One of the perks of working independently on an early-stage product is flexibility — but that comes with a risk: running out of steam. Like I said in my post about #pacing, it’s key not to overextend on the good days and not to check out completely when the work feels like a slog.
One trick I’ve found increasingly helpful as the codebase grows? Keep a backlog of quick wins:
➡️ Small code changes
➡️ Straightforward UI tweaks
➡️ Refactorings
➡️ Adding a missing unit test
These are tasks that don’t demand a ton of mental energy but still feel productive. Even knocking out something simple like “cleaning up how we apply drop shadows” or “writing tests for this helper function” gives a small but real boost.
On low-energy days, I’ll tackle one of those first. And often, once I’m in motion, I hit that flow state — and suddenly the bigger tasks seem way less daunting.
The psychology behind this isn’t new. Greg McKeown calls it START in Effortless: “Start with a ten-minute microburst of focused activity to boost your motivation and energy.” Open source projects often have a “good first issue” backlog for exactly this reason. And when I wrote my first novel in 2020, I followed a similar strategy — setting a small daily goal to turn “write 40,000 words” into something manageable.