You probably heard of the Pareto principle stating: 20% of work drives 80% of the result. During the last three months I focused on what I thought was my last 20% of redesigning Plamoon. Turns out, the appearance of progress is deceptive especially when rebuilding a product that already exists for a decade.

Hello. I’m Diogo and these past three months were brutally hard.

There’s always a storm, and it shall pass.

First, I want to say I struggled finding the silver lining of my past quarter’s experience. Today is the 12th of October, Sunday. My first attempt at writing this post was at least 20 days ago. I wasn’t in a good headspace and ended up writing a lot of bullshit that I hated.

After weathering a few personal storms, I think I learned to be patient and wait for the storm to dissipate. It’s still raining, but you can’t really expect to walk in the rain and stay dry.

I don’t want to overshare here, I’d rather focus on my professional experiences. And you probably have enough shit going on in your life. Still, I need to say this: you are not alone. I lost a friend to suicide this quarter. I was fucking broken for at least two weeks. Please remember, the storm always passes. We all put on a smile and forget that everybody else is doing the same. Sometimes, we just have to let it rain.

I hate umbrellas. Bulky, awkward, always in the way. I kept forgetting them everywhere as if it was on purpose. So I stopped using them. I prefer waterproof coats now. Although I wish I was cool enough to pull off a cape.

Then, I went back to the activities that keep me grounded. It was a period of intense focus and solid progress, but I don’t think it was worth the cost. I noticed my mental state deteriorating, and when you are not fully aware, that’s when it usually starts to rain. So I took a few days off, travelled, and went back to my “good” routine. Think of those habits as a waterproof coat. They help, but you’ll still get wet. Hell, you might as well take a swim.

Enough with the analogy, I can feel you cringing already.

A redesign is way harder than you think

We intuitively think: “The product already works! How hard can it be? We just need to change this and that and bada bing!. Done.”

Not quite. And the Pareto principle applies here but in a twisted way.

I decided to tackle what seemed the bulk of the work, and it felt like touching 80% of our product surface. I established the redesign patterns and started munching through it. It seemed easily digestible. (more analogies incoming)

When I was a kid, my parents would make me sit at the table until I finished the plate. The good stuff, easy. Gone. The veggies and the other unidentifiable horrors? 🤢

That’s where I’m at now. Staring at those horrors. And you might have been there as well.

The twist: our perspective is usually wrong. I call it the (re)design mirror effect. We see the work through a developer’s reflection: refactoring, the number of file changes and components left, the database changes, etc.

But users are looking in the same mirror. From their perspective the changes are less apparent and seem slow and distant. And the real value lies in that 20% seem from their perspective.

And I fully agree with the 90-90 rule that states:

The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time. – Tom Cargill

(I went down the ACM rabbit hole — here’s the issue where that quote appeared, with a few other gems: ACM 1979 issue)

To exemplify the above, I tackled one last piece of technical debt that I felt was important to be done before bringing more people onboard. I had this massive core class holding most business logic. You can imagine the entire UI referencing it as well as other modules, but with some things still being outside of it and doing some stuff that I’m not proud to say and that I didn’t quite remember what were about.

Well, I managed to split it into different domains and concerns. But the cognitive load of reorganizing it and rewriting large chunks under the new architecture was just a lot. It felt sluggish and slow. It still does.

Still, it was the right call. Imagine scaling without caring for the code that does 20% of what matters.

But when you change perspective, so does the feeling of progress. It starts looking like embellishment without real progress. Redoing the same that was already done.

And changing perspective at the last 20% is specially cruel. My energy is already low, and on top of that, the thought of falling behind only makes it harder.

It’s all summer rain

It gets hot, then it rains. It’s always like that and I keep forgetting it.

So… I’m finishing the first 10% of the last 20%. Not bad, considering I’m solo and the workload. I lost sight of what mattered for a bit. And that’s okay. It happens. I’m still here, and I plan to ride this storm to the end.

I’m also supporting clients and shipping small fixes on production. Not sure how long until I will need to deal with a big request or new requirement.

A few reminders for anyone redesigning, or doing anything hard for that matter:

  • Prioritize yourself, the product is only a by-product of you.
  • Look in a mirror and focus on what really matters.
  • Eat your vegetables first.
  • Control perfectionism, or your 20% will become a NaN%.
  • Wear a coat. It’s going to rain.

Outro

I planned to document the technical changes, new features, and share screenshots. But honestly, I’d rather do it once this phase is complete. Then I can focus on the product itself and the decisions behind it.

I also have many ideas that I would like to work on. This internal conflict adds an extra burden. I keep telling myself I have to focus and put aside exciting ideas. Maybe there’s a balance to be pursued here, but right now my job is getting this thing released. Period.

Cheers.