Your New Year’s Resolution: You don’t need a GitHub contributions streak
Tags: mentalhealth, programming, productivity
Published: 2024-01-01 15:04:16

It’s time for a New Year’s Resolution, don’t fall into the trap that you need to have a contribution chart that has every day colored. Instead, focus on your mental health!

For many years I’ve seen people compliment GitHub profiles that have every day colored on their contribution chart. Those people, in turn, proudly post a screenshot of their contributions on Social Media to show off.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/auivrlpvcd5gdi2yk93e.png)
_Mitchell Hashimoto’s GitHub profile ([tweet](https://twitter.com/mitchellh/status/1739784515944579086))_

However, while this does indeed look awesome, and it might work for serial-entrepreneurs like Mitchell (founder of Hashicorp) and maybe for you, this shouldn’t be something to look up to necessarily.

One of the good things in this chart, is there are gaps. Way too few if you ask me, but they exist. To me, this highlights that there aren’t any vacations or weekends off. Not a single weekend was spent offline entirely, and not a single week was spent not working.

I totally get it though, I too have 100s of projects queuing in my head for attention, and I’d love to be programming all the time. But having time off, is really important.

I’m calling out Mitchell here specifically because I noticed his post on Twitter, and because he has quite a following. I’m not saying it is bad to have a profile like this, all I want to focus on is that you don’t have to have a profile like this to be noteworthy. It isn’t a must have nor a goal you should strive for. However, if you might end up with a full chart accidentally, it could also mean you just really enjoy your work.

## What should it look like?
So what should your GitHub contributions chart look like? That’s actually quite easy. As full or empty as you’d like, but make sure your mental health is coming first! If you’re perfectly fine with working every day, then it’s also fine to have a chart completely filled. No matter what you choose, your own sanity should come first.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/dw90rxfhjiluxgs7xll3.png)

_This is my chart, and I’m very happy with it! Though I would’ve wanted to work more, this is what made sense to me._

But never ever start contributing or working when you don’t feel like working that day. It’s absolutely fine to have a day, weekend, week or month off from GitHub. Take the time you need, and don’t contribute for the sake of contributing.

In the end, the quality of your contributions matters, not the quantity. Not everyone can produce high-quality contributions at a high pace. For example, Vermeer produced only 34 works while Picasso produced over 100.000. Both produced high quality, but I’m sure if Vermeer would’ve tried to make 100.000 pieces, the quality wouldn’t have been very good.

One thing is for sure, if I see a completely full chart on GitHub, I’ll always wonder if they’re okay and if they’re taking enough time off. If you ever sit across from me at a job interview, I’ll be asking that exact question; “Are you taking care of yourself above work?”

**Happy New Year, enjoy 2024, and put yourself (and your health) before work!**