DEV Community: Mohammed Ali

Hacks to manage my ADHD while learning

Mohammed Ali — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 15:11:11 +0000

Hi everyone, today I want to share with you my tips or hacks as the title says for managing the worst enemy of so many people “ADHD”.

Backstory:

Although I studied programming basics at college, along with some languages like Java, C# and Python, but I didn’t really put much effort into learning about programming principles for a whole year.

Enter 2020 and after watching a great video about Web Development Roadmap by Brad Traversy, my ADHD brain gained this sudden dose of motivation like a drug and I was like “what the hell you were doing all these years?”

But that sudden dose had a sudden end and I was back to watching tutorials and being addicted by fake dopamine when I see a random Youtuber build something!!

But after reading and researching about tips to manage ADHD without medication ( I live in Somalia, which lacks greatly in the mental health industry ), I decided to use them whether my brain liked it or not, my future was in danger and I wasn’t going to let this monster win…

So enough with talking about me, because I don’t wanna to waste somebody’s time, lets start with my list:

1. Find out if you’re a Morning person or a Night owl:

Because in my theory which I proved it right, defining your daily routine and what time exactly do you feel like working or learning stuff whether is at sunrise or after sunset helps greatly in forcing your brain into adapting to a routine

So when the morning comes ( in my case ), I wakeup and feel an immediate rush of energy to open my laptop and launch my environment and continuing my courses :)

2. Write a to-do list of what you’re going to do today:

This one helpful advice I found on Reddit/ADHD which helped me greatly in my daily home tasks, like brushing my teeth or cleaning my room, sounds cliche but once your brain adapts to it, it will work like a charm!

Also it gives a really good feeling when you finish that task and cross it off the list.

3. Stay away from Caffeine and High-Sugar products:

Yeah, when I ever consume too much sugar ( I’m a tea person, sorry developer community ), I tend to become restless and more energized, well that’s not a good sign since you will be prone to distraction and daydreaming lol.

I cut off my supply of sugar for months in 2020 and now I feel like a Ferrari…with brake this time off course :D

4. Control your Sleep:

This is not a joke, lack of sleep will hinder any daily routine useless or at least hard to maintain, without mentioning the headaches and random muscle pain in different parts of your body.

Usually I sleep for 6 to 7 hours and wakeup like a bird, a good night sleep also helps ( again my theories ) reducing any mood swing as a result of ADHD.

5. No Social Media:

I can’t stress this enough, nothing your ADHD-Brain loves more than reading random posts or engaging in a useless drama from people with too much time on their hands ( how lucky are they right? ).

Social Media is just an ocean of distractions, one can’t simply open Twitter or Instagram and come out in a less than 3 hours damn!!

6. Beware of “them”:

And I mean by “them” the random tutorials that watching it gives an instant dopamine with a fake sense of accomplishment

Me on YouTube:

Suddenly sees a “build a beautiful portfolio in 20 minutes”

Me ( breathes heavily ):Oh God, just ignore it and it won’t hurt you!

My brain: oooooh shiny 20 minutes to waste

Me: don’t you da-
-clicks on it anyway and drowns into a sea of similar tutorials for hours

Seriously, as much as it is entertaining to watch some wizard play with CSS and produce a masterpiece, it is actually useless if you don’t spend that time at least learning something ( at least in my opinion ).

Conclusion:

Finally, we reached the end of my post, these tips above are my sword and armour against my constant brain shenanigans, I hope it will provide future help to anyone who stumbles upon this humble list whether they have ADHD or not, because in the end, things like lack of sleep and social media addiction affects lots of people from different backgrounds and their future plans for better life.

Thank you for reading and goodbye into another post…hopefully sooner than later :D

Looking for a free blog hosting...

Mohammed Ali — Sat, 02 Jan 2021 12:23:44 +0000

I'm not is this best place to ask or if I am even allowed to ask but:
Is there any free blog hosting service for a unemployed graduate like me?

So far WordPress and others are bit costly to me, so i was asking anyone who has a blog: were the service you’re using free or what?

2020 was a rocky start

Mohammed Ali — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 13:28:14 +0000

Hi everyone, this is my first post here and I’m kind of hesitant to write about my journey , maybe because I’m a beginner who just joined a community full of experts and seniors , but I decided to go with writing this because as I said before, I wanna talk about my weird journey.
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I was a IT college student back in 2019 , but I didn’t too much work into learning about programming and web development like you would expect, I was just doing home works and delivering assignments like a dead robot, no passion, no nothing.
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Until….
I stumbled across this youtuber named “Brad Traversy” when I just randomly typed in “Web Development” , and his video of web developer map made me curious about this “map”

Neither to say , I felt like a bomb went off inside me, like I wanted to become a web wizard and create cool stuff like Brad, that’s when I decided to walk through this map.
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But the motivation and excitement aren’t enough to become a wizard, I needed resolve and patience and lots and lots of practice, I started with HTML,CSS then chose JavaScript as a programming language , keep in mind , as an IT student , I actually learned a lot about C++, C# and Java , with some data structures and algorithms but like I said, I felt like a robot while writing code and running it.
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Through 2020, it was like climbing a mountain, sometimes I reach a new height , and sometimes I sit for months doing nothing but watching tutorials or reading through Medium and Dev to.
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As a beginner , there were times that I felt dumb or this is not where my talents are , turns out, I wasn’t the only one struggling in this field, and they made posts on reddit talking about being overwhelmed or feeling like a fraud compared to all these masters and wizards on YouTube or Codepen, but the amazing thing is that the replies were full of stories and encouragement that made me realize that I lack patience and stubbornness to continue this roadmap.
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In the end, this is just a post of my thoughts about the previous year and I hope in 2021 I will be able to beat this map and become better than the years before :)