10 Things You Should Know AsYou Retake The 100daysOfCode Challenge

The year started for me with participating in the 100 days of code challenge, it was fun and interesting at a time, dedicating one hour learning something new.

Like many people, I slacked and dropped out of the race for some reasons I’m going to highlight here, and also try to provide solutions as I attempt this 100days of code challenge again.

Problems/Solutions

1. Record Your Activities: One thing I noticed was that I was lagging throughout the two weeks I was in the race, I didn’t really see any tangible thing I was accomplishing because I wasn’t recording my activities — So my plan for this second attempt is to always log my activities on Twitter and hopefully on my blog.
2. Have a Weekly Plan: Having a weekly plan will ensure you have a well-guided approach towards completing the challenge with value not just for the sake of completing the challenge.
3. Having a Definite Goal: Have a definite goal about what you hope to achieve at the end of this challenge, don’t just join the bandwagon, have a definite an aim.
4. Join Community groups: To be honest most large Facebook/WhatsApp chat groups might be annoying with so many unnecessary chats but they can also encourage and motivate you on your journey. Don’t be full of yourself, we all need a community to thrive.
5. Set Specific Study Times: This could be hard if you have a busy or unpredictable schedule, but nevertheless try to set out time either by mornings, afternoons or evenings… it’s not compulsory to have a fixed time of the day for example 10 pm.
6. Have an end date in mind: Make sure you count down (100–99–98) not count up (1–2–3). It’s said that it’s easy to go down than up, counting down helps your mind picture the fact that you are almost close to your goal and these can immensely boost your confidence.
7. Create small projects don't just accumulate tutorials: I was once the tutorial type, I often make fun of myself that I learned HTML, CSS, and CSS3 even before attempting to create my first website. The key is to make small projects even if they are crap and might obviously never get to leave your computer.
8. Write about your experience: As humans, we really love to share our experiences either via a blog post or with video using Youtube. Sharing your adventures simply helps you seek more mountains to conquer.
9. Attend social events: Take a break from jamming your keyboard to associate with humans like you. Although in tech events we still end up talking about code, interacting with other people just opens your mind to newer things.
10. Believe in yourself: This cannot be overemphasised, if you don’t believe you can, you might just as well be wasting your time.

These are my top 10 tips for anyone considering whether or not to attempt the 100daysOfCode challenge.

Failing doesn’t make you a failure, it’s giving up that does. — Frank Sonnenberg

I cannot overemphasise the benefit of the 100daysOfCode challenge but you can take out time to also read another article I wrote for Tech Meetups Nigeria here http://bit.ly/100daysofcodeTMN