I like being productive as much as the next guy but I don’t want to be consumed by it. When I find a new interest, I become obsessed with it. Unfortunately, many times this leads to me burning out and having an aversion to it. I don’t mean to do it. I guess I just get really excited because learning something new is the most awesome feeling one can have. With the amount of information that’s available on the internet, this is a feeling anyone(with internet) can have literally everyday. When I decided I wanted to pursue a career in web development about a 9 months ago I quickly entered the rabbit hole.

I this process made me love web development more as I learned new things about it that never existed before. Apparently the field saw a rapid growing of tools and skill sets that adapted to the growing demand of needs from web developers. I learned about preprocessors , build systems, and flexbox just to name a few.

While this peaked my interest more than ever, it also lead to my eventual burnout. I watched video tutorials, read upcoming news, read relevant subreddits, and did live coding tutorials. All of my free time was devoted to web development and I had alot of free time back then. I thought of this time period as a period which I should take advantage of. I did take advantage, but weirdly enough I did not do much learning or at least as much as I wanted. The progress I wanted was unrealistic.

It was like going to the gym one day and wanting results that same day. The training also made me more confused as I tried to put together puzzle pieces that didn’t fit together. I felt really discouraged and stopped looking at code all together. I thought I could push myself. I though I should push myself. I remembered back to my days in school. Boy, did some of those days kick my ass. In retrospect, I don’t think I’ve ever been pushed harder. I can do it, I though. This is nothing, I said. I was wrong. At the time I kind of just felt stupid. I sometimes doubt myself so much that I feel like I’m faking it.

I realized that I can’t learn this way. I can’t get mad at myself for not knowing. That’s precisely why I’m trying to learn it! Just like you can’t expect instant gainz from the gym, learning something new takes time. Thinking back on the times I did the best learning was when I did other things to keep my mind off it. For example, I would study as much as I could for a test and then put the books down. I then took a break and played a game. This kept my mind stimulated in a very different way. It kept my mind from thinking about the test. This may seem like procrastinating, but it’s not. It would be worse if I left to go read something else. There would be no way that the looming test wouldn’t cross my mind. I abandoned a strategy that helped me in the past for no good reason. I was really hard on myself and only allowed myself to think of web development.

I’m farther from the field now than I ever was. Only recently am I crawling my way back. I miss playing games with my friends. I miss neglecting society for an entire weekend. How can I fix this? I did what any self respecting nerd would do : buy a ps4.