Frantic-tick-tick-tock
Front End Developers might have seen a recent tweet by Sara Soueidan stating that although someone may have written about a particular topic, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write about it either. For a little while, I’ve been trying to figure out a topic that I’d like to write about and inspiration was lacking. That was until I saw an article written by Gavin Strange, a man I’ve seen talk at a conference previously and have been a fan of since. The article was about time and how to manage it, something that I’ve been trying to improve for a while now.

Time is something that seems to slip away from me, something that’s improperly managed, something that I waste a lot of but to achieve any aims or goals, bad habits will need to be altered. At the moment, the time that I spend, I spend spontaneously. Nothing is particularly thought out, if something pops up short or long term, it’s generally catered for. Time, I tend to think of as a variable, it’s open and likely to change but recently it seems to be a troublesome way of managing it.
My professional and personal goals pull me in different directions in regards to time management. Setting aside time to learn coding practices, different languages, the basics of functional programming is a project to manage in itself. Putting time aside to focus on one topic without getting pulled away onto something else is tough and the way I dictate how I allocate my time and its benefits is as follows:
- Find an interesting topic
- How will it benefit me?
- Will it affect my aims/goals?
- If so, how?
There will be some time set aside for initial research into the topic, for example, I’m currently learning or should I say, re-learning, basic JavaScript. A colleague of mine maintains the standpoint of in order to be progressive with the trends, you should know the fundamentals. So my time is essentially laid out like a stack of building blocks: learn the fundamentals, see how the logic applies to my end goal, practice, implement, repeat.
Always do your best, what you plant now, you will harvest later.
- Augustine “Og” Mandino II
Balancing personal and professional ambitions can be time consuming, especially when it’s not managed. Structure is a hard thing to put in place when annoying habits dictate. Getting into a habit hasn’t got to be a chore but it’s important to remember that things can change but as long as you can find a balance, you’re creating our own work/life balance, you’ll have time to develop new interests and time to develop on a silly idea you had whilst going for a run.
The clock maybe ticking, but you mould what you do with it. Breaking your week or even day down could be as simple scheduling blocks of time for specific tasks.

This circle has inspired me to start my own variation of this and plot out my routine. There are a number of different ways of managing time, it’s completely dependant on the person but don’t be enslaved to a routine which doesn’t allow flexibility for balance.

There may be a million and one things to do during the day, some planning can go a long way!
Oh, and while I’m thinking of it, thanks for the inspiration for the title Metallica!
