My Developer Journey

Dated: 01-Sep-2022

Intro

So after I left my job in the last organization as a Project Manager, I decided it was time for me to move onto what I should have moved on 10 years ago. Software and Development. Even as a kid I always had one answer to what I want to grow up to become and the answer was a Video Game Developer. Tech is what I love. I adore it. If my arch enemy would be slitting my throat and would ask me at that point any tech question, I would give him a genuine answer. That's how much I love tech.

I made a lot of mistakes as a kid, mainly not pushing hard enough that I should go for CS or IT as my mainstream bachelor and when the courses went nuts I lost track and wanted to do everything but study. I will tell you about it some other time because that will take up a lot of storage on the server to write. It's a very uninteresting story with the only silver lining that my love of computers kept me alive.

Now that I am in a situation where I can start fresh and let go of the time I deem wasted career-wise ever since I started college back in 2012, I can move ahead.

I confess that I should have stopped everything whenever I had an awakening and started learning development and should have taken a job back in the day, but no worries, I finally can.

Now that the intro part of this thing is over, I can finally move ahead with my progress. I believe in accountability and if I am not telling you my progress, however worse that is, I believe I am wasting my time.

01-Sep to 02-Sep 2022 | Can't Focus with Distractions

I might have been waiting for my mechanical keyboard which arrived today. Also, now that most of the game reviews with the new laptop are complete, I don't need to worry about making any sort of videos for youtube.
Read like 4 minutes of the video and it made me angry that this is how little I could study. The main reason I would say I did that was that I was unable to keep focus. I need very very few distractions around me and studying in the room that's outside the kitchen and is used as a storage room with the TV in front of me is a big distraction. So, the next day I decided to move everything to the first floor.

03-Sep 2022 | Let's move upstairs

So I just moved upstairs right now because I was getting frustrated and angry with myself for not being able to focus at all. There are constant distractions below. And now that I am upstairs which is a bit hot I would admit it's at least free from anyone. If even one person is sleeping in the same room I can't seem to focus at all. I don't care what you call it but it is what it is and the only sound I want to hear is the mechanical sound that my keyboard makes while I start typing on the keyboard.

One more thing, my cousin Buddhu called last night and I kind of influenced him a lot to get Electrical Branch because he had strong subjects in the area. But after I realized and he too that he might not be able to clear the entrance exams to get a tenure position with the Government, he might have to go to private companies.

If you're not familiar with the job situation in India, any core branch: Civil, Mechanical & Electrical, sucks when it comes to private jobs. You should only ever get a dull government job and suck the life out of you. It changes people. People who were jolly and friendly turned into absolute nightmares to even talk with. They start caring about their fake statuses and start demanding respect from just about anyone. This fake ego in them makes it impossible to even have a normal conversation with them because they seem to find happiness in belittling other people. If you think I am wrong and you have recently joined a Government job, give it a few years and we will talk again.

In any case, so he is also preparing for IT jobs which he should get in his final year which happens to be in about 6-7 months, just about to learn languages enough to get a decent salary at the beginning.

We both decided on Java and I enrolled in three courses: Learnquest Java Core, Oracle's free Java Course and SimplyLearn free Java just to get the certificates to show that we have something to get into Java ourselves.

Now that I have started to study, I will let you know about my progress soon.

-2 hours later-

So here's how my body tricks me. It sees a bed beside me and I start feeling sleepy. "I will just lie down and sleep" but the thing is I don't sleep. I just pick up my phone and start wasting time on time-wasting apps. The body plays tricks so that I don't have to study and then I feel bad because I didn't study.

So the first thing I did was fold the blanket on the bed into half so that at least it's not easy just to lie down and the second I uninstalled the TV watching app I normally use Stremio and have decided to only watch the movies when I go back down between bricks even though I want to watch the movie Nightcrawler.

Now the patches on the screen of this laptop have started bothering me. Maybe I should start meditating seriously. Let's just do a 10-minutes Anapana meditation.

- 10 mins later -

That helped a lot. 10 mins are not nearly enough to calm me down but it's certainly enough to bring me back to my what I am doing. Now I have like 45 more minutes before the kids arrive and I will have to go out for another hour or so. Be back and will let you know the progress.

I studied the next 4 mins of the video but I got called below and everything went haywire I watched the movie completely and didn't try much to get back to the study. And the day ended.

04-Sep-2022 | Quarter day vs full day

~0100hrs: So the day started at 00:00 and I started to learn right away. I guess it's somewhere fit in the mind that if a day is ruined, it's ruined and no matter what I do I can't amend it. So I remember I read something related to the same that don't think of a block of time as a day. Think like a quarter of a day. If one-quarter of a day is bad, you can fix it in the next quarter. And I am going to start with that mentality now.
My blocks for the day: 6-9, 9-12, 12-15, 15-18, 18-21, 21-0 & 0-6 is blocked out for Sleeping mainly. So I have six blocks in a day and that should help. I already studied more than I studied yesterday.

