A couple of years ago I immersed myself in the web community, I spent the days reading many blogs and the evenings going to loads of meetups around London.

Then about 2 years ago I stopped. I’d reached an impasse, I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. There were a few reasons for this; the atmosphere I was seeing in the community, feeling overwhelmed by the ever accerelating rate of change and the number of things I had to learn, but most of all I was tired, the balance was no longer working for me. So I took a step back from it and decided I wanted to spend my time doing more of the things that mattered to me, spend more time with my family and more time with my friends.

I’ve had a wonderful, jam packed and extremely enjoyable couple of years. One thing has been missing though. I’ve missed making things, I’ve missed my attempts to be creative. There has been the odd fleeting moment, the odd moment of inspiration but not as much as I’d like.

The last few months have seen me dip my toe back in, particularly with the frontend gig with GDS and the Land Registry, it’s given me the taste again. I want back on so I am going to spend some time easing myself back in by fixing up all the things that have been neglected and have been gathering dust, like this website and various unfinished side projects.

Although this time I’ll be more sure to just concentrate on the things that matter to me, that interest me and that I enjoy. Echoing what Susan Robertson recently said in her post “Overwhelmed by code” I will learn (do) what I actually want to learn (do), instead of what I think I should learn (do).

One thing I’ve always had a problem with is being a massive, world class procrastinator. If I can be distracted by something I will be distracted by it. I’ve found one of the best ways to combat it is to accept that steady progress is a very good thing. I used to want and expect to be there now (or at least in super quick time), I think that was a particularly damaging mindset.

How to be sure progress, no matter how big or small, is being made? Well I’m going to track it. I’m going to write it down and stick it online for anyone to see, hopefully to trick myself into keeping things ticking along. I don’t expect anyone else to care greatly but the fact someone could stumble across it will hopefully create an situation where the desire to not be seen as lazy is greater than the desire to procrastinate. All this progress stuff I’ll be posting here.

As an added bonus making that was an excuse to set up a site with Jekyll, something I’ve been wanting to do since I first saw Phil Hawksworth’s slides on static sites generators.

Let’s see how I get on and whether this current spike of motivation is just that or whether something like tracking the small steps will help me get things done.

If any other procrastinators out there have any tips on winning the tussle please do share in the comments below. Thanks.