Let it never be said that it's a waste of time to spend a day thoroughly reviewing the list of contributed Drupal Modules.

Right now I'm working on a project that's got a fairly tight deadline and so the more I can benefit from the contributions of the Drupal community, the better. I had planned about 3 or 4 days of development time to accomplish a particular piece of functionality for the site. Yesterday I decided to spend the day taking a step back and doing a very thorough look through the contributed modules for Drupal 6. As I went through the list, reading the description of each, if I saw a module that I was all but certain I'd need for the project, I'd download it and enter it in a list I called "Added." For those modules I thought I might want to use, I put the name and a link to its project page in a list I called "Considering."

Although it was a tedious exercise, today I'm reaping the benefits. What had been planned as 3 or 4 days of development turned into 1 day of research and 1/2 a day of development. I found a module that does exactly what I needed and it integrates very well with Views2. It even gave me enough time to take a moment to write this blog. And I never seem to have the time to update my blog.

Update: I should probably mention the module that saved the day. It's the Flag Module, developed and maintained by quicksketch, one of the Lullabots (updated today, Feb 22, to RC1).