Have to Work Hard Not to Overload

Alright man I am on full throttle lately and just blasting through things. I've been listening to 1-2 podcasts a day and getting a ton of great suggestions. My task organization is getting better and better (still not where I want it) but writing down all of the crap that circulates in my head is allowing me to feel much less stressed.

I've been chatting with various communities, and feeling really good about where that is heading. I just recently got some help on some MAJOR roadblocks to me continuing the Facebook app. I can finally begin working on it again.

I've organized tons of resources, books, and small projects that I want to complete into my Kanbanflow app. So...that leads me to my current situation, where I think I MAY need to be a bit careful and reign it in a bit. If there is one thing that I know for sure, and in fact is a big part of the Pomodoro, it's that spreading focus can be a bad thing and cause me to lose productivity.

Looking over all of the things that I want to do, and how I am starting to bounce around with my resources, I am starting to think I may be getting into that trap. Honestly, I feel that part of that was due to running into so many problems with that Facebook app so I just began running off in multiple directions to ease the pain.

I really want to follow along on this Algorithms course, while learning the many things I have been...but if I want to make true progress I have to focus on what will allow me to produce measurable results, so let's examine that.

Reading 50 articles, and 5 books, and watching hours of lectures may sound great...but if I don't jump in and actually play around and produce something from those concepts shortly after it is almost a waste of time. Our brains just don't work that way. Without applying the principles, it's all going to get muddied and all of this "learning" I want to do won't work out.

That said, when I reel back and think of my goals for the next few months, we see that I REALLY want to get into a Jr Dev position as soon as possible. What do I feel are the important aspects of proving my ability to an employer? Okay, based on my opinion from reading and common sense it's:

1. Projects proving my ability to code
2. Contributions to open source to show I can work with codebases and teams, and have initiative etc.
3. Knowledge of tech that is being used currently.
1. Ruby/Rails, TDD, Javascript/JQuery/HTML, Postgres, SQL
4. Online presence / credibility
1. Blog, podcast, youtube can all contribute to this
2. Also networking in person and on social media with other devs close to companies I want to work for

So, if I try to align the tasks I am currently working on...it makes me want to rearrange what I am currently working on. Even though I DO feel that the Algorithms course is very important, and I know some of that stuff is going to be brought up in tech interviews...I hear less about it happening in web dev roles. I can definitely understand the basic stuff, and eventually jump into the more heavy duty learning but I feel that getting through these HIGHLY critical things such as Javascript for example just feel like a much more productive use of my time currently.

The idea is the 80/20 concept. I can spend my time doing many many things, but if I can focus just on that top 20%, I can shine above other candidates. I'm probably going to bump up the priority on getting my actual blog out (this is just more of a personal journal than the blog I want to have out).

After working through week 1 of Algorithms (not done yet) I am already at 3 hours spent. The assignment will MOST likely take me another 3 hours. With my rate of learning, I could probably get through a very large amount of the CSS3 and/or Javascript sections in that amount of time. Obviously projects take a bit longer, but from my experience most of those things are fairly easy to me save for any major roadblocks I might hit.

As for my reading, so far I have been doing a lot of speed reading practice and I am getting pretty good at it. I'm able to get through 65 pages a day currently just during short breaks at work, and maybe a few minutes more of reading at home. With that rate, I can definitely get through 4 books a month without taking away major time from my actual learning. The only caveat to that is that any tech books won't work like that. I'll have to work through examples and what not. There is no point in straight up reading through a tech book, because I won't retain most of that information. I'd have to treat it like a full on project and WORK through it. I'll need to stick to personal development style books for my speed reading at work stuff.

Anyways, this post was long and a bit misorganized but it helped me to get my mind right on some things that were bothering me. I want to keep tweaking my kanbanflow grouping / tagging, and probably organize it more like the secret weapon GTD. That will most likely be the best route to take.

Other than that, I think I'll start breaking up my time to focus half on the Facebook-app, and the other on continuing through the rest of the Odin Project. I'll feel much more productive that way. As for working through the setup of my blog, I'll dedicate a decent size to that 1 or 2 days a week in order to get it out the door also.

OKAY, that's all for now.