So, my GitHub contribution graph? A thing of beauty. Solid green. My calendar? Color-coded chaos. If you asked how I was, I’d groan, “Buried!” and feel a tiny flicker of pride. I was the picture of a busy dev.
But here’s the secret I was carrying around: I was deeply, totally stuck. I was running on a code treadmill, sweating, but the scenery never changed. A whole year passed, and if you’d asked me what I’d actually learned? I’d have drawn a blank.
Turns out, I was a master of busywork, and a total stranger to growth.
Stuff That Felt Productive (But Honestly, Wasn’t):
Let me be real about my “productive” habits:
- The Ticket Grind: I chased that dopamine hit of closing tickets. But most were just… variations of the same thing I already knew how to do. It was like flexing a muscle that was already strong, while the weak ones atrophied.
- Update Obsession: Running package updates felt so adult. “Look at me, maintaining things!” But I’d just hit ‘yes’ to everything. The actual breaking changes and cool new features in the changelog? Never read them. Total placebo effect.
- Nitpick City (Population: Me): In code reviews, I’d go to war over variable names and commas. It made me feel smart and detail-oriented. But I was avoiding the scary, big-picture question: “Do I actually understand what this change is trying to do?”
- Tutorial Tunnel: I’d finish a tutorial on a new framework with a perfect little demo. And then… I couldn’t build anything on my own. I’d just followed a recipe without learning how to cook.
I was on autopilot. My brain was comfortable. And comfort is where growth goes to die.
The One Tweak That Actually Helped (No Guru Advice, I Promise):
I didn’t overhaul my life. I just started asking myself one question at the end of the day: “What’s one thing I know now that I genuinely didn’t know yesterday?”
Some days, I’d stare at that question and panic. I’d just spent 8 hours “working” and had nothing. It was brutal.
So, it forced my hand. I had to go find the “thing.”
- Instead of applying a band-aid fix to a bug, I’d follow it down the rabbit hole in the debugger. The fix took 10 minutes; the understanding took an hour. The knowledge was the prize.
- Instead of updating all the packages, I’d take one major version and break my local setup on purpose. Fighting through the errors to make it work taught me more than 100 smooth updates.
- I quit tutorials cold turkey. I started building stupid, tiny, broken versions of things from scratch. My code was bad. Really bad. But for the first time, it was mine, and the lessons stuck because I earned them through frustration.
Where I’m At Now (It’s Messy):
My GitHub graph? It’s patchy now. Some weeks it looks like a connect-the-dots puzzle. And I’m okay with that.
Because the green squares I do have? Some of them represent the day I finally understood that weird concurrency thing. Or the afternoon I lost wrestling with a concept, and won.
I still have busy days. The grind doesn’t vanish. But now I can feel the difference between motion and momentum. That old dread—the feeling of being left behind—has mostly quieted.
Turns out, getting better isn’t about being busier. It’s about being braver with your curiosity. It’s about letting yourself be confused, and staying in that uncomfortable space long enough for the light to break through.
So yeah, my process is imperfect. My code sometimes is, too. But I’m learning, for real this time. And that feels a whole lot better than just being busy.
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