A little over a week ago I was reading Shawn Wang's Coding Career Handbook and was inspired to start a challenge. So, I sent this out to the world:
1000 words for 1000 days... Even now that I'm 10,000 words into that commitment, it still sounds like a lot. But, in the past eight days of this challenge, it's been quite amazing what's happened already. Not only did Shawn Wang, the author of Coding Career book that inspired the commitment, make the commitment with me, but it's been exciting and relieving to finally begin to release these words that I've had in my mind for so long out to an external form.
I was once told by an uncle that from a very young age, he always saw that I was, "an observer... Someone that enjoyed watching and learning from the world around you, soaking up all the knowledge that you could." That statement resonated with me. It reflected the way I saw myself and my interactions in the world for a very long time. Sure, I was active in many things and interacted with the world around me. Yet often, I chose to observe for no other reason than I wanted to watch and soak in the things I saw. Yet, as I've grown into the person I am now, I've realized that observing isn't enough. I need to put what I have learned out there, or else it dies with me, and that's not the way the world progresses. Humans progress by taking the knowledge that passed down to them, adding their own experiences into it, and then passing it down to the generations to come.
Not everything in this commitment will be public, but my plan is that most will. I'm also not as fixated on the 1000 words part as I am the 1000 days. So, here's what I've lined out for myself:
- To write for at least one hour every weekday.
- The weekends are my time to spend with my family and work on other projects.
- Strive to make it to 1000+ words per day.
- Primary types of writing that counts towards this goal:
- Journaling
- Blog posts
- Notes - personal and work
- Brain dumps
- Documentation for projects
- If I do not get to 1000 words, try to make it up another day on that same week.
- Forgive myself if I do not make that commitment. Then, use that as an opportunity to improve my writing systems so that I don't have to do this often.
- Share a little bit of randomness with each post, mostly music!
Random share:
My life before tech was a DJ/Sound Engineer/Dancer. So, I want to share a song of the day with every post. With that, here's today's! From one of my favorite instrumental funk bands, Fusik.
This commitment is to better myself and create a second brain to reduce the work of my first one. To have a place where I can clear my mind to make way for more creative outlets (such as writing more!). My primary objectives are to gain more knowledge through writing and researching and to share my findings with the world.
I look forward to this journey and hope to see you along the way!
Top comments (3)
How is The Coding Career Handbook so far? It looks interesting but I'm not sure if it's worth it for 59 dollars.
I've really enjoyed it. I've been following Shawn for a long time and was excited when he dropped the book. I bought the pre-release when he announced it and then also the full Creators edition when it was on the release sale.
The entire book resonates around the concept that he has preached for a long time, and has brought him to where he is in tech quickly, which is "learn in public." If this is something that interests you, then you'll gain a lot of knowledge from this book. If not, you'll still gain a decent amount, but it may not resonate as much with you. I don't think it's a great immediate book for the code newbie, but provides for everyone that is from junior-senior, it lines out a lot of great concepts. Also, the curated links throughout the book to dig deeper into concepts are really great. I actually recommend the $99 version with updates for life (which he is already actively planning v2) and access to the Discord community. Shawn is very active and constantly posting more and more knowledge there as he finds it. All in all, I'm not disappointed in the money I've spent on it at all.
Dang, you really convinced me. I just looked up his article on "learn in public" and it's awesome. I'm going go ahead and buy it soon. Thank you so much!