The Bionic Blue game brings fun and learning opportunities to the project, since it is an open-source, public domain game which we can use in tutorials and other educational materials.

I intend to finish the game before this year ends, but even when the game is finished another game project will take its place, since open-source games bring all the aforementioned benefits to the Indie Python project.

That's it

Thank you for your attention. As always, all feedback is welcome. I look forward to keep working on the Indie Python project and witness its growth with you all.

Peace