Sto's thoughts
==============

# One focus a week

Oct 13, 2026

![A warmly lit workbench with one electronics project in progress and other projects waiting on shelves.](/images/2026-10-13/one-focus-a-week.jpg)

When it comes to personal projects, I keep being attracted to the next shiny
thing. As soon as I get my hands on it, though, it becomes dull, outshone by
the next one.

Because of this, I keep moving on to new things, exploring new ideas, starting
new projects, but I never take any of them past some kind of "finish line", a
satisfying conclusion.

I've even reached a point where I'm stuck, unable to start anything new because
I tell myself, "I won't have time to finish it anyway."

To break this pattern, I've decided to try a new experiment.

In this experiment, I'll pick a new "idea" from my ideas stash, and explore
that idea for a week.

Every other idea, whether already in my stash or new, I'll consider a
distraction from bringing my current focus to a satisfying stopping point.

My hunch is that counterintuitively, reducing the possibilities will allow me
to achieve more. By knowing what I'll be working on for a week, I'm reducing
time used hesitating between ideas, and building excitement and momentum.

Not every project will fit neatly into a week. Some will be tiny and may only
require a day or two of my attention, while others might require several weeks
before being even close to completion. So I'll have to adapt.

I've come up with a set of rules that I can get back to whenever analysis
paralysis hits:

- Each idea starts with a budget of a week.
- A focus week can be extended by one additional week, at most once. For this
  to happen, I need to be able to justify that extra time with a clear
  definition of done and enough motivation. This limit allows me to preserve
  novelty and helps me avoid boredom or burnout.
- To avoid Parkinson's Law ("work expands to fill the time available for its
  completion"), I'll allow myself to pick a second project in the middle of the
  week if the first one reached its goals early.
- If an idea requires more time, I'll still define a satisfying stopping point
  within the allocated time. Any remaining work goes back into my ideas stash
  and must compete with other ideas for a future week.
- To be eligible, an idea/project should have at least one of these traits:
  - It solves an actual problem for me or someone I know.
  - It is an opportunity to learn.
  - It is fun to work on.
  - It is an opportunity to practice and improve my use of AI tools.
- Every focused week will start with:
  - a minimal pitch justifying the time I'll spend on it
  - a reasonable (but challenging) definition of done that I estimate can be
    reached in a week.
- Every focused week will wrap up with a minimal retrospective, including
  details such as:
  - progress
  - successes/failures
  - learnings.
- Some ideas will need preliminary work (research what I need to get started,
  gather hardware when necessary), which can be done in advance but should be
  strictly timebound. No more than 3 hours in a whole week should be spent
  grooming future ideas.

I will run this experiment for a while, at least until the end of 2026, likely
a few months into 2027. My hope is that I can learn what keeps me interested
long enough to reach a satisfying stopping point. I'll try to report every few
weeks on how it feels.

There are only 11 weeks left in the year. That's potentially 11 ideas I could
dedicate time to before 2027! It does not sound like a lot, but is also way
more than I've seriously worked on so far in 2026!



_Written by [David Stosik], generated and formatted for LLMs by [Bridgetown]._

[David Stosik]: https://davidstosik.me/about
[Bridgetown]: https://bridgetownrb.com