I don't know about you but I have discovered it's very difficult to stay consistent if you don't have something (or someone) that's keeping you motivated. It might be a colleague or your dreams, but there's usually a driving force that pushes us to keep going.
I have mentioned before now that one of my dreams is to become a successful programmer (specifically in web development) and I picked up that skill back in 2020 when COVID-19 was seriously ravaging the world. I was so hellbent on becoming a programmer that I practically had no social life, I froze all my social media apps and I practiced coding for more than 8 hours every day.
But suddenly, COVID relaxed a bit and it was time to go back to school. I tried learning programming while at the same time studying at the university but that was very difficult! I had to pause my programming journey so I could focus on school work, and it has been on pause since then.
I was browsing through nairaland yesterday and I saw a thread titled "My Job Hunting Experiences As A Junior Developer" and I immediately opened it because I love reading anything that's programming related. The poster talked about his journey so far in the world of programming and it's very similar to mine.
Other programmers as well as aspiring programmers dropped their comments and also talked about their experiences, which also included what their salary looked like, those amounts I saw were mind-blowing! 🤯 Someone was comfortably earning $1500 monthly (around NGN900k), and I was instantly feeling motivated to resume my journey.
What I love about that thread was that most people that talked about the good experiences also talked about the nasty side of it and how it's very difficult to get to where they are, so it's left for you to decide if you still have the will to venture down that road.
But I already knew all that before I decided to learn programming, I knew it was not going to be a smooth ride and at some point, I will feel like giving up (maybe I even did!). After reading all of those experiences, I suddenly realized I have actually lost sight of my dreams and I have gotten too comfortable in my shell.
Right now, I am home doing nothing because universities all around my country have been on strike for over 3 months, but still I didn't use that opportunity to go back to programming and that's because I couldn't find the right motivation to latch on to, but now I have gotten one (or even more than one 😆).
It's very easy to fall from consistency and lose focus on your dreams. Your brain is always looking for ways to escape and switch things up from the usual routine it follows, and what better way to escape than to come up with distractions? That's the reason you always tend to procrastinate on that important task you're supposed to be doing right now (yes I am talking to you 😉).
Finding the right motivation is also difficult, sometimes the timing might be wrong and the usual things that keep you motivated might fail at that point. I remember when I was new on this platform, my biggest motivation was my goal of getting a new phone and a laptop, that made me work very hard and I spent most of the day on readcash.
But what happened after I bought a new phone? I suddenly lost the zeal for grinding daily here. Sometimes I won't come online for days and I didn't seem to find the right motivation to help me do so. When I noticed what was happening, I figured I needed to come up with another goal to help me stay motivated, that was when I remember I still need to buy a laptop, but it seems that alone wasn't enough.
Then I came up with something new; my final year project. Right now I am in my penultimate year at the university and very soon I will get to the final year which requires me to work on a project, and it's going to be very expensive. Right now I am using that as a motivation to stay focused and keep grinding every day, I am going to need a lot of money for both the laptop and my final year project.
I have gotten back my zeal for programming and I am now motivated more than before. I took a test to know how much I can still remember from the tutorials I took in the past and I was surprised to get 80% of the questions right 😆 not bad for someone who hasn't done any coding for more than a year.
So let me hear from you, what helps you to stay motivated and keep focusing on your goal/dream? It might be a person, a thing, or even a memory, do let me know in the comment section
Thanks for reading 💖💖💖
Saturday May 7th, 2022
It's always be my family who keeps me motivated and inspired. I know it's hard to tell our parents that we're not doing good because all they can see is that "we're doing great" . So I keep in my mind that whenever I have a problem at school my parents are there to support me and give courage to face all that problems.