10% Project

Google are well known for their attitude towards encouraging employee creativity. So much so they have an initiative that allows all(?) employees to spend 20% of their time working on personal interest projects.

A 20% project can be anything that sparks interest for the individual, in general they are usually something to do with improving the way that they are working, or the software they are using.

I read today that over 50% of the google product line up have come from 20% projects – including gmail!

Anyway I’ve wanted to do this ever since I found out about it, and now that I’m working for myself again the time has come to do it. I can’t quite afford 20% yet, but 10% will do. A day every fortnight focussed on learning new a tech, doing some design work or building a fanciful site. And not worrying about revenue generation or payment. That’ll do nicely!