To some people, coding everyday is no big deal. It’s a common occurrence. But to me, between dance practice, work, and everything else in between, it’s a struggle. Last month, I challenged myself to code for 31 days straight. I skipped one day, but otherwise, here’s what I learned from it.
1. Have a Trello
I've had a Trello board for personal projects going for a while now, but I didn't realize it's full use until I had to work on my personal projects everyday. Trello kept track of my ideas for the future, notes on current activities, and tasks I'd already accomplished. I organized my board by the project and tagged tasks by difficulty. So on days where I was very busy and didn't have much time for code, I'd just pick an easy task and quickly be done. No more racking my brain for things to do, just pick and code.
2. Have good architecture
We're often tempted to pick the easiest hack and go with it. But for this challenge, I tried my best to make good decisions before coding. And towards the end of the month, I quickly found out how valuable that was. I had several stories for my mobile game that involved changing decisions I've made early on. I planned on these stories taking at least an hour each. But thankfully, because of what turned out to be good architecture, those changes barely took me five minutes! So, note to self, stop just hacking away at things.
3. The power of habit
Towards the latter half of October, I started coming to work early. I came in a whole hour and a half earlier than my coworkers. That gave me time in the morning to relax, organize my thoughts, and work in peace. It also meant I got home earlier. I had time to code before any other plans I had for the day. And despite October being over, guess what I did today? I came in early. That means I can go home early and have time to work on my blog post.
It turns out there was much more to coding every day than seeing that box on Github turn green. 30 days of coding improved my technical skills, organizational skills, and time management. Now let's see how I'll survive November -- 30 days of blogging.