Foreword and Introduction

For as long as I can remember, my life has been governed by some kind of routine.

As a child, it was the 8am to 3:30pm school days. College taught me to replace that strict timing with a newfound sense of freedom (almost) - I could sleep in until 9 some days! However, each week remained the same, a rota of sorts. And when I entered the adult world of work, wages, and paying taxes, I could really put this discipline into action. 8am until 6pm, five days a week, became my new normal. Management could pop my name into any timeslot on the rota and I'd be there as long as I'd get paid.

That is, of course, until I tested positive for Covid-19 in July, and subsequently had to take an extended period of time off. I was what some would call a 'long-hauler'. The recommended 2 week isolation period soon creeped up to a month, my return to work became much more staggered than I would have liked, and I found myself being let go from my retail job to fend for myself, in the middle of a pandemic, another statistic in unemployment.

This sudden world of free time I had led me to begin to learn to code.

For the first month, I relished in all the time I had to rest and recover. My dog loved me being at home more too. I was lucky enough to not be in immediate financial danger, so for the first time in many, many years, I allowed myself to be lazy. That novelty wore off pretty quickly, however, as I found myself getting antsy at not having anything to do or contribute. I stumbled across Codecademy's free 3 month pro membership for those who had lost their jobs due to the Coronavirus, and immediately jumped at the opportunity as I had wanted to learn how to code since I was a teenager.

Granted, my mojo ran pretty strong for the first few days, I flew through the HTML module and started making my way through CSS, but then it hit me in the last couple of days that I would have to discipline myself if I really wanted to get this done. I had no set time to get up in a morning, to take breaks, or to stop at night; if I'm honest, adjusting was pretty bloody weird.

I'm no expert at self discipline by any means, but I'm slowly learning what helps when I am my only critic, and perhaps this is also a letter to myself to remind me to keep growing too.

Learn to forgive yourself! - For any of you who may have learned with Codecademy, you'll know that they use a 'streak' system, in which the website marks how many days in a row that you log in and take a lesson. 3 days in, I felt a little under the weather and lost my streak. Cue the subsequent mental suffering.

Beating yourself up for slipping up once in a blue moon won't help. Guilt or frustration won't help you move forward. Take that day off, and start again tomorrow. Just don't quit!

It's easy to get distracted at home - treat it like you're at work or school - I'm absolutely obsessed with a mobile game at the moment called AFK Arena. The whole point of it is that it's an idle game - you earn more gold, EXP and gear the longer you're away from it, but the developers must have known how hard that would be because the game is so addictive. That's probably one of my biggest problems, I could be doing anything and I'd just absentmindedly open it. Which is why I pledged to leave my phone out of sight and out of mind, just as I would if I were at school or work.

This also goes for any clutter. Tidy those things up that you've been meaning to put away, your mind will thank you! :-)

Take breaks!!! - I might be contradicting my last point ever so slightly, but make sure to take breaks every now and then. Spare 15 minutes here and there to make a coffee, get a bite to eat, and play your mobile games. Refresh your minds! Committing yourself to the strictest routine known to man is essentially setting yourself up for disappointment. Burn-out is no joke, folks! If you're working from home, you are your sole critic. You deserve to reward yourself for your hard work.

Hydrate between coffees - I fell victim to this one on day one. I'm a tea-lover by nature, so perhaps I put my body into shock by drinking copious amounts of coffee all of a sudden, but hey, it's what all the Instagram influencers seem to say I should do to be productive, right? ;)

There's no denying coffee helps, but my god, is it dehydrating. Too much of it will give me a headache, as well as some false sense of security that I'm adequately quenched when I'm really not. A glass of water between each mug of caffeine will make sure your brain is in tip top shape! Your skin will thank you for it too!

Keep learning! - Right this minute, I have this problem. I feel as though I'm making very little progress, though I'm only 6 days into learning. Tonight, I decided to write a list of everything I learned today, however small, and it was so motivating!

Even if you just take a couple of small things away each day, you'll know more than you did yesterday, and that's amazing!

Take-away

I read somewhere that it takes 21 days to form a habit. Several sources contradict that and say that it takes anywhere between 18 to 254 to really implement it. Not to mention, we're in the middle of a pandemic - AND we're only human, which is why self discipline is an important behaviour to learn.

There's no 'one-size fits all' time-frame, and for the fellow newbies out there, everybody was new to code once.

Keep learning, keep doing, but be kind to yourself.