So, everyone’s been talking about this “Ryan Mitch” way of doing things. You hear it in forums, whispered in co-working spaces. Sounded like some magic bullet for getting stuff done, real stripped down, no fluff. I thought, okay, I’m a practical guy, I’ll give this Ryan Mitch approach a whirl on a little side gig I had brewing.
Diving In – Or So I Thought
First off, I tried to find some solid ground. You know, what exactly is the “Ryan Mitch method”? Turns out, it’s a bit like trying to catch smoke. Lots of talk about intuition, about just doing, less about actual steps. My first step, then, was just deciding to build a small photo gallery app for myself. Simple enough, right? The Mitch way, I figured, meant no fancy project management tools, no complex frameworks, just raw coding and common sense.
I started by just opening a text editor. That felt very “Mitch,” very grassroots. I mapped out a few basic features in my head. No Trello boards, no Jira tickets. Just me and the code. For the first day, it actually felt… liberating. I was just building, no red tape.
But then, things started to get a bit… sticky. Here’s what I bumped into:
- I kept forgetting little details. What was that specific shade of blue I decided on yesterday? Which feature was I supposed to tackle after this one? My mental notes weren’t cutting it.
- When I hit a snag, a real coding problem, trying to backtrack or explain it even to myself without any documented plan was a pain. It was all just a jumble in my head.
- I realized if anyone else had to look at this, or if I had to look at this in six months, it would be a complete mess. There was no trail, no logic laid out other than the code itself, which, let’s be honest, isn’t always self-explanatory when you’re deep in the weeds.
The Big “Aha!” Moment, Sort Of
After about a week of this, I stepped back. The gallery app was… well, it was functional, mostly. But the process? It wasn’t the smooth, enlightened journey I’d heard about. It felt more like I was just making things harder for myself in the name of being “pure” or “minimal.”
My main takeaway from trying the whole Ryan Mitch thing is this: it probably works wonders for Ryan Mitch. Maybe he’s got a brain wired differently, or he only works on super tiny, super focused things where all this can live in his head. For me, a regular Joe just trying to build something without pulling all my hair out, it was a bit of a non-starter for anything beyond a quick sketch.
Sure, I learned that you can definitely overcomplicate things with too many tools. That part is true. But “zero-overhead” quickly became “all-overhead-in-my-brain,” which isn’t exactly an improvement. I ended up going back to my usual lightweight set of tools, a simple task list, some notes. And you know what? Things started moving smoothly again. So yeah, I tried the Ryan Mitch way. It was an experience, for sure. Not one I’ll be rushing to repeat for my day-to-day work, though. Maybe it’s just not for everyone, despite what the internet hype might say.