Reducing creative friction: starting a new project
I’ve written about creative friction before. But I just realized a new source: how much effort it takes to start a new project.
A few seemingly small things can inhibit the process way more than I realize. Here’s some I realized recently, and the changes I’ve made.
| friction | reduction |
|---|---|
| Having a bunch of code editors open | Just opening up one editor at the root of all of my git repositories (~/repos/). Surprisingly, VS Code can handle it. Unexpected benefit: now way easier to cross reference code and docs from other projects. |
| Starting new code repo locally + on GitHub | Downloaded GitHub command line tool and auth token, learned incantation: gh repo create mbforbes/[name] -y -d "[desc]" --public/--private |
| Starting new python project locally | ,pynew |
| Installing a new python package | ,pyinstall |
| Starting a new three.js project | Made repo with build script and template. Next: writing script so it’s one line. |
| Starting a new p5.js project | Made repo with build script and template. Next: writing script so it’s one line. |
These are specific to programming projects. Here’s an example for drawing: how likely are you to start a new drawing if:
- your drawing equipment is all away in a closet?
- your drawing equipment is near you but you have to get out paper and pick a tool?
- you are currently drawing and just finished a sketch?