The ask is simple: Make 50 Things. You choose the technology and constraints.
Why?
Making 50 different things with the same technology (or problem) allows you to evaluate approaches differently. Many times, you build the tutorial app, then bang your head until the app you had in your head becomes realized. Cut to a year later, and you realized you should’ve set up the project differently.
When you make a lot of things, you start to understand the ins and outs of what you are building. It really is a game of quantity vs. quality. You can spend 1 month building the best thing, or you can spend that time building 50 things. The developer who has gone through 50 iterations knows the technology a lot better than the one who only built one project.
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
— David Bayles & Ted Orland, Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
Rules
- You should be able to make these 50 things in a short amount of time. Try not to extend this over a long period of time. You want to be able to iterate quickly.
- It doesn’t have to be 50. 50 appears to be a high enough number to make some creative solutions. However, if you want to stop at 10, 25, or 40, that’s also acceptable.
Start Now
The best time to start your 50 things is now. As long as there is nothing stopping you, create a plan. The rest is practice.
Need some inspiration? Go to the about page.