On July 4th, 2021, when my friends were out at the beach and spending their day celebrating the independence of our country, I was stuck at home, not because I was not invited or did not want to go, but because I stayed up all night playing video games. I slept through 5 missed calls and snoozed my alarm a countless amount of time, so they left without me. As I mindlessly spent the day regretting my actions from the night prior and scrolling through Twitter I came across a hashtag that would impact the next 100 days.
What is #100DaysOfCode?
Started by Alexander Kallaway as a challenge to code for at least 1-hour every day for 100 days. He was inspired by the book “The 4 Hour Workweek” which he claims opened his eyes to the fact that consistency over a period of time can make a huge impact.
“The idea of #100DaysOfCode originally came from personal frustration with my inability to consistently learn to code after work. I would find other less-involved activities to spend my time on, like binge-watching TV series.”
— Alexander Kallaway
#100DaysOfCode was his way to create social accountability amongst the people participating in the challenge. Read the full history here!
I wasn’t a complete amateur, but I for sure did not know enough to create anything worth showing. At the time, I was coming to the end of my coding bootcamp journey and was looking for a way to sharpen my skills as the career search process was in the near future. I knew what I needed to do, but I was never able to hold myself accountable; there was always something more enjoyable, more relaxing, and less anxiety-inducing that was right at my fingertips, like Netflix or video games, and I’d always fall victim to the latter. As I aimlessly scrolled through Twitter trying to not think about missing out on the fun my friends were having, I came across a tweet about publicly committing to the #100DaysOfCode challenge. After reading about the history and seeing others’ success stories, I also publicly committed to the challenge that day. Tweet.
What I learned and advice for #100daysofcode challengers
As of this blog I’ve just passed my midway checkpoint. I began the journey without a plan or any structure, this was a blessing for me in a way because it made me reach out to other people doing the same challenge and asking them what they were doing. Although it helped me open up and ask other people I suggest having a plan from day 1. Some of the most common paths/courses I noticed other people were working on was: freeCodeCamp, Udemy, or personal projects. The most important thing is to stay consistent, there will be days that you don't feel like it but something that helped me is whenever you have that feeling just try to commit to just 5 mins of work. Click HERE to begin. Good Luck!