Man, sometimes I look back at how I used to tackle things and just shake my head. Like, seriously. My brain would cook up an idea, and before it even had a chance to properly cool down, I’d be off to the races, full tilt. It felt like I had this, you know, this burst of energy that just demanded action. No waiting around. Just do it, now. And that’s exactly how I used to kick off almost every single side project I ever thought was brilliant.
I remember this one time, it was a few years back, I got this wild notion for a little app. Something simple, just a tiny utility that I figured would make my life, and maybe a few other folks’ lives, a bit easier. The thought process, if you can even call it that, went something like this: “Hey, this is a cool idea! Nobody’s done it exactly like this! I can totally bang this out in a weekend!”
So, what did I do? Did I grab a pen and paper? Did I open up a Notion doc, or even a simple text editor to jot down some thoughts? Hell no. I didn’t even fire up a drawing program to sketch out what the thing might look like. Nope. I just ripped open my code editor, created a new project, and started pounding the keyboard like my life depended on it. My fingers were flying, code lines just spilling out. I felt like a machine, translating pure thought directly into working software. Or so I thought.
The first few hours were a total rush. I was making “progress,” or what felt like progress. I got the basic window up, slapped some buttons on it, made it do one super simple thing. High on that initial win, I kept going. No brakes. Just full steam ahead. I was adding features, tweaking stuff, fixing bugs that popped up from my own hurried code, and then adding more features. It was a beautiful, chaotic mess. I was convinced I was just being efficient, cutting out all the “fluff” of planning and just doing.
Then, about two days into this feverish coding spree, I hit a wall. A concrete, unyielding wall. I wanted to add this one specific function, something that seemed pretty straightforward in my head, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out where it fit into the tangled web I’d created. My codebase was a spaghetti monster. Functions were calling other functions in ways that made no logical sense. Variables were named like I was having a stroke. Dependencies were everywhere, crisscrossing like a bird’s nest. I’d painted myself into a corner, and it felt like every new line of code just dug me deeper into the hole.
I distinctly remember staring at the screen, late at night, the glow of the monitor reflecting in my tired eyes. My brain was fried. My fingers were hovering over the keyboard, but there was nowhere to go. It wasn’t just this one feature; it was everything. The whole thing was just a big ball of “almost.” I felt that initial rush drain out of me, replaced by a dull, heavy frustration. It hit me like a ton of bricks. All that impulsive energy, that rush to just do, had led me straight to this bottleneck.
That night, I just closed the laptop. Didn’t even save, I was that fed up. I just sat there, in the dark, thinking about how many times I’d done this. How many brilliant ideas had started with a bang and ended with a whimper, gathering dust in some forgotten project folder? Too many to count. This time, I decided, was different. I wasn’t going to just abandon it.
The next morning, I did something I hadn’t done in ages for a personal project. I brewed a strong coffee, grabbed a thick notebook – a physical one, with actual paper – and a pen. And I just started writing. Not code. Just words. What was this app supposed to do, really? What was its core purpose? Who was it for? Then, I started drawing. Simple boxes. Arrows. Like a kid. This button goes here, this screen does that, this piece of data flows this way. I sketched out every single major interaction, every single part of the UI, every single function, even the pesky one that had stumped me.
I broke it down. Really broke it down. It wasn’t about coding anymore; it was about thinking. About planning. About taking that massive burst of energy and channeling it, directing it, instead of letting it just explode everywhere. I wasn’t trying to finish it in a weekend anymore; I was trying to understand it. I forced myself to walk away from the code and just sit with the design for a full day. Then another.
When I finally opened the editor again, it felt different. I wasn’t just hacking away. I had a map. A real plan. I started fresh, deleting all that old, messy code. And this time, with the blueprint in front of me, I built it piece by piece, exactly as I’d laid it out. I still had those bursts of energy, but now, instead of just rushing into coding, I’d use them to refine a sketch, or map out the next logical step. I’d pause, check my notes, and then, and only then, would I start writing the code for that specific part.
It took way longer than a weekend, obviously. But when I finally released that little utility, it was clean. It worked exactly as I’d imagined, and it was actually maintainable. I could add new features without tearing my hair out. I had tamed that wild, impulsive rush, and in doing so, I actually finished something that was good. It wasn’t about losing the energy, it was about learning to steer it. And that, my friends, was a game-changer for me.
