One Contribution Per Day

At Constant Contact’s Engineers4Engineers conference this year, Kyle Simpson (@getify) gave a great talk about Asynchronous JavaScript. Aside from a better understanding of Promises, an interesting tidbit stuck with me. While he was introducing himself he showed a screenshot of his GitHub contributions that looked a lot like this:

Kyle has dedicated himself to making at least one contribution to a GitHub project per day. I thought that was awesome, and it inspired me to do the same. I’m only two weeks in, but I’m already in my longest streak yet:

This is a simple, not too demanding way to stay active and slowly but consistently work towards being a better developer. The contributions don’t need to be massive or groundbreaking. Even simple fixes, adding documentation, and opening issues can keep you thinking about your work. And the projects don’t need to be some big-deal open source whatever. Find a pet project, something as small or large as necessary to get you learning and keep you interested.

By thinking about your work on a daily basis, I figure you’re more likely to get excited about it, and once you’re excited you’ll be more likely to keep working! Those little green squares serve as both a great motivator and a great measure of progress.