# 2.5 hours a week

> Last updated: 2013-06-01

My 8th grade Humanities teacher was one of the best I had in middle
school. Unlike many teachers he wasn't focused on filling our heads with
curriculum. Instead he tried to teach us skills we needed to be useful
adults. 

On the first day of class he told us that one of the most important
things we could learn in his class was to write clearly. As adults it
wouldn't matter so much if we'd read The Red Badge of Courage but it
would matter if we could communicate well in writing.

To achieve this goal he required us to write for 2.5 hours a
week. This was in addition to any essays or other writing assigned by
our teachers. With this assignment his goal was quantity over
quality. He believed that if we each spent over 100 hours just writing
that school year we would improve. I certainly improved during that
year but I also learned not to dread writing and became less
intimidated by a blank page.

I think that the same idea would work well for improving programming
skills. During the month of June I'm going to spend 2.5 hours a week
on my personal programming projects. My rules are simple: 

1. Things I'm paid for don't count toward the goal
2. Time spent writing blog posts, preparing talks, reading stack overflow, etc doesn't count
3. Everything I write toward this goal must be pushed to github 
4. A week starts at Midnight Sunday and ends at 11:59 Saturday
5. To increase my accountability I'll either blog or tweet what I did each week.

I'd love to have others join me. You can tweet at me or email me to let
me know what you spent your two and a half hours on each week. I know
many folks who already spend more than 2.5 hours a week on open source
and personal projects but I also know there are lots of folks like me
who either spend less time or goof off during the time they have set
aside for personal projects.