Everyone does it, I wanted to do it but hesitated: 100 Days of Code. This is a Challenge in which you code for 100 Days each day for 1 hour. If you miss days, you just put them at the end of your challenge and add them. It's about holding yourself accountable to do something to learn. I didn't like the "You have to..." approach especially because I am experienced with burn-out and imposter syndrome and therefore try to always be aware of healthy methods of learning new skills. Check out my article on the topic Grindculture in Tech and why it should be canceled.
My rules I set for myself
- Streaks are not important. But the days on which I am learning should be close enough to each other that I don't need to repeat things to remember what I did last time.
- There is no time requirement when a day counts. Realistically I do learn more than an hour anyway on the days I do learn.
- Every type of learning counts. I don't only count "Coding" but also actively learning, researching, etc. It's all part of the process.
- Have fun. The worst outcome would be I burn myself out after the challenge that I never look at coding again. To avoid that, I put fun on this list.
The next steps
Today I actually already did, what I was supposed to do. I decided after learning without notes and anything, to repeat my Python course and put stuff into my personal note system I made for learning. I also started a database for terms in programming so I know how things are defined. I feel like when talking about what I do, I still miss vocabulary. That makes describing problems harder. I am using my Notion for all of this.
I will also find a secondary source of information with every more complex topic because sometimes things are not perfectly explained by one person but better by another. I will on top make a list with all concepts that I don't understand to talk them through with the person mentoring me. (I wish I was that organized in school tbh 🤣 )
So far that's the plan. I do have three projects I am actively working on. My Cat-Genetics-Sim for learning Algorithms, my Pomodoro-timer for learning Graphical-UIs, and my Discord-Bot, to have a project that gets me familiar with APIs and that on top is super helpful for my content creation work. So there is no shortage on projects 😁
Well, here we go! 100 Days Of Code!
Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash