Your Coding Journey: How To Stay Commited
Learning a new skill is always a lot of fun, but can oftentimes be overwhelming as well. There always comes a point where you want to say, “Eh, what’s the point”. That moment comes at different points for each person, but it comes all the same.
That is why it’s important to have a plan in advance of starting your learning. This plan will help you stay on track and invigorated to keep pushing ahead.
Here’s a few tips and thoughts I have for staying commited.
Have a Clear, Realistic Goal
When you start your coding journey (or when you’re switching to a new stack), you need to have a clear end point in mind.
That end point can’t just be “Master Coding”. It needs to be something realistic and explicit, and attainable. A good example would be to get to a point where you can make a simple, pure HTML webpage or to complete a beginner course in Javascript.
Schedule
In order to keep yourself on track, you need to set up a good schedule per week that allows you ample time to work on your goal.
Is that 1 hour per day? Or 3 hours twice a week? It’s up to you to figure out, but regardless of the schedule that you work out for yourself, you must remember…
Take Breaks
It is very important to give yourself a chance to rest. Understanding and learning coding isn’t a sprint. You need to take regular breaks in order to give your mind a rest. Not taking breaks can lead to mental exhaustion which is not conducive to learning or good mental health.
Keeping Yourself Honest
So, you have your goals and schedule in mind, now you need to stick to it. There are a lot of ways to keep yourself honest about commiting to your work: Set a timer to alert you when your next coding session is due, make a checklist or mark a calendar with your schedule and keep it somewhere you’ll see everyday, or have a friend or family member ask you once a week how your coding is doing (this one is especially helpful).
And that’s it for now! There are a lot of ways to keep yourself commited and maximize your learning potential. These are just of few of those ways, and I hope you found it helpful.
