Do you want to make effective progress? Code Every Day!

Recently, I read an article from the author of famous jQuery (JavaScript library) John Resig. He talked about a topic which I am also familiar with (and I guess you as well). He discussed the fact that he does not have enough time for doing his coding side projects effectively. This led to insufficient progress when building them.

Making any side project can be very challenging, especially when you code eight hours a day at work. However, Resig's article can be also applicable to anyone who has a full-time job, not only to professional programmers. I am such an individual, since I am not coding for living yet. I know very well how it can be sometimes difficult to code after you come home from work. This means that your are basically able to code only in the evenings (or at night) or on the weekends. Since I often relax on the weekends, I code mostly after work.

This lack of spare time sometimes leads to non-consistent coding periods. In other words, I am not able to code for a couple of days in a row. Even two day gap might cause that I forget what I was working on. The worst case scenario is when my coding gap is longer than five days.

So, I am experiencing the same problem as John Resig in his article:

I am not able to code every single day.

As a solution, Resig set himself a couple of rules to become more effective and to make more significant progress when working on his side projects. In a nutshell, these rules were:

• code every day
• write only useful code
• all code must be written before midnight
• it must be open source up on Github

I guess these rules are OK for an advanced programmer, but not for me or for anyone who is not coding for living. Only skilled programmer can produce 'useful' code everyday.

So, I decided to set myself less strict rules. In reality, I created only one rule, which (I hope) will help me to become more effective programmer and to make better progress. This simple rule is:

CODE EVERY DAY – MAKE IT YOUR HABIT

However, this does not mean that you need to make your Github chart all green. I also have many of my projects on my hard drive only. As John Resig correctly pointed out: ‘this is about a change that you’re making in your life for yourself not a change that you’re making to satisfy someone else’s perception of your work. The same goes for any form of dieting or exercise: if you don’t care about improving yourself then you’ll never actually succeed.’

I also agree with his other claim that ‘the feeling of making progress is just as important as making actual progress.’ It is truly important for you to always feel that you are moving forward.

Before I go to sleep, I sometimes feel that I have not achieved coding progress that I wanted to that particular day. As a result, I code even after midnight and do not sleep enough. John Resig claims that with a habit of coding every day, this anxiety will melt away.

I guess that might be true. If I will be making progress each day, I will not feel anxiety to make bigger progress on a day, before which I was not able to code for a couple of days. Instead of feeling that I need to make progress every now and then, I will make it regularly each day.

Maybe you are now wondering, 'for how long do I need to code each day?' This of course depends on your personal preferences. I guess half an hour can be sufficient for experienced coders. However, I myself need to code at least one hour a day. Otherwise, I do not feel that my progress is sufficient. This is in part due to the fact that I often encounter an issue which takes more than a hour to solve. I guess this sometimes happens to anyone :)

Starting today, I commit myself to code every single day.

I will share my experience in some of the future posts.

What about you? Do you code every day? Or do you want to start and join me in my commitment?

If you have any experience with this approach, please let me know in the discussion.