20 minutes a day

Everyone struggles

No one ever accomplishes anything substantial on their first try without struggling first. And if they have, this blog is not for them.

(As an aside, I strongly believe those people simply forgot the first time they did that thing. For example, do you remember learning how to read? You learned it so early, you probably forgot you once didn’t know how.)

If you are a normal person like me, you will suck the first time you try anything. And that’s okay, because the first step is sucking and hating it, then you get some traction and start enjoying it, then you’re pretty decent, then you’re proud of what you’ve made and you’re hooked.

And even then, you likely won’t be world-class at that skill. That’s okay, if you’re like me, it’s the process you enjoy. Improving is an addicting, fulfilling thing.

I want to do an experiment. I want to document the process of becoming good at something from absolute scratch. As you track this blog,  you will be able to see a clear progression from absolute beginner to some level of competence. I’ll do this by working for at least 20 minutes a day and documenting my progress.

I will document exactly how long I worked, what I learned, how I feel and track how on track I am.

Example:

Time: x minutes
Changes:
-Added walls
Diary:
Calendar: xxxxx, etc.

Why?

I want to conduct this experiment because I see this imbalance in the real world: the experts share their experience freely, but the learners keep their heads down as they learn. The result is this large gap in the learning process that is never documented. People idolize the experts and often jump to the conclusion that they are “smart” and that’s just the way they are. I want to disprove that. It just doesn’t make any sense. A house must be built one brick at a time, a book must be written one word at a time, why then do we assume that skills aren’t built one day at a time? If you are willing to put in the time, you can add the desired skill to your life.

The skill

Now that I’ve figured out how I’m going to learn, I need to decide what I’m going to learn. I have always wanted to build games. Ever since I was a little kid, I had tons of ideas running through my head about what kinds of games I would build if I had the skills. Well, now is as good a time as any to build that skill set. To narrow it down, I’m gonna start close to home and write games in Javascript until I feel like branching out. I’ll be pushing to my Github every day and writing a short blog post to document what I learned.

I’m cheating here because I am a year into my career as a software developer, but it’s important to me that I learn something I want to learn. I will have the programming background, but no knowledge of the tools used in the industry.

Another aside: I’ve always wanted to get good at writing for people and this is a good way to find my voice and build the habit 🙂

Join me?

Do you have something you have always wanted to learn and think writing a blog will give you that extra push? Post a link in the comments and let’s do this.

Advertisement