When You Think There Is No Time for Learning or Coding

Hello everybody and welcome to when you think there is no time. My name is Eleftheria, I am an app developer, and feel free to catch me on my social media, especially like on Twitter, I'm very active there, and feel free to reach me there.

Alright, so in this session we are going to talk very briefly about my coding journey, how to form habits and last but not least, how to find the time. So let's get started with my coding journey. I graduated from an engineering university, I did a lot of maths, a lot of physics, but not a lot of coding, and I knew that I wanted to be a front-end developer, so then I found a really cool challenge named 100 days of code. Maybe some of you already know that challenge and it basically helps you to get into the habit of coding. So what you do in this challenge is that you code for 100 days every day for one hour, and then you upload that code on GitHub and you get into that habit of building a nice portfolio that you can share with other people, which as a front-end developer is probably something that you really want, and as I was starting my journey I know that this is something that a lot of coding managers and people like that really, really wanted. And the third thing that you had to do on that challenge is to go on Twitter, use the hashtag 100 Days of Code and follow people there, encourage other people to take part, like give feedback on projects, or ask feedback for your own projects. But, so that's how I started becoming a developer.

Of course, when I tried to find my first real job, I understand that I really had to be good at HTML, CSS and JavaScript. And then I should probably, like, no good at GitHub or another, like, system. And obviously, I was seeing other developers that they were using all the time, the Chrome tools, developer tools, like the console and the network. I didn't know anything about these things. I was actually, like, intimidating, but I knew that I had to learn them. And my fourth step was to learn a framework or a library. I went with AngularJS. Now, I know that this is not a very good option or, like, it wasn't a very good choice. Because AngularJS is going to be duplicated. But I also learned a data visualization library called j3JS. And that was actually a pretty good choice, because it led me to my first freelancing jobs. So, it's not only important to watch tutorials or try to figure out other people's code, but it's also, like, really important to build your own stuff.

And as I mentioned, I wanted to learn HTML and CSS. So, what I did was to build really small things. The ones that you can see on your screen right now, all those things are done only with HTML and CSS. My next step was to learn JavaScript. So, I started building small games. For example, here you have the Tic Tac Toe game and the Simon Says game. The inspiration behind this is coming from FreeCodeCamp, which is an excellent site. I totally recommend it if you're new to frontend. And my third thing was to learn AngularJS.

Again, I started building small games. And the fourth step was G3.js. So, I did all of these things. And I was getting into the habit of coding and coding and coding of building my portfolio. But I started to see how important it is actually to form a habit. And that's what we are going to talk about right now.

If you want to form a habit, the first thing that you will notice is resistance. Try to do something good and resistance will be always there. Try to diet and the cookie will always be there. Try to code and a message or someone will be calling you. Try to do something and resistance will be always there.

Well, now that we know that there is resistance, there is always a way to fight back. And one of the ways that we can do that is by knowing the power of limits. So things that you can do to help are don't spray your efforts around. Focus on only one thing at a time and try for consistency over volume. You can't do everything in just one weekend or in just one day. You need to be consistent and you need to always work on those little things.

And one weird thing is it's better to have just a little free time rather than too much. Because if you have like a little free time, you will need to force yourself to be concentrated in all those little things, in all those details that makes a beautiful project. And another thing is to keep a log or a calder or a notebook. It's really important. I know that it sounds cliche, but really start doing that. Start writing down everything and you will feel like so much more accomplishment when you will see all those ticks in your to-do list. So the other thing is how to find the time. Because I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that, hey, I want to do all of these things, but I don't have the time. Well, guess what? You do have the time. All of us have 24 hours. And just the different ways that we interact with that time. So you need to claim back the time.

You need to find the time in those little things. Be really ruthless about what you want to do, about what you want to have in your life and start fighting for all of those things. And another really important thing is that change only one or two things at a time. You cannot change everything in just one day or just one weekend. And actually, this is why new year's resolution always fails. Because you think that you will change ten, 15 things at a time and in only a couple of weeks. But things don't work like that.

So make your changes so small that you cannot say no. Start from something and you can always build up. And also don't think only about the best case scenario, but also think of your fails and what will happen if you don't do something. And some tips that maybe are not so well known is keep a note to do list. A note to do list is a list that you write the things that you shouldn't suppose to do. Like you shouldn't suppose to watch Netflix for more than two or three hours per day. You shouldn't like it more than two ice creams per day and stuff like that.

Analyze your day, find what works, your time, find your focus and always like try for the best because you know you can do that. All right guys so that was it. Thank you very much and again feel free to follow me on my social media.