DEV Community: Kien Dang

One Year, Infinite Possibilities: A Self-Taught Programmer's Journey

Kien Dang — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 12:28:35 +0000

My first post on this platform was about the Pomodoro's technique and how I started using it as part of my process of reskilling to be a developer in 2019.

During that year in 2019, I had been silently posting updates on my personal blog, mainly because it contained posts of my self reflection and introspection of my progress.

I did 1031 Pomodoros, which is equivalent to 430 hours; 176 hours came from doing the courses I found online and the other remaining 254 hours came from debugging, struggling, and relearning concepts that I didn't understand.

Now that I've been working as a software developer for the past 4 years, I decided to revisit and post publicly here where I might reach a bigger audience and share what I’ve learned since becoming a developer.

Here are some key factors that kept me programming consistently and staying focused:

Utilizing the Pomodoro technique 🍅

The Pomodoro technique has been instrumental in my success. When you have faith in the process, "what-if" scenarios transform into "when" outcomes. By utilizing this technique, time works in your favor, and the Pomodoro method becomes the instrument for measuring your progress.

Having monthly self-reflections ✏️

Having introspection is monumental in keeping yourself motivated. It allows you to acknowledge the things you've accomplished no matter how small and also helps steer you back in the right direction.

By writing, it helps clear your thoughts and any doubts you may have about yourself. You'll notice whether you're burning out or when you need longer breaks.

It also keeps you accountable for what you're doing with your time. If you notice yourself stuck on a problem for way too long, just move on, look at the solution and learn why the solution was written the way it was.

Removing your phone 📵

While this may be pretty obvious.. I found in practice that this is pretty difficult to do.

Your phone is extremely distracting and constantly competing with your attention. If you're doing a Pomodoro, make sure the phone is on silent or move it away in a different room. Its addicting nature is due to the constant notifications and the apps that entice you to be on it non-stop.

It was definitely a struggle for me as I find myself just unlocking my phone for no reason. I found something that helped me improve my focus and concentration, which is the next tip on this list.

Reading books 📚

Reading has been proven to increase your focus, attention span, concentration, and improves memory. I really needed to retrain my brain to stay focused and increase my attention span, so I found some books that really interested me and developed a good reading habit.

Reading helped rebuild my attention span after being glued to my phone from years of browsing social media and watching YouTube. Eventually, it helped me reduced the habit of constantly checking my phone.

Drinking coffee ☕

Okay, I admit, this is a weird one. I was never a coffee drinker. I only drank tea for my caffeine fix, but eventually I switched to coffee. I’m not sure if it was because I was really addicted to the sugar (something I definitely gave myself ample of in my coffee), or just the larger kick of caffeine that coffee gave me compared to tea, but nonetheless, I found it helpful in reducing the barrier to get into flow state.

Patience & Meditation ⌛

This is pretty important. You need to be kind to yourself. If you're going to start learning on your own, be patient.

I started meditating to improve my sleep and lower my stress. When you're out learning on your own, it's going to be stressful. Sleep is very important in remembering concepts that are new to you and help build those new connections. Improved sleep means better energy and focus.

I was skeptical about meditation as I didn't think something so simple would help, but it really helps clear any frustration while you're stuck on a problem. I highly recommend developing this habit, because as a developer, you will run into a lot of frustrating moments.

Consistency is key 🔑

This is by far the most important tip. Pomodoro's kept me programming consistently. I experience mini-dopamine effects that reinforced this habit of learning and programming in 25 minute intervals. 25 minutes may not sound like a lot, but the small chunks of time really add up. Motivation is short lived; Consistency is key to making progress.

The above tips were the things I learned as long the way and none of this was applied in one go. You can try putting some of these into practice and find out what's best for you. I hope this post has offered valuable insights, and please feel free to share it with anyone you think may benefit from it.

If you're curious feel free to drop by my personal site @ https://kien.dev where I blogged every single step of the way, including how much time spent per month, what courses I did, how I learned and what I did to accelerate my career path into programming.

Thanks for reading! 🙏

The Pomodoro Technique - A simple tool to develop great study habits!

Kien Dang — Sat, 01 Feb 2020 17:43:08 +0000

Yes, this is another one of those Pomodoro posts... but hear me out:

For the past few months, I've been obsessed with how to be more productive. As someone who is currently reskilling to become a front-end developer from a biochemistry education, I've developed my own process that I trust blindly to becoming more productive.

