The epic 100DaysOfCode challenge has drawn many new developers to the community and with the growing number of people committing to this challenge I have noticed a trending topic about it. People not finishing, as a person who messed up on my original and second round, I'm going to give some tips on what has made my third round different and how it may be able to help you!

Time-Boxing

Alex Kallaway had a great idea when he came with the idea to practice everyday to build a solid habit. What a lot of beginners lack is a road map or clear list of goals to build on skills and projects, my first round I was all over the place. From FreeCodeCamps curriculum to Udacity and Udemy courses. I never had a set of rules to follow what I was learning until I ran across this article A Timeboxed, Day-by-Day #100DaysOfCode Front-End Development Curriculum, written by developer Nick Scialli. It is not a set of rules to be bound by, but gives you a good place to start. It is important to have an idea what you want to learn and build before even comitting to the challenge.

Pomodoro-Technique

Around 2014 I was introduced to a productivity method called the "Pomodoro-technique". It involves setting a timer for 25min and focusing only on the task you have planned at hand with no distractions: cellphone on do-not-disturb, all tabs closed that are not related to what you are currently learning, no Facebook message pick ups or SnapChat story viewing. Hyper focusing for 25min with a 5min break in between and a 15min break every 4x25min blocks. This technique helps me remember to buckle down and not be distracted while working. It also helps with habit forming in which 100DaysOfCode is all about. Official Pomodoro-Technique website. Learn how to implement it in your workflow and it will work wonders, I started off using an excel spreadsheet to track them but then that became primitive when I found a website created by someone I followed on twitter who also practices it called Pomodoro-Tracker. It let's you keep track of your tasks and even see your focus and hours spent on tasks. Go on YouTube and watch a few videos on the subject and you will have it down in no time.

Accountability Partner

This topic is why I even chose to publish this blogpost. The accountability partner is highly misunderstood in the 100DaysOfCode community. A lot of times people just commit to the challenge and tweet out that they are working on one challenge in FreeCodeCamp each day, which is okay but does not help you much in your developer journey. 100DaysOfCode leverages twitter as the platform to hold you accountable, but Alex Kallaway mentions in a YouTube video that having an accountability partner is great. Google defines an accountability partner as:

a person who coaches another person in terms of helping the other person keep a commitment.

So I started searching through Discord and the FreeCodeCamp forum and found myself an accountability partner. You need someone to discuss coding with on a daily, I discovered this harsh truth through meeting my first mentor in 2019. I have been coding for fun since 2013 but I did not take it seriously until I started to discuss it with other people. We spend a lot of time learning and building our own set of bias views about technology, stack choices, and even language of choice. Having a partner takes a way from some of this egotism and allows you to compare projects and even discuss similar topics learned and what you took away from them. Use slack, discord, or twitter with the #100DaysOfCode hashtag to find someone that you can chat with for at least 15min every 24hrs about coding only. Me and my accountability partner Matt Dwyer are from completely different walks of life but we both love coding and are making each other better through sharing our journey. He keeps me motivated and pushes me to want to finish the challenge. This is something I think a lot of people who take on this challenge lack, someone to push them forward, constructive criticism never hurt anyone.

Conclusion

I am currently on R1D25 of my 100DaysOfCode Challenge, I will be making post about HTML and CSS in the future. This is my first blog post in a long time, I originally was documenting my coding journey on Kinja before it's epic shut/wipe-down of all user content. If you made it this far into this post, thanks for taking the time to read and I hope this content helped you out and If you have the time give me a follow here and on Twitter.