Recently I stumbled upon a new (to me) podcast called Develop Yourself with Aaron Hayslip & Peter Elbaum. The episode I listened to was #63 - How to Focus When Learning to Code (replay). This episode was very interesting to me because I am someone who is easily distracted while trying to learn how to code and am also a procrastinator. I will be sharing the tips that I found helpful as I start planning my coding first schedule and setting my coding goals.
They lay out the 4 steps to staying focused, these are: making a commitment, creating a coding first schedule, making coding a habit with rituals, and the strategies for staying focused. They reccommend to start by asking yourself how important your goal is and to write down motivations for why you have this goal. This is important to have a clear view of what you want to achieve and then start forming the steps to take to get you closer to these goals. It is also helpful to have someone to keep you accountable of your goals so that it will help when you maybe are not feeling as motivated or just plain being lazy. Also, plan to sacrifice during this period. Sacrifice time, relationships, money and whatever else will need to be cut out in order to help you achieve these goals in the amount of time you set for yourself.
Creating a coding first schedule requires looking at your bare minimum commitments that you can’t change, such as your job or school. Then you will review your variable commitments, these we can change and sacrifice because we don’t have to have them. These might include going to sporting events, watching netflix, or scrolling facebook or instagram. You first want to decide how much time you want to dedicate to coding per week. They suggested 15-20 hours per week for career transitioners. To start you want to add the fixed commitments on your schedule first and then setting realistic coding times around these fixed commitments. They mentioned that most of us don’t spend our time well, which is not generally a bad thing, but when learning to code and focusing it is imperative that we try to be intentional with our time and how we choose to spend it. It is important to still have down time in between learning to code, but while you are focusing it is best to cut out any distractions to avoid losing concentration.
Making coding a habit by creating rituals could be one of the most important parts to this journey, in my opinion. This could look like having your coffee ready in the morning, having your favorite pair of slippers ready, having comfortable clothes on, having all of your devices charged and ready to go, and having a dedicated workspace. What can also be helpful is knowing what you are going to be learning for that day and having a plan for how to tackle the topics you are learning. This will really help with the procrastination that I struggle with, because it will give me less excuses to start getting things done. Adjusting these rituals is important as well so that you can ensure you have a habit of being prepared to focus.
The strategies for staying focus starts with one question, what is focus? They describe focus as intensions minus distractions equals focus. In this part they encourage to think of your life in time buckets, 10 years from now, 5 years, 3 years, 1 year, 3 months, and to create goals for each of these buckets. At first this idea terrified me, 10 years from now?! After some thought I agree that having goals for these buckets is helpful to imagine where you want yourself to be, and from there what steps you can start taking today to get you to these goals. The method they suggested is the pomodoro technique. For example, I have a 3 month goal of learning JavaScript, what do I need to be focusing on in the next 25 minutes to help me achieve this goal? It is also helpful to create weekly goals that align with your 3 month goals.
My big takeaways from this podcast is to have clear goals for the future, plan out your coding time, adjust rituals to ensure having a fool proof habit to be as productive as possible and to make sure you are planning your break time as well. Over these next couple weeks I plan on creating my own coding first schedule and thinking of what goals I have. So I leave you with this: in the wise words of Leon Noel, never go into your day like an accident.
Also, I am not affiliated with or sponsored by this podcast, I just really enjoyed these ideas and wanted to share what I found helpful.
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