Like many self-learners, I've stumbled upon many resources and became eager to start, however, this excitement lead to being overwhelmed which can be detrimental to your progress. Here are the building blocks of my process that I use with Pomodoro's to help me in my journey.

1. Pomodoro Technique

Self-learning can be tough and often we love to see results quickly. Unfortunately, change doesn't happen overnight and can take months of progress to build up and see the results of your efforts. The best thing to do is to start with one thing at a time and slowly break them down with Pomodoro's.

It is a simple time management technique developed by Francesco Cirillo that requires 25 minutes of focus and 5 minute break. That is 1 unit of Pomodoro (aka tomato in Italian). I've developed a habit where the moment where I start a Pomodoro, my brain automatically goes to work without any friction. Starting and maintaining focus is a hard skill to master. Pomodoro's strengthen this ability which can help tremendously in building momentum.

I've used countless Pomodoro applications and found that Pomotodo.com works best for me. It is extremely simple and I love the fact that it can sync to your Google Calendar to show you the Pomodoro's you've completed (I'm currently paying for the premium version for just for this feature but if you know of a free one, please let me know!)

Example of the calendar sync:

Edit: PomoDoneApp is a great one that has many features, I highly recommend it.

Pomodoro's can provide a nice visual measurement of your progress which can snowball you into continuing your good habits. Remember that even if you spent 1 or 2 Pomodoro's trying to fix something, it is the effort that matters.

I will continue to do my Pomodoro's every day until I get somewhere. I know if I can complete over 80 Pomodoro's (2000 minutes or 33 hours) every month, I'll be a step closer to my goal.

I actually use this to track my time in progression through a Udemy course or any course I'm working on. I know many people like to have different things allocated for Pomodoro's but I find that using it as a time tracker works just fine.

2. Celebrating Small Victories

It is important to give yourself a celebration for learning something new. These positive reinforcements will help you greatly. A fantastic way to do this is to do the first tip above!

By doing Pomodoro's, you effectively celebrate small signs of progress by increasing the number of Pomodoro's you do every day. The big victory is often the result of small ones.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before — Franz Kafka

Looking at your Pomodoro's gives you a sense of progress and that is what we often look for. Sometimes when you're trying to achieve your goal, you lose sight of any progress because it's not there yet — you're still learning the fundamentals and haven't built anything and that's okay!

I noticed when I started programming, I didn't see any true results — all I had was following JavaScript tutorials and just copying code. But eventually, things started to make sense and looking back at my calendar, it allows me to see the progress I've made.

3. Non-zero-days - The Pomodoro implementation

I stumbled upon a Reddit users' comment ryans01 talking about no more zero days. It's implementing a system that gets rid of any day you do not do a single thing towards your goal. A non-zero-day.

I actually applied this technique for my Pomodoro's. There are many days where I just feel like not doing anything, perhaps I'm just not feeling it or life gets in the way. I do at least 1 Pomodoro and then I'll give myself permission to relax. However, I find that when I do 1 Pomodoro, my momentum kicks in and I eventually do more than I expected that day which is a win-win.

4. Self-reflection

It's important to self-reflect on your Pomodoro's and see how much you've done and where your time is being allocated. I've had many self-reflections revealing efforts going off course such as jumping to different resources and not properly allocating the time to finish something. It helps bring correction to your journey and brings your focus back to where it needs to be.

5. Disengage

For years I thought to be productive meant to always be doing something to achieve my goals. However, this can lead to burn-out and often lead to a huge halt in your progression.

One of the most important things to learn is when to decompress and relax. It gives your mind the ability to recover from having to learn new things all the time. We're all humans who live in an oscillatory universe and have our rhythms.

Remember that resting and recovering is a big part of being productive. Usually, I set a daily of 6 Pomodoro's and when I've completed my daily amount, I'll end up spending guilt-free time doing leisure activity.

"Time enjoyed wasting is not wasted time" — Marthe Troly-Curtin

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. Feel free to adapt and try out this process and tweak it as much as it suits you. I'd love to hear what your process is like in the comments below!

My inspirations come from the books below:

Atomic Habits - James Clear
The Power of Full Engagement - James E. Loehr and Tony Schartz

Photo by Vince Lee on Unsplash