Career changes are hard

Changing careers is hard,

especially when working full-time in an unrelated field.

I thought completing my coursework was a challenge in time-management. I was wrong. Job searching for that first job is the real challenge in time-management.

Not only do I need to keep my coding skills up by working on personal projects and doing code problems, I also have to filter through the egregious amount of job postings, write cover letters, and network.

To add to this I have decided to learn Java. My classes were in Ruby and Javascript so learning a strongly-typed language and having built in classes for Trees and whatnot would be nice. More importantly many roles require either an iteration of C, Java, or Python so a basis in one (however small) would be great.

Here is the list

1. job search

2. network

3. practice code challenges

   • on the computer
   • on the whiteboard (aka the sliding glass door in my house)

4. continue working on personal projects

5. learn Java

I need to dedicate aliquots of time so many days a week to make sure that when I am productive that I am focused on what I need to focus on instead of trying to figure out what I should do each day.

Here is the plan:

When it is slow at work - work on blog posts on coding problems and CS topics

2 days a week (Probably Tuesday/Friday) - Job stuff
2 days a week - do a coding challenges in each language
1 day a week - practice whiteboarding
1 day a week - do nothing/sleep/excessive netflix yeay

Wen I need a break, I do what I really want to do, learn Java and work on my personal projects.

Lets see how this goes.