HOW TO BE TORTOISE NOT THE HARE?

 

I am sure most people know the story of tortoise and hare. There are various lessons that we can take out of that story but In this post  I will relate the story with how my coding journey started, the mistakes I have done along the way and why the approach of tortoise is more suitable than the hare's?

 I started learning web development on 1^st April, 2022 after seeing countless roadmaps like “How to be a software engineer in 6 months” on the internet.  I was pretty hyped and I immediately started to learn HTML-CSS based on one of those roadmaps. However my journey ended up a month later. I haven’t studied a single day till the end of summer. I was feeling guilty , knowing that I shouldn’t have given up but at the same time I didn’t know what had put me down.  Later on 5^th of September  , I again started learning coding. However this time I was mentally more powerful. During all those non-coding months, I realized some vital stuff that I was not aware of before. I found out some of  my mistakes that caused me to fail. So what were my mistakes? What should you pay attention for an effective and consistent learning process? Let’s get into details.

1-Not being a part of a Tech Community: Being a part of community is one of the crucial step that you need to follow. Why? Because coding is a complex skill and the learning process is a marathon. Community and networking will provide you enough support to overcome the problems you face along the way. Coding is not fun as much as initial period. Sooner or later you will face the through of sorrow and when it hits you, it is the connections-networking that will keep you on the path.

2-Not questioning enough or searching  the roadmaps: I  remember I just selected  a roadmap on internet and saw myself as a programmer after 6 months with zero background. The roadmap  that I have selected is given below. Now I can see how meaningless the roadmap is. Learning javascript in 14 days? That is ridiculous! Most of the roadmaps you will see on the internet makes no sense. If you need to pick one of them , please be very selective.

3-Not taking care of my body: I was basically doing everything the way I was used to do .Especially after work , I was generally out of energy and couldn’t do daily studying even for 1-2 hours. My mistake was not preserving my energy. I started paying attention things that consume  or might affect my energy such as building more healthy relationship with my colleagues , avoiding any possible arguments, focusing on how to deal with an unexpected problems etc. I also did a membership of gym for a year and paid attention to put more healthy food into my body. I have been hitting the gym pretty much  3 days per week since I started.  

After paying attention to these points for some time, I saw that learning process gets much easier and fun. Besides I discovered that exercising and consuming proper food increase the quality of your life a lot in general. I successfully finished my first  100DaysofCode challenge. I am currently  on Round 2 Day 55 at the time of writing. That is basically over 5 months. I couldn't have made it  without paying attention to  the details I mentioned above.

The takeaway:  It doesn't  matters how fast you started or how many hours you put into studying if you do that for a short amount of time, what matters  is taking the approach of the tortoise and doing the consistent work even if it seems slow progress. However remember in order to do consistent learning, you need to pay attention to anything might affect the process.

I shared my experience in this post, hopefully my mistakes will give you some insight on your learning process. Feel free to leave a comment.  I'd love to read your mistakes or the strategies that you follow for a consistent work. Happy Coding to Everyone!