This content originally appeared on Level Up Coding - Medium and was authored by Shuvadarshan Bhual
Capitalize on these 5 powerful habits to optimize your learning throughout the challenge!
Let me start off by telling you a story about a dear friend of mine: John.
A financial analyst by profession and father of a one-year-old, John’s life required him to deal with unhappy clients during the day and an unhappy kid at night.
He had a desire to learn web development but found it extremely hard to fit a single hour into his demanding schedule for the pursuit of it.
One fine day, he stumbled upon the #100DaysOfCode challenge and decided to give it a shot.
However, after repeated instances of failing to find time to code on several days, he finally decided to give up on the challenge entirely, and sadly, on the pursuit of learning web development as well.
Does John’s story sound relatable to you? If yes, please continue reading this blog further, as I have some good news for you!
The #100DaysOfCode challenge
A challenge aimed at fostering a consistent and community-oriented attitude towards coding, the #100DaysOfCode challenge is probably one of the best things given by Alexander Kallaway to the current as well as aspiring programmers out there!
“That sounds really amazing, Shuva, but the rules require me to devote at least an hour every day, for coding. This would be something that I would really want to do, however it sounds too good to be done at the moment, given my already demanding schedule. What should I do now?”
If that sounds like something that might be echoing in your mind as you read this blog, then I would like to tell you that you can calm your nerves now, as I have already got you covered in this case.
As someone who took the #100DaysOfCode challenge himself and is already halfway through it, I have learned many a lesson by trying new things and failing in quite a lot of them.
Through this blog, I wish to share 5 of the most valuable things that I have learned so far, in my journey of becoming a web developer while having taken the challenge at the same time.
They have proven to be quite effective for me and might prove similar, for you as well. So without further ado, let us dive into them.
The 5 gems
- Start NOW!
Are you waiting for the perfect moment to take up the challenge? Well, I was too.
I would have loved to share my secret sauce as to how I created my perfect moment for starting the challenge, except that there isn’t any, unfortunately.
Waiting for the perfect moment had kept me from taking up the challenge for months on end, until I finally decided to do something differently. I started. And, that has made all the difference!
2. Start small
Devoting at least an hour a day to coding could indeed be daunting for a lot of us, but how about half an hour? How about 20 minutes a day? I am sure it wouldn’t be too much to ask for if I would ask you to devote just 10 minutes a day to it, would it?
10 minutes a day, every day, spread over the course of a year, can give one, enough momentum to take the process forward at a higher pace than before, in the following year. The benefits thus reaped would also start compounding over time.
As Darren Hardy rightly puts it, in his book The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success:
“Since your outcomes are all a result of your moment-to-moment choices, you have incredible power to change your life by changing those choices. Step by step, day by day, your choices will shape your actions until they become habits, where practice makes them permanent.”
This leads me to my next point.
3. Practice consistently
It doesn’t matter if you start off by devoting an hour a day or just 10 minutes. What matters more is that you code for the same amount of time (or more, if you can) every day.
Consistency is key in getting you accustomed to coding every single day. Trust me when I say that it won’t be very long before it becomes second nature to you.
But why does it even matter if something becomes second nature to us? Well, I am sure that most of us aren’t strangers to the old proverb which goes: old habits die hard.
I am sure this wouldn’t be a habit that you would regret any day.
4. Have a plan
“A plan a day keeps inefficiency at bay,”
- Shuvadarshan Bhual
Okay, that may not be the best way to convey my point, but I am sure you see where I am getting at.
Having a target that you wish to achieve by the end of the challenge and a series of actionable steps (aka a plan) that you could take to achieve it, would make your path to the target, significantly smoother.
This would not only reduce any indecisiveness regarding tasks that you should undertake after a particular task has been completed but also allow you to focus better on the bigger picture and redirect your thoughts towards possible steps that you could take, once the bigger picture has been painted, to make it better.
5. Maintain healthy boundaries
More often than not, one could easily get carried away in the pursuit of coding and probably end up neglecting personal life to a great extent.
I have certainly experienced this, quite often. To tackle this issue, one of the things that I would recommend is to block a certain period of a day for coding and focus only on coding during that period.
This could not only help you stay focussed on coding during that period, thus getting some focussed work done then, but also give you a guilt-free opportunity to focus on other things for the remaining part of the day.
Conclusion
Before I sign off, I would like to encourage each one of you to approach the challenge with a positive mindset and some powerful (and doable) steps.
That certainly has the potential of making a significant difference in your journey to becoming a successful coder in the future.
Have you inculcated one or more of the above habits in your life already?
I would love to hear how it has helped you with coding or any other aspect of life, in the comments below!
5 ways to make the most out of the #100DaysOfCode challenge was originally published in Level Up Coding on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
This content originally appeared on Level Up Coding - Medium and was authored by Shuvadarshan Bhual
Shuvadarshan Bhual | Sciencx (2021-07-17T14:04:01+00:00) 5 ways to make the most out of the #100DaysOfCode challenge. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2021/07/17/5-ways-to-make-the-most-out-of-the-100daysofcode-challenge/
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