Re: Managing my LilyPond addiction

[Valentin Villenave]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Graham Percival
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Since it's the end of term, it's time to look back and reflect. When
> looking back, I see that I have a problem. I seem to be addicted to
> working on LilyPond.

Hi Graham,

I can certainly relate to that (though my own unfortunate addiction is
split between LilyPond and the PP). Except that in my case, being
(nearly) unemployed doesn't help much (volunteering just gets in the
way of me finding a proper job).

> I hereby announce that starting tomorrow (21 Dec 2009), I'm only going
> to do 3 hours of lilypond work each day. That's still 21 hours a week,
> which is very respectable for a volunteer job. And it's not going to
> count working on other open-source projects; that time is separate
> from lilypond time.

That's already a big deal. And I think no one will blame you for
preserving yourself.

> My time will be carefully prioritized:
>   1. Urgent emails.
>   2. Mentoring contributors, new and old.
>   3. Dealing with non-urgent emails.
>   4. Working on stuff that only I can work on (the Grand Unified
> Builder, releases, and the website).
>   5. Working on complicated stuff that I can do much faster than
> other people (large-scale documentation rearrangements, build system
> stuff, etc).
>   6. Working on other issues.

Although I certainly am in no position to give you any advice, you
might also want to pay attention to how many times a day you check
your mailbox(es). Limiting myself to only three times a day (plus,
ideally, one whole day a week without checking my emails at all) has
helped me in the past (in fact, I know for a fact that I couldn't have
written my opera without observing this specific rule for a few
months).

> This will undoubtedly slow down lilypond development -- if we have a
> lot of new documentation contributors, then I'll be doing less release
> work. And it would be quite difficult for anybody else to pick up that
> slack; GUB is a beast to get running.

I do believe that documentation management and releases building are
without a doubt the two fields where you're most needed right now,

> I make no apology for this; my time is my time, and I consider keeping
> new contributors happy to be more important in the long term than
> having more releases or better-quality releases. If anybody wants to
> volunteer to mentor a few people, that would obviously reduce the
> burden on me, thereby allowing me to spend more time on releases, the
> build system, or whatever else occurs at a lower priority level.

Please do take care of yourself. We're all grateful for your work,
your involvment and your presence, and I hope this way you'll stay
longer among us! :)

Cheers,
Valentin