So I posted my first Thing A Week post almost exactly 1 year ago today. The idea behind Thing A Week was to get myself to do more small projects with short deadlines and also get myself to work on a bunch of different things so I was producing something interesting each week.
While some weeks I did manage to work with in those bounds and produce a standalone project in one week (for example; the bass pedal, my cover of In The Garage, and the Therimino) I actually ended up spending a lot of my Thing A Week time on pieces of larger projects like RecLaboratory and the photo listener. While this wasn’t the original intention of the exercise I was still able to use the model to break up chunks of work and produce stuff worth talking about almost every week.
In the end I did 36 Thing A Week posts last year. Not as good as the 52 I would have liked, but it still represents a lot of productive weeks. I also found it really valuable to write about what I was working on each week. I think I just really enjoy sharing both the finished product and the process for the projects I work on.
Here are some things I made last year:
- a non-working video game
- a bass pedal
- the save the date card for my wedding
- a webservice that pulled tagged images from Twitter and Instagram
- a bunch of music
- a ring box out of an old book
- some watercolor paintings
- a webservice where you can do collaborative music recording
- an electronic musical instrument
While I really enjoyed doing the Thing A Week posts last year, this year I’m not going to have the same weekly goal. I may do some more Thing A Week style posts when I finish a project but I’m trying to focus more on just doing stuff rather than only on getting stuff done. For example, when I was writing music last year I focused a lot on writing things that I knew I could finish quickly so I ended up with a lot of short musical ideas, but not very many complete songs. I want to spend more time doing things like art, music, and coding (and whatever else sparks my attention) and doing it well. Maybe this means spending more time drawing in sketchbooks and less time making finished comics. Maybe this means starting a couple of songs and working on them until I’m REALLY happy with one.
I have a few project ideas (some big, some small) that I’m already starting to plan out, so I’ll try to keep up with regular Thing A Week style postings discussing my progress on those things, even if it’s just for my own enjoyment.