I’m two weeks into the four by four challenge and I have to say it has been an interesting experience. A lot has been learned – both in the areas of code and in personal limits.

Biting off more than I can chew

As of the end of this two week mark, I only completed one week’s worth of planned goals in two weeks. I created a small photographer’s portfolio site, attended my first-ever tech breakfast, wrote a difficult blog post on css lengths, and polished my resume for the incoming application fest. I’m still working on the NodeJS app, which should be done in the coming week.

As you can see, I should have had twice amount of this work done. But as the cheesy saying goes, “my eyes were bigger than my stomach.”

What I learned

In the beginning, I envisioned myself working on these goals twelve hours per day in a freakish manner. It would be an epic montage of late-night code and coffee. I would end up victorious, rising out of a pile of noodle cups like a Phoenix reborn, bathed in the soft glow of pushed commits from the computer screen…

It did not go that way. I found myself coding in short bursts and taking long, unscheduled breaks. My discipline wavered in a stagnant environment. My attention span was diminished by unproductive breaks; there was no proper way to rejuvenate my sluggish mental state.

My code was hurting too. Despite the gung-ho mentality that I had, I found myself deliberately implementing bad practices because of the pressure to finish on time. I realized I didn’t have the knowledge to get the work done on time; 80% of the time spent was on googling issues and 20% was coding. When I realized this, I started cutting corners and began developing bad habits. This decreased the quality of my work and the quality of my learning. This needed to stop.

Thankfully, I was experimenting with Scrum during this time, and without it I would not have even completed the first week of goals.

Since then I have been thinking about improvements for the next two weeks:

• Combat environment stagnation by working on specific goals (blog posts, lightweight html/css) only at coffee shops and/or libraries.

• Combat mental stagnation by taking proper breaks such as 15 min nature walks to rest weary eyes and the sluggish mind.

• Keep on Scruming. It’s working and I’m seeing good results so far.

The next two weeks

I have been thinking a lot over the weekend as to whether to continue the four by four challenge. One of the reasons for taking the challenge was to get a portfolio up in a short amount of time. After the last two weeks, however, this experience has taught that I still have a lot to learn about the front-end. Focusing on NodeJS seems like a rash decision when I see that I am not completely comfortable with client-side JS yet.

For this reason, it seems better to focus on ‘job-related’ things to get a portfolio out as fast as possible. What do I mean by ‘job-related’ things? Well, polishing projects that will showcase in the portfolio would be a good start. Practicing interview questions and reading up on any missing knowledge would be another good step. Re-polishing projects after filling out any missing gaps would be great and continuing with connecting with the local tech community is another plus.

All in all, my hubris got the best of me these past two weeks. However, I’m still determined to get into this field, and by the gods, I will climb mountains to make this work.