DEV Community: Buba Mohammed Auwal

HNG Internship Goals

Buba Mohammed Auwal — Sun, 15 Aug 2021 09:32:55 +0000

If you're a developer with an eye out for internships, you must've heard of the HNG internship and the drills they put developers through to make them world class software engineers.
The internship is open to anyone and aims at creating a virtual work environment that fishes out the best candidates from a pool of participants. Operated by the zuri team, the internship is one developers around the world keep an eye out for.
You must be wondering if I am a participant, well, you guessed right, I am in the 8th cycle of the HNG internship and I'll be stating my goals in this article.

Become a better developer

It's undeniable, working with other awesome developers around the world make one better, you get to learn a lot of things quickly and HNGi (HNG Internship) provides a fast paced environment with the talent for such.

Network with Great Minds

There is an excess supply of super awesome developers, designers and the likes in such an environment and I wouldn't let the opportunity to network pass me by.

Work on Awesome Products

Building software is every developers' joy, even better when you're building it with great developers.

Scale this Challenge

I have always considered HNG internship a challenge and I don't take challenges lightly. I was in a previous installment but crashed out halfway, this time, I am seeing it through to the end.

In conclusion, I aim to generally get better at what I do, which is building APIs and web apps with MongoDB, Express, React and NodeJS.

In case you're wondering, the internship is open to beginners but keep in mind it is a fast-paced environment and as such you should be willing to learn at lightening speed. Basic knowledge of git and github is a plus, check out this tutorial to get started with git.
Basic knowledge of figma is also an added advantage, get up to speed with figma here.
Check out this tutorial to get the basic knowledge of HTML.
I would also recommend getting the most basic know-how (atleast for a start) on a backend language like NodeJS

With all those, you're more than ready to go, take the leap and dive right in. See you on the other side!

Overcome procrastination like a hero

Buba Mohammed Auwal — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 00:32:26 +0000

So it's Friday morning and you're struggling to meet up with the deadline set by your project manager. You know it's a task that could have been done earlier and in convenience but you couldn't help but keep scrolling through the latest threads on Twitter and watching cat videos on Pinterest (cute!). Honestly, it's something we all go through and though it might seem unsurmountable, it is rather easy to surmount.

Procrastination is the act of putting off important tasks for less rewarding and easier tasks. It is often mistaken for laziness but it is way different from laziness.

The battle against procrastination is a never-ending one so I'll share a few hacks I use to trick myself into completing tasks on time.

Acknowledge your habit of procrastination

You have to, first and foremost acknowledge the fact you are a procrastinator (I know, it hurts). This puts you in the position of knowing your flaw and actually putting in work against it. As with all problems, identifying it is the first and most important step.

Focus on starting, not finishing

The more we dwell on finishing a particular task, the more we dread getting on it. A workaround for this is to focus on starting the task, forget about finishing up the task, just get on it and start something no matter how minute it may seem. You'll might be surprised to wind up with the task done in no time.

Keep Yourself a To-do list

This list should be comprehensive and have a breakdown of the larger tasks into smaller chunks. This'll take your mind off the task as a whole and lets you do your thing getting things done.

Hold yourself accountable

"Yes, we are back on your case, you won't get discharged till you hold yourself accountable". Put yourself in the spotlight and tell yourself you can get it done. It is always harder the first few tries but as you hold yourself more and more accountable for getting these tasks to the finish line, you realize the habit of getting things done is actually dope (dope!).

Tackle the hardest tasks at your peak time

So you've started working on that feature you've been putting off for weeks but you're feeling like taking a nap to continue later?
Don't!
Truth is, you're just looking for an excuse to leave the task for a later time which might be another four weeks from now. No matter how hard it may seem, persisting might just be what you need to get it done.
Some tasks might be really hard to get done at that point in time, so setting a reminder or alarm to come back to that task is a good solution.

Reward Yourself

Yay!, so you set a target for yourself and reached a milestone, what's next?. Go get yourself that ice-cream you've been meaning to for a while. Getting tasks done and doing it on time is a huge achievement and you need to pat yourself on the back and shout out a nicely done hero!.

Congrats!, you're winning the fight against procrastination and getting more productive hours in, be careful not to let the villain back in though, who knows what havoc he'll wreck.

Welcome to Dev.to

Buba Mohammed Auwal — Sun, 16 Aug 2020 01:26:39 +0000

This is my very first article on Dev.to and it doesn't contain much but with time this will eventually become really big.

Cheers!.