Three months
Sometimes it feels that you simply can’t win. No matter how many bugs you slay, no matter how fast you crank out those features, your incoming queue never quite dries up. It’s easy to get lost, and it’s hard to see that you’re making a dent.
I’ve been thinking recently that I can easily take three months off, forget that incoming queue and just work on stuff that I’ve been neglecting. Things that can been languishing in the queue, not quite ready to fall off the cliff, but not quite important enough to elbow their way to the top. Things that once were marked as launch blockers, and then when the launch time was getting near, turned out to be actually just nice to have.
Three months feels just right. It’s a good chunk of work that I can tap into every now and then when things get just a tad quiet in the regular release schedule. But it’s not so overwhelmingly big that it makes you think that you’ve sacrificed too many other things at the altar of featuritis.
Of course, I’m rarely in charge of my own time. I don’t quite envision a near future where I can just go off for three months, chipping away at things that I want to do. A fiercely competitive market is a wonderful thing. You can spend all your time tinkering at the edges. Or you can stay focused on your core, falling back to the edges every now and then. Just don’t lose track of which is which for you.