What is it?
The 30 Day Project Challenge is my commitment to working on a project of my choosing daily for 30 days. At the end of this time period, I will do a self-assessment.
Why do it?
There are two pieces of advice I often hear given to developers interested in picking up a new skill:
- Work on something real
- Choose a real project (something that interests you). Doing tutorials is fun, but the real learning happens when you are forced to figure things out for yourself.
- Work incrementally
- No one can train for a marathon in a single day. The way to climb a mountain is one step at a time. One of my favorite authors and one of the most prolific writers of all time, Stephen King, maintains the habit of writing daily for a set time period each day.
This challenge fulfills both of those goals.
How will it work?
- I must create my own project. While I can use tutorials to assist, the goal is to develop my own thing, not just blindly follow tutorials.
- I must commit to working on this every day for at least 20 minutes (barring some sort of emergency).
- At the end of the 30 days, I will evaluate my progress, and then move on to a new project.
- The self-assessment must answer the following questions:
- What did you learn?
- How far did you get?
- What were the roadblocks?
- What would you do differently?
- How do you feel about what you accomplished?
Why 30 days?
This is key - this ensures that my learning doesn't stall. It is very easy to get stuck on a problem and feel unwilling to start anything new until the roadblock is solved. By setting the 30-day limit, I remain focused on the process of learning, rather than on the result (after all, I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel).
Let's get started?
I will be using this blog to keep track of my learning journey. Stay Tuned!!!