DEV Community

Tuxhedoh
Tuxhedoh

Posted on

Too Easy to Break a Streak

I got a whole week in. I was posting updates and making sure to get my tasks complete...and then the holidays hit and my schedule is all different and I miss one...two... and now it's been 5 days that I haven't done any of my tasks. I'm the only one holding me accountable.

I find it easy when I'm sitting at work during a lull, to pop over to my FCC or open VS Code and just start working, but when at home, I have plenty of time, it just doesn't fit in to the "things I do at home" category yet.

My current problem, and one I frequently face when doing front-end challenges, is that I'm not really a creative designer type. So now I'm on the FCC HTML/CSS challenge to build a tribute page and I just don't care enough to make it look good. I can follow the points to meet the requirements fine enough....

So 2 obstacles present themselves, lack of scheduled time, lack of commitment to the actual building of pages from a creative standpoint.

What do you do to insure that you stay on top of your goals, in my case 100 days of code, through different schedules?

Do you have any tips for how to push through the tasks when you don't care about them?

Latest comments (2)

Collapse
 
tuxhedoh profile image
Tuxhedoh

I'm posting a new post that I wrote as a reply... :D Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Collapse
 
tvanantwerp profile image
Tom VanAntwerp

Setbacks happen in building any habit--especially when holidays come around and your routines and locations can change. When making something a habit, try to use various cues together to strengthen that "itch" to do whatever it is. Seems like you've already done this in part: "When [bored at work], do [work on code]." But your home has too many cues for other things that aren't working on code, so it hasn't stuck there yet.

As for getting stuck because you don't care about design: if you don't care, don't do it. Since you don't feel creative, your uncertainty around that point holds you back. Uncertainty is probably the biggest cause of procrastination, in my opinion. So try to remove some of that uncertainty. Sketch a simple wireframe or twenty and just pick the one you hate least. Use Bootstrap or some other UI framework to just make it look good enough and generic. Make a plan and execute, even if it's imperfect; don't let perfect be the enemy of good.