Alright, let’s talk about this Trevor Wells thing I tried out recently. It wasn’t like some big official project, more like something I stumbled upon and thought, “Huh, maybe this could fix some headaches.”
See, I was getting really bogged down with how we were handling our smaller project updates. Too many clicks, too many different tools, felt like wading through mud sometimes. Just keeping track of tiny changes felt like a chore. Someone mentioned this guy, Trevor Wells, and his way of doing things – super stripped down, apparently.
Getting Started
So, I decided to give it a shot on a little side task I had. Didn’t want to mess up the main workflow yet, you know? First step was trying to figure out what his actual process was. Wasn’t much official documentation, more like scattered comments and mentions I found here and there. Seemed like it involved mostly plain text files and some simple command-line stuff. Okay, I can handle that.
I cleared out a folder on my machine. Really cleared it out. Decided to start completely fresh. The idea, as I understood it from the bits and pieces I gathered about Wells, was extreme simplicity. Track tasks in a simple `*`, log progress in `*`, maybe use basic file naming conventions to show status. No fancy software.
The Actual Process – Trying It Out
So I opened up my terminal. Felt a bit weird going back to basics like that.
- Created `*`. Added maybe five or six lines, one for each little thing I needed to do. Super simple, like “Fix the button color,” “Check the image size.”
- Created `*`. This was supposed to be my diary for the task. Every time I did something, I’d add a timestamp and a short note. Like, `2023-10-27 10:15 – Started looking into button color issue.`
- For files I was working on, I tried renaming them. Like `*` and then `*`. Seemed clunky, honestly.
The first couple of hours? Felt slow. Really slow. I’m used to graphical interfaces, drag and drop, all that jazz. Typing everything out, constantly saving text files… it felt like stepping back in time. And keeping that log updated? Man, I kept forgetting. I’d finish something small and just move on, then realize twenty minutes later I hadn’t logged it. Had to rely on my shell history sometimes to figure out what I did and when.
Also, searching through the logs wasn’t great. Just `grep`-ing through a text file works, but it’s not exactly slick when you’re trying to find something specific from two days ago.
Hitting a Wall (Sort Of)
The biggest hurdle was collaboration. This Trevor Wells setup seemed purely for a solo person. How would I share this? Emailing text files back and forth? Putting them in a shared drive? Seemed like it defeated the purpose of being streamlined. It just shifted the complexity somewhere else.
And the file naming convention for status? That got messy fast. Imagine having ten files all marked `inprogress`. Not very clear.
So, What Happened?
Well, I stuck with it for that small side task. Finished it using just the text files and command line. Did it work? Technically, yes. The task got done. Was it better? Honestly, not really, not for me.
I get the appeal of simplicity. Cutting out the noise, focusing on the core tasks. And maybe for certain kinds of minds, or certain very simple projects, this Trevor Wells approach is gold. But for anything involving teamwork, or just needing a slightly better overview than manually scanning text files, it felt like a step backward.
I ended up going back to my old ways, maybe trying to simplify that process a bit instead of throwing it all out. Learned something, though. Sometimes the simplest tools aren’t always the best tools for your job. You gotta try things yourself to see if they fit. This one didn’t quite fit me.
