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Sometimes, Diving into Your Past Can Be Constructive.

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I wrote yesterday about keeping old ideas in a notebook. Well, it’s also useful to take some time out occasionally and page through those old notebooks. It is often interesting seeing how much you have grown over time as your skills and knowledge has expanded. It’s also often useful to see how you solved problems in the past and to possibly use some of those ideas in the future.

The past version of you was far less knowledgeable, but sometimes that lack of knowledge leads you to solutions that seem less obvious once you understand things. It is sometimes those very solutions that are the most interesting and elegant.

Basically, you need to remind yourself that sometimes looking at the world with your earlier naivety will sometimes offer you the perfect solutions. Let yourself view things as you once did and then use your current knowledge and experience to make it work even better.

Don’t Throw Away Things That Are Still Useful

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This has to do with my personal life as much as it does programming. While writing a program we often go through many iterations of what we are creating or how to solve individual issues. While, many of these ideas won’t be used in the final program, it is still worth keeping some record of them.

A couple of ways to do this are to use a notebook to work through your ideas. As you change your ideas or come up with new ideas, simply turn the page and start again. This will allow you to keep your old ideas (ideally with dates written by them), while you explore new ideas or solutions. When the notebook is full simply put it on the shelf and start another. Notebooks don’t take up much space and the are relatively cheap to purchase.

I couldn’t begin to list the times that I have run across old notes and they inspired a solution to a new problem that I was having. The same can be true for you. It just takes a bit of a change in how you do things.

Just Keep Plugging Away, Even When You Don’t Feel It.

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Today is one of those days that I am struggling to get much done. I debated if I should even write a blog post today. But, here we are.

As I stated before, come up with an achievable goal in the first place and then do what you can to make it happen. I will cut myself some slack since this won’t be a great post. But, you know what? A post is better than no post. If you let yourself get away with missing your goals, then it becomes easier the next time to do the same. Before you know it, the goals vanish and your progress goes with it.

So, make some effort to get toward your goal. It might not be anything major, but at the end of the day even a little bit counts.

You can do it! Just keep at it one step at a time. Results will happen.