Backlog

[Strategy]

Honest answers: have you ever cleared through your entire backlog? 
What's the approach? Being organized and just doing one project at a time? Hopping around from multiple concurrent projects and coming back to things?
- Strategy

[niektb]

Nope, I'm at the point where I don't care anymore and just do what sparks my interest the most 

[radio]

I m not even sure its possible ,every time. When you lost somehow trace of the project or PCB

or but a newer revision because it has added features or simply a better layout ,it feels kind of

feels natural to me to drop some of the things I did not finish.

I thought I would stop this habit at retirement, but now I have more time for the garden or do

small changes to my house. Eventually fall and winter will teach me more consistency ,because

I have now a larger workspace and possibly can start to sell the original pedal as soon I finished

building the copy to finance the hobby

[marcelomd]

That's the story of my life.

Anyone who knows the answer is sitting on a pile of money. There's an entire industry catering to people who can't  complete all tasks.

Actually the problem is that I (we?) invent new things to do faster than I (we???) can actually do them.

[pacealot]

Endless unfinished projects, fuzz after fuzz after vibe after fuzz, breadboarded, tested, tweaked, declared the best thing I've ever heard, bagged up and organised ready to slap on a PCB, sometimes even actually slapped on a PCB (sometimes even successfully), rebagged, put inside the enclosure I'm sure I'm going to put it in, if only I could decide to commit to it, then...  crickets?

I mean, that's just what I've heard happens. I wouldn't know anything about that myself or anything... 

(it's a bad sign when your wife won't let you buy any more breadboards until you finish at least one of the projects you've had sitting on one you already have for the better part of two years first....)

[bluebunny]

> cleared through your entire backlog?

I don't understand the question...   

[duck_arse]

the project left unfinished, probably waiting for a parts order, will be hogging all the parts, like pots and switches, that you need now for the new shiny circuit you've just started. short answer, no, never.

never put off till tomorrow what you can scrounge parts from today.

[amptramp]

I am scheduled to finish all of my projects on the 32nd of August.  I better get busy!

[antonis]

Narrow time margin, Ron..
(better shift it up to 37^th of August, at least..)

[davent]

i have a singled ended transistor hifi amp i started collecting parts for 2005, had transformer wound for it and did collect all the parts, designed and etched pcbs, loaded those, chassis drilled and painted... no idea as to what year it might get put together.

[Mark Hammer]

I suspect the best way to avoid a backlog is to visit this site, get a couple of interesting ideas, then leave, never to return, and don't visit any other sites. Purchase ALL the parts you need and don't even think of starting anything else.

I have bins full of boards.  The challenge is that etching, drilling and stuffing a board for something that sounds like it would be nice, takes hardly any time at all.  Waiting to acquire all the parts you need, and especially troubleshooting,takes MUCH longer.  Then there's working out the enclosure machining and legending, and wiring everything up.  In the meantime, something else captures your fancy.  "Hmmm, that looks interesting.  I think I have all the parts for that, and it looks really simple and easy.  While I'm waiting for that parts order to arrive, lemme see if I can perf this up."

And so it begins.

[Keppy]

The only way to clear the backlog is to stop adding to it, which in this case means to stop finding/thinking of interesting things. Sounds pretty sad, to be honest.

[lapsteelman]

Once I finalize a circuit on the breadboard I pretty much move straight to making the board, enclosure work , etc until it's done.  Sometimes I'll have two circuits going at the same time, but I still keep moving forward until they're both done...
One thing that might help is I'm not much of an "arty" person so I spend no time on that stuff... bare aluminum enclosures and Dymo labels.
I do have a backlog of circuit ideas I want to experiment with... but once it's finalized it's game on!

[amptramp]

Narrow time margin, Ron..
(better shift it up to 37^th of August, at least..)

That's the delivery date.

[Digital Larry]

This was a pretty important philosophical question for me to answer.  A few years back, I got a ton of stuff to build pedals and ultimately finished 3 or 4.  Having spent my early career as an electronics designer I wasn't actually learning much of anything new, I was just "doing" something.  It was a little different with trying to get those old tube amp chasses working as guitar amps since I don't have the background in tubes, but that stalled also.  I really never even got started on guitar BUILDING, which is an obsession of many people on the other forum I spend most of my time on.

My main focus of all my possible creative pursuits is trying to record more of the music that I play.  So to the extent that other things I am doing distract from that occasionally, I do allow it, but as far as building effects or messing with tubes amps goes, I moved those to the "NEVER gonna do it" column.  It also became clear to me that even though I like THE IDEA of electronic guitar effects, as far as using them, I'm relatively conservative like lots of other guitar players.  I'm not all that interested in various "dirt" flavors.  Give me something and I will use it.  I think if I were more interested in USING effects I would be more interested in building them.

Things that I probably am still going to do:
- play music
- try to record music
- try to write music
- develop audio plugins (this is my remaining technical rabbit hole)

[Strategy]

I appreciate all these responses. I do find I have a lot of things stuck at:
"project works but procrastinating the enclosure / finishing steps"
"powdercoating resources went away and feeling fussy about the finish work / not sure what to do"
"there's a step that requires a tool I don't have" (oscilloscope, transistor matching, machining widget, etc)
"got distracted from builds because I realized I could use my pedal building skills to rehab broken pedals found cheap on craigslist"

I am involved in a number of bands and musical obligations so I find I ramp up on pedals / DIY when I'm between commissions / deadlines, and as a mental break from making music. But my DIY space is in the same room as my studio so sometimes the bins of half finished projects literally add unfinished-project "vibes" to the creative space.

The big thing I did try that felt good was not buying new PCB's if there's a big bottleneck. I will occasionally go out on a limb for a must-have or limited availability item. Also got rid of some flights of fancy / stuff that was above my ability level. Of course I want to support my fav PCB makers too but overall the slow down was a good idea.

I guess another big take away I'm hearing here implicitly is that the journey is as important (or moreso) than the destination!

Thanks for humoring me with answers to my very broad opening question