Probably, you are wondering what that title means and what Bojack Horseman is doing here. Actually, This started as a serious question.
How to finish something when the reason to do that is elusive?
The thing is I have this bad habit of starting things purely for intellectual curiosity,So, I ended up with hundreds of README, dozens of git repos, half-written paper abstracts and earmarked books lurking around for years. There is too much to read and learn with very little time to do it. Now, the problem how to finish all of these projects when there is no good reason to start them?
The solution was the 40-minutes laptop. Allow me to explain. I have this 6-years old laptop with really bad battery that lasts around 30-40 minutes. So, whenever I start a new thing, I make sure to break it down to 30-minute chunks and try to finish it before my laptop battery dies. That’s why my posts are full of typos because I have only 30 minutes to do the technical work and write the post. I just don’t have the time to proof-read what I just wrote. Same for books, I plan how many pages i can read in 30 minutes depending on the book. It varies really. Some books are harder to read than other.
This is the only thing that worked for me: break it down, make it a challenge and enjoy the small win (If I can!)