ship one small thing a week

The rule is simple:

every week, something leaves my laptop.

The thing can be ridiculous. A gist, a tweet-length post, a one-command bash script, a PR against someone else's repo. The point is motion, not output.

why

• shipping compounds. Four small things a month is 48 a year. Nothing I'd call "big" ever beats that count.
• it kills perfectionism. You can't polish a thing for three months if the deadline is Friday.
• it's a honest signal. If I can't ship anything in a week, something's wrong — usually scope or energy.

how i cheat

• a code review counts.
• documentation counts.
• publishing an old draft counts.
• deleting code counts, especially deleting code.

The only thing that doesn't count is planning to ship. Plans are not shipping.

// the only rule
function thisWeek(): Ship {
  return somethingSmall(); // not nothing. not everything.
}