The Minimum Viable Plan

I took a very long hiatus away from this project. I had some personal issues that I had to sort out before I could really commit myself to this project. I’m sure I will write about it another time.

I did not have a good approach when I initially started this project. I learned that I struggle to make progress without deadlines. And when it comes to personal projects, nobody will set the deadline unless I do… not exactly a recipe for success.

As much as I hate how overused this acronym is, SMART goals have a point. SMART stands for: Specific, Measureable, Atainable, Relevant, Time bound. My previous “plan” fails almost all the criteria.

I generally know what I need to accomplish but I was operating with a completely unrestricted timeframe. That allowed me to dilly dally and become demoralized at the lack of progress I was making. It is extremely important for me to have a meaningful deadline and not something I made it. I have always wanted to go to the annual Maker Faire or Open Sauce. Coincidentally, I will be in the Bay Area for an internship this summer when Open Sauce is going on. So by Open Sauce 2025, I will have finished my project and hopefully be able to show it off at the event.

My approach with planning is to solve things recursively. Start with the broadest and necessary deadlines, break it into meaningful chunks, and then hone in on the specifics. Rinse and repeat.

I’ve broken up the project into three different phases, each approximately 11 weeks long. Phase 1 will be working towards building a first working prototype while Phase 2 will be polishing and removing the jank. Phase 3 at the moment is entirely allocated for unexpected delays at the moment. But as the weeks progress, it will hopefully become more clear what Phase 3 will encompass.

Since I have limited time as it is I have only planned out phase 1. Things will surely change so I didn’t bother trying to worry about phase 2. I applied a similar approach.

I need to be able to answer two questions: how long do I have to get the big tasks done and how much wiggle room do I have to work with. Do no more planning than is absolutely necessary to get the job done. I think I’ll call this minimum viable planning.

My new approach to building this bicycle is to be as quick and dirty as possible. That means things will likely be barely held together, but with enough time and steady progress, the cruft should fall away. This is fighting against almost every fiber of my being to try to make things perfect the first go around. I am trying to break my long reinforced habit of premature optimization.

I have been reading The War of Art which talks about this concept of “resistance” towards doing things. We all experience resistance in our everyday lives towards actually trying to accomplish our goals. There is some kind of invisible force holding us down, and usually that is ourselves.

I can summarize one of my findings from this book. As makers, we need to be like water. Water erodes even the sturdiest of mountains with consistency. That means showing up every day to get the job done. This is the difference between a “pro” and and “amateur”.

I won’t delve much deeper into this than this mention for now. Even though most of the advice is given in the context of writing, I can thank this book for shaping a lot of my philosophy behind this new approach and getting my out of my creative rut.

Week 1 Progress

I’m unfortuately running out of time to write this post, but I will briefly talk about how I stayed on track for this week and some of the challenges I faced.

This week was primarly focused on electrifying my bicycle. Since I am also attending classes full-time I obviously have not been able to concentrate my full effort towards. However I made really good progress and am ahead of schedule in some aspects!

So what threw a wrench into the plan to electrify is my choice of bicycle. I am using a vintage road bike I picked up from ebay for $100. The initial idea was to throw in a hub motor and bam, electric bike. So after a lot of research, electric road bikes are not that common. The hub motors are just too thick. And toss in the fact that this bike is probably 40 years old so there were some very large differences in terms of standards. The dropouts of the bicycle (this is the part of the bicycle where the back wheel is clamped on with nuts to the bicycle frame) was 120mm on my bicycle. However almost all hub motors are configured to work with 135mm axles. There is a whole other list of reasons why a hub motor wouldn’t work. Supposedly the spokes/frame of the bicycle may not be able to handle all the torque generated by the hub motor. And also the tire width cannot be extended any farther without completely re-working the frame with welding. I can’t promise I’ll update this post with more specific information, but if I have time I will try to. If you have a question feel free to contact me (see the home page).

Funnily, and rightfully so, the bicycle shop I went to refused to cold set my frame to 135mm out of worries of liability. I tossed this plan out the window and am now proceeding with a mid-drive motor that mounts onto the bottom bracket of the bike (where the pedals and levers go).

Thankfully the bicycle seems fully compatible with a mid-drive kit from Amazon. I will be using a 500 watt motor from Bafang (BBS01B). I am a bit concerned that this bike might become too fast. It’s already an effortless ride even up steep hills.

This week’s dragon seems to be slain (minus finding some training wheels for the bicycle). But if there is something you can bet on in life, it’s that things will certainly go wrong. So we will see how the electrification build goes.

I’ll end this off with a cool picture of the northern lights right outside my college!

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