By Steve Smith | February 7th, 2019
Sometimes I get home, sit at my computer, and for some reason just stare blankly at the screen. I have a lot of projects and goals to complete. I have a lot of tasks to do. I have a lot of things I need to do in order to feel like the reason I am sitting in front of this screen is worth my time.
Let's talk about those goals of mine. I have several web-sites, of which two need to be built for two new shows I am developing. Sound familiar? It's because it has been a long time waiting. I am a one-person workforce doing projects in my down time, with really small short-term goals. This is the how I have always been. It is easier to achieve smaller individual goals than one giant complicated goal. From my point of view, if you take that one giant goal and broke it down into a dozen goals, and fail only a few, you have technically succeeded with my successful goals completed. But, the dangers of a giant goal being unsuccessful exist and are more devasting to ourselves.
How I apply this to myself when I am building a web-site is simple really. My first set of goals are always end-user security. This is my primary focus and the reason why I take longer to make my sites. My second set of goals are related to functionality. I actually leave the sites running on one of my monitors to see how it behaves over time just to see if I can find an instance of it needing to be fixed. Usually those details are related to behavior in the mobile usage space. My final set of goals are related to server and privacy. I've had to develop code that allows for multi region caching of pages with a set of variables that allow the sites I build to function as permitted in many countries around the world. However, I definitely hate JavaScript and resort to using backend code to do most of my work. This makes for web-sites that have less code downloaded but that have an extra step to be completed first before being sent to the user.
Am I looking for a huge audience? Absolutely not, like I said before, I have smaller goals than most, so when I say I'd rather change the world for an individual who ends up changing the world for others, I am being serious. Have I achieved that before? Yes, I most certainly have. But that story is for another day!