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Big progress slow, or small progress now?

This is just a small update to say I've been working on an airplane.

I've been doing a lot of reading on home-building aircraft lately and one of the "hints" I've run across over and over again is, "work on it every day;" most articles say to work an hour a day, and I've laughed at them. After a 10 hour work day, some time to decompress, then make and eat dinner, I have precious little time to spend in the garage before 9PM rolls around and I stop making noise in order to keep peace with the neighbors who also share our triplex apartment.

However, recently I read an article suggesting half hour stints and another that just said, "Do something every day, no matter how small. A light bulb went on in my head. There was that A-HA moment when I realized I didn't have to stick to a schedule. 

Please bear with me as I explain.
When I started I took the process of building my airplane and broke it down into some fairly large chunks, listed here approximately in the order I figured they would get started:
-Wings
-Tail surfaces
-Fuselage steel
-Cockpit and controls
-Engine/fuel
-Sheet metal
-Covering/painting.

When I started on the wings I broke them down into more basic steps, Building ribs, making the spars, making spar straps, making steel brackets, etc. At first I was trying to knock out each of these parts in one or two big work sessions because they felt were too complex to try and come back to without forgetting something and because it felt good to knock a huge task off the list in one fell swoop. The downside was I was limited to working only when I had large enough chunks of time to do everything to start and finish a part in one sitting. This made for long, frustrating breaks between progress.
 
At some point I realized I needed smaller bites to take because the big build sessions would get interrupted and I was starting to lose my place. I made a to-do list where each part was broken down into the specific steps needed to bring it to completion so I could keep track of where I was and what needed to be done next. For example, this is the approximate list for making a two-piece steel fitting to hold they jury-struts onto the spars.

-Cut steel blanks
-Bend to fit spar
-drill for bolt
-round ends
-smooth all edges with 120grit sandpaper
-break sharp corners with sandpaper or wire wheel
-ream hole to final size
-debur holes
-weld
-recheck fitment on spars
-clean and paint

Small, bite-sized bits. This is where that light bulb began to glow. I had the list, but I was still trying to knock it all out in one big whack. When I read the article suggesting 30 minute work sessions I put two and two together. Each one of these steps could easily be done by itself in about 30 minutes. Pull out the bandsaw, mark and cut some steel, clean up. There, 30 minutes and one step closer to an airplane. Sure, I lose some time to setup and cleanup, but I'm closer than I was yesterday. Pull down a spar from the shelf, bend four fitting, and mark for the bolt holes. There, another 30 min. If you have the time you can start stringing them together; drill those holes. 

Sometimes progress is less than a half hour, maybe you have 15 minutes to mark something out for tomorrow, or to clean up a mess from the day before. Maybe progress today is researching a part, ordering materials, learning more about how to do something, or practicing some welds. Every little bit is one step closer to the goal, even the failures. 
I've made at least two parts that won't make it into the finished aircraft because of some error in construction. I had some aileron control horns that cracked when I bent flanges into them. I spent extra time and finished them anyway, because they were junk anyway and I could practice all the steps before I started over and made the good ones.

So which is better, making big leaps of progress and then resting until you can make the next lunge; or taking little steps day-by-day to reach them same end? Either method could work, but for me the daily steps are paying off far more than I thought they would. To anyone who reads this, especially if you feel exhausted by your last big leap, I encourage you to start taking those small steps toward your own goal today.

-Brian

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