Iterate

Many of us, myself included, default to making large wholesale changes in our lives when we notice something about ourselves that’s not to our liking.

Eating too much? We immediately start a strict calorie limiting diet. Not getting enough exercise? We plan a detailed workout regimen that has us in the gym six days a week for two hours a day. Drinking too much coffee (ahem)? We limit ourselves to just one cup a day, or cut it out altogether. Spending too much time on our devices? We delete every app and quit all the social platforms cold turkey.

You get the picture.

What if instead we took a software development iterative approach to improving our lives, making small changes a “feature” at a time? Don’t just jump in feet first and simply hope for the best. Instead, make a realistic plan for gradual improvement broken down into manageable “user stories” that focus solely on a single enhancement.

Start with one small insignificant change, say, one less cup of coffee a day, replacing it with water. Let it bake in for a while – a week or a month. Tweak it as often as you need to during your development sprint. Once it’s working as designed, call it a public release. Then tackle the next user story from your backlog and iterate on that one.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

The really good apps you use each day have been built this way – carefully planned, with a single feature added at a time. Could you imagine if a developer tried to write your favorite app in one sitting? It’d be full of bugs and wouldn’t work at all.

This post was written as advice to myself more than anyone else. It’s okay to start really, really, really small. After enough releases, you’ll see things take shape and it will feel natural. The best part is, it will not feel like it was forced and we’ll have a better chance of having not failed.