1411hrs: Studying late at night and it being Sunday, I did sleep a lot which is fine actually and now I have had lunch and I am ready to go to study.
But I wanted to heat these cookies and in a way hide them from my father because he eats whatever he sees and starts getting cranky like a baby even though his sugar and cholesterol levels are over the roof.
1509hrs: Finally I was able to leave the madness on the ground floor and I came up to the first floor. Let's resume what we set for about 12 hours ago. Also, I turned on DND on both my phones for 2 hours and kept it away from eyesight.
Also, I was thinking about this last night and I should set a small goal. So I want to complete the Overview which is of total 25mins of which I have completed about 10mins. Let's resume.
1521hrs:  After constant studying for a few minutes I realized the problem is that I am trying to learn everything 100% the first time but that is not the way to do it. So now I am planning on going ahead with the course and completing the course at least once and if I fail the exam that requires 80% to pass I will revisit everything much more seriously.
Also, I am so anxious that yesterday I skipped three videos and yet kept trying to understand everything and that was the demise of yesterday. Let's resume with this mindset.
I also increased the speed to 1.25x whose details I will share later.
1540hrs: Finally I completed the overview. My god, it took me so long to get in the flow. I guess that thing about a rocket using 90% of its fuel in takeoff is true.
Oh yeah, why did I increase the speed? I guess I did learn about it somewhere that if you are having a hard time focussing on online lectures, just increase the speed of the videos and that way you are more engaged. The brain can still take in whatever is going on so instead of going with the recommended 2x I am just going with 1.25x and I don't feel sleepy yet. Good. Let's resume.
1847hrs: That was an amazing run. Not only I did do my goal but I exceeded it. Then talked with the cousin and got him enrolled on these courses also. Let's study a bit more, shall we?
....Wait, actually I am thinking of rewarding myself with making a new gameplay video if I can and then resuming it.
47 mins study today nice. It was 9 mins the last day and 4 mins a day before that. See you tomorrow.

05-Sep-2022 | Ate too much | Eat only to fulfilment, not to laziness

1433 hrs: God! What happened? I woke up, dropped my mother off at school and I should have theoretically started studying but I fell a bit asleep after eating too much hence I went to bed but just scrolled away on the phone for a long time hoping the digital wellbeing app will disable the app itself after the set minutes but it didn't. Anyways, I think taking the laptop to the room below might not have been a good choice in hindsight. In any case, let's begin as kids will be here by 4 and I am thinking of walking to the doctor mainly because it's been a few days since I went out for a walk.
I studied for 11 mins but I have eaten too much and was feeling sleepy. Maybe I shouldn't eat so much from tomorrow. Gonna take a break. Although what I am learning is interesting.
1837 hrs: I think I am having anxiety attacks. And I believe I have been having them for a long time. I do want to spend some time meditating actually. Let's do 10 minutes of Anapana before going back to study actually.

07-Sep-2022 | Deleted 9GAG | Installed 5mins beep timer
1230hrs: Where is the 6th? Well, it started with me making a YouTube video that I had been wanting to make for a long time and then going out to walk. Also, the time-wasting application 9GAG, I started and just never seemed to get out of the comfort of just scrolling so I deleted the application completely.
I don't particularly enjoy 9GAG but I do like downloading a bunch of memes and then sharing all of them at once on my Whatsapp status. It's a kind of routine for me and hence I keep falling into the trap of it.
Not to worry, I just uninstalled it. It feels like a few people replying that they liked the joke made me feel worthy and I kept chasing that.
Also, I installed an app that makes my phone beep every 5 minutes. This thing actually helps me remind myself of the time passing because it's easy to forget how much time has passed just sitting there and doing nothing. Now those things are out of the way, I want to go back to study but I am suddenly feeling sleepy and I want to rest a bit. Let's rest a bit without phones.
18-Sep-2022 | Time goes by fast | Materials Ready | Pomodoro Timer
1934hrs: I was studying, I just wasn't blogging as much. I went through a lot of content to try to find what would best suit me and now that I have it, we can begin.
You must realize that you need to have immediate feedback on what you're learning is right or not. If it's not there you will get bored and do something else. What I found the most useful things to be was Mooc.Fi as it let's you start writing code right away. There are no lectures but it's an amazing tool nonetheless.
Also, the Pearson Video Lectures is an excellent course which I found to not be so basic that I get bored.
I still am doing the Oracle Java Explorer course which is free and an amazing thing to do it.
Apart from this, I saw myself getting distracted all the time with my phone and hence I got the free month subscription to LinkedIn Learning just to do these courses on the go as they don't require you to code, it's full of quizzes and you get a certificate at the end.
21-Sep-2022 Made a video about this journey on Youtube

19-26 Sep 2022 | Sale and Youtube
1745hrs: There was this national sale that was going to happen and I guess I just wasted my time making videos after videos for the Indian Youtube channel . I thought at least one person would order via my affiliate link and maybe somehow I can justify the hours I put into it but alas! I made nothing. Many did order. Like 20+ people did order laptops and everyone loved the content I made but at such a small level which my channel is right now, having no sponsorship and no affiliate that properly works(Yeah I tried many, all are cheats), only amazon at least shows the clicks. I guess I have to accept the fact that the YouTube channel should be a hobby unless it's having at least millions of views every month, which might be hard because that would mean putting a lot more effort and time, time which I don't have right now, so now, I have decided to only take YouTube as a hobby and only after 6pm when the day's work is done would I even consider opening the websites.
I always used to get excited when someone used to order laptops and I sent them link but after hours and hours of it not being accepted as a valid purchase for affiliate, I guess, I am done!
It's a hobby now, and maybe I don't even go there everyday at all to make videos and what not. Things were going so great before this sale if I'm being honest.
I have an interview in a few mins now and I am not sure if I even want a job that is far way from home when many other companies are giving work from home option. Honestly, I am going to reject the position if it's not greater than 20% of my last salary.
If you have something to say, just tweet me at ni6hant
As you can see I am not wasting any time in setting up the website or anything as I am learning stuff to get a job in under 30 days.
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