Catharsis for self-encouragement
By: Damian Demasi

In 1998 I started designing very simple websites as a hobby, and this helped me to support myself (in part) during my university studies. But this activity never evolved from the hobby stage, and soon I started to invest less and less effort into it. Once I finished my university studies (in a far related field) I ditched web development for several years.

Fast forward to 2020, I decided to start a Web Developer boot camp course on Udemy with the end goal of updating my knowledge and go back to my design and development interests.
After doing some research, I decided that I will start learning Git. This way, I could keep track of everything I will be doing during the course and future projects. I also chose Windows as my development platform, something that proved to be a challenge but that now is very rewarding.

I also intended to analyse the process of learning and how much time I will be actually investing in this activity. This is the reason behind the use of a time-tracking tool called Clockify.
The objective was to study 4 hours each day, so I could balance this course with a master that I’m also studying (in an unrelated field), a part-time job, and other activities related with the fact that I’m an immigrant in Australia. At first, I thought the goal will be achievable, but the “evidence” showed that the intended study rhythm was hard to maintain.

Using Clockify, I noticed the following study-time distribution:

The Web Development Bootcamp had 405 lectures spread across 47 hours. This translated into almost 148 hours of actual study. If I consider the time invested in researching what course to study and which path I would follow, a short Git and GitHub course, and the total length of the web development course, I actually invested almost 164 hours across 6 months. Initially I estimated, at the most, half of that time.

So, after going through this experience, these are the lessons I learned about myself during this course.

The motivation myth

I chose to study this course because it was a subject that interested me. I enjoy creating something (a web site) out of tools and raw material (code, images, databases, etc.). This was the main driver behind choosing to commit myself with an online course, paying for it, and willingly pouring hours of study into it. But sometimes that wasn’t enough.

I had a lot of “I don’t feel like it” days. I found a straightforward technique to overcome that feeling. The problem was “choosing”: I could choose not to study. So, I started by removing that choice. I found out that not giving myself the option of “not studying” helped a lot. I usually studied in the mornings, very early, so what I did was doing a series of automated habits: wake up, do some exercise, take a shower, prepare breakfast, sit at the computer, open Udemy, my code editor and my Word document for note-taking. All of that, without thinking about the option of not doing it. I just had to do it, because that was the way my morning was structured. No options, no choice.

Of course, there were some days in which it wasn’t possible to study: work commitments, other studies commitments, life in general. But even after derailing from a couple of days (or even weeks, when the assessments for the masters were near), it was fairly easy to go back to the established routine of studying web development online.

Later I learned about the motivation myth.

“"Motivation" as we know it is a myth. Motivation isn't the special sauce that we require at the beginning of any major change. In fact, motivation is a result of process, not a cause. Understanding this will change the way you approach any obstacle or big goal.” - From the book: The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win.

I experienced how motivation started to grow after I started studying any given day, and not before studying. This was another supportive element to continue pushing me daily.

Mindset and study techniques

Some sections of the course were not easy (actually, very challenging), and the idea of me not being “good enough” to take this course, or the feeling that “I will never reach the level of knowledge that the instructor has” presented itself several times. But I had to remind myself that I can’t compare my present me with an expert on a subject. What I should do is compare my today “me” with the person I was a year before, or even 6 months before. As proof of this, I now know a lot more (after finishing the course) than the person I was 6 months ago (before starting the course). And, if I continue this path, eventually will reach a higher level of knowledge. The problem is that I often tend to focus too much on the things I don’t know, instead of making emphasis on the process. I have to maintain a growth mindset and remember that I don’t know it… yet.

Another habit that helped me a great deal during the course, was taking lots of notes. I decided to make a document for each main topic, and fill those documents with definitions, tips, common mistakes, useful links, etc.

Each document grew thanks to the content of the course itself and all the supporting information I started finding online.

This technique proved to be of utmost help when I went back to the course after a couple of weeks of not being able to study because I found another interesting subject to explore. I could make a quick recap of concepts, and review important commands.

Being prone to explore different interests played against me. I spent several weeks researching another area of curiosity: selling on Amazon. This drifted my attention and energy. But I learned a great lesson: the best way to get things done is to focus on just one long term goal, and one or two short term goals. My long term goal is to become a web developer, so I focused on that, and at the same time, I also dedicated time to short term goals, like delivering assessments, work projects, etc. But if I would have focused in two competing long term goals, such as being a web developer and being a successful Amazon seller, I wouldn’t have finished this course at all, and I would probably still be dabbling between two or more goals.

An excuse for not doing the work

The recommendation of the course was to use an online code editor because the development environment was already set up for you. I decided to use Windows 10 (yeah… I know). I invested a great deal of time in configuring the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to have a proper terminal, and integrating that with VS Code, npm, Git, NodeJS, MongoDB and Heroku.

It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t impossible either, and at the end, I managed to make everything work.
This taught me that there is a great number of ways of doing something. I just had to choose and set up the tools that work best for me. It is important to highlight that many times we tend to use the “lack of the right tool” as an excuse for not doing the work. I recently listened to an Ali Abdaal and Derek Sivers’ podcast episode in which Derek explains this concept. If you really want to do the work, you will find a way. The tools are just a mean to an end.

Key takeaways

Now that I finished the course, I not only know a bunch of new things about web development, but also a lot more about me, how I behave and the actions that I can take to push myself in the right direction. In order to achieve a long term goal, I need to be committed 100% with it, and be aware that it will take time, so I have not to despair. I need to remember that I shouldn’t compare myself with others, rather with the previous version of myself. I choose to believe that I’m on the path less travelled, and, even though it’s rougher, I'm sure it will make all the difference.

Cover photo by Caleb Jones on unsplash.com