Today my github streak looks like below, well this should have happened 210 days before if I were to have a good internet connection on my vacation in the Andamans.

I have open sourced about 474 projects so far (i.e is from 2008), some are tiny and some are decently large.

I have been part of larger of projects like yeoman koajs git-extars and other orgs as well.

I don't have the exact count of humans who have crossed the 365 days mark, but I have come across couple of dozens who have and each of them would have their own experiences, given the geo location and the projects they have worked on.

Let me start with related FAQs and few picks from my AMA and then will try to share my learning from it.

What is the graph all about?

A profile contributions graph is a record of contributions you've made to GitHub repositories.

That includes:

• Issues and pull requests opened within the last year on a standalone repository.

• All the commits made within the last year.

• Contributions to Private repos are not visible to all. (Just a caution)

Can we cheat here?

Yes, a bot could help you to fake a streak but it's even more easier to find if it's faked or it's a genuine effort.

How do you get time to commit?

Well, to be very frank I am not very good at managing time, but it's more of a habit. Related AMA#21

How did it all start?

Well, I have been lurking around in Github from Jul 25, 2008, I was contributing to Ubuntu from 2005ish over launchpad, my first major contribution was for diaspora and later on yeoman

I manage my side projects by collaborating with humans! (:

Related AMA#11 and AMA#4

What do you get from this?

Nothing, but the below feeling!

Learnings:

• Don't over burn yourself!

• Don't get anxious it's just a streak.

• Start as many as projects/orgs you can, collaborate with humans and contribute more!

• It took about 180 days for this to become a part of life.

• Make new mistakes, make them in public out and loud, that is one of the finest ways to learn.

• Accept negative criticism with a smile.

• Accept and work on all the positive criticism.

• Ask people about their thoughts on IRC, Social Media et.al

• Pause and reflect at times.

• Make a public list of TODO items, so that people will help you with it and you will be cautious about them.

• Make sure your projects have good readme!

• Make meta repos for ideating if needed.

• Invite friends to collaborate, get people started with FOSS.

• Names of the repos matter a lot! Specially if it's a node module, ruby gems or similar.

• Don't wait for permission of others to send a PR or start an org.

• Don't get addicted! (Trying not to ;) )

• Thank people who helped you, out loud.

• Sometimes whatever you do need not be a success story, it's not meant to be as well, do it for the fun of it!

• Pickup new stuff now and then, experiment a lot!

• Never stop! Getting burnt in this is very common, have seen great minds getting tired at this and have stopped contributing :(

Well, this is all I can think of for now, I am sure I would have missed many points here, will update as and when I get more learning from this habit.