Struggling to Get Better at Coding?

If we are living, grow we must.

But how we grow matters. As we come of age different circumstances occur. We must be willing to confront them if we are to live than just survive. One way to achieve this is by developing your willingness. So often as we are learning to code, we’re fixated on learning to code but forget or lose focus on a few other aspects of life that would actually be of great value to the coding career. In this issue, I want to share something that has helped me in my coding career.

Reading

It empowers, inspires, and encourages among other things. In fact, for me, if it wasn’t for reading I wouldn’t realise my potential. I had a short stint of formal education than most people.

Through reading, I have gained wealth in terms of coding knowledge. As a result, I’m able to coach/mentor beginners and average developers to reach their full coding potential.

See, being a good coder is exciting but not as much as being a good coder earning sustainable income and in good health shape.

Over the years, I have read tens of thousands of technical articles, coding tutorials and HowTo guides. I consumed information about a range of topics from general computing to computer networking, cloud engineering, databases, web development, domain names, security, programming, AI, and blockchain to numerous technologies.

This was a blessing as well as a disadvantage. In terms of disadvantages; I ended up building self-doubt and a lack of concentration. I couldn’t get off in Web Development as much as I desired. I was all over the place. I was doing something right but wrongly, perhaps.

## What have I discovered?

For the 10+ years I have been coding, I’ve discovered to get better at Product coding one has to practice a life of balance.

You can choose different parts of life to focus on including but not limited to Love, Entertainment, Travel, Faith, Spiritual, Community, Education, Health, Finance, Sports, Family, Business and many others.

In 2016, I got an opportunity to attend Unleash Dreams. A program which focuses on personal growth and life transformation, it’s when I first encountered this concept of life balance. The same is emphasised by rich people like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Warren Buffet among others.

How does reading help?

Without reading you can’t gain knowledge. Without knowledge, you can’t construct values upon which to shape the direction of your life, without direction you can’t focus on your passions, without passion you can’t be an influential citizen of society. Speaking of which, your reading had better be diverse – encompassing the aspects of life you’ve identified to be the centre of your life. At Unleash Dreams we were recommended to identify a maximum of eight areas to focus on. We were also to self-evaluate and allocate an equal amount of time to each of these areas. It sounds difficult, isn’t it? If so, then the fewer areas of focus you identify the better but at least not less than three. You’re in charge. I recommend that the least you can do in a period of 24 hours is to read something relating to all the areas of focus in your life. This content may or may not be about self-help, self-hope, personal growth, finance, communication/presentation, promotion/marketing and branding, sports, fitness, health, family, love, travel, problem-solving, art, comics books, blogs, news articles etc.

## What if you don’t like reading?

What if you’re one of these people;-

They don’t like reading
They don’t have time to read
They don’t know where to start
They don’t have books
They’re demotivated.
They get bored and never complete reading a book or a news article.

What if you tried to;-

Putting in an effort and trying the suggestions below is helping me go from not reading a single book in many years of life to reading one book of 100 pages in one week if I decide to read for 5 to 15 minutes per day. Considering that I didn’t like reading long-form content when I was young, I find this incredible.

Get audiobooks and listen to them while you’re coding or having a break
Watch videos about interesting books
Join a group of readers – this is incredible for many reasons including but not limited to consistency, completing books, getting started on your own, support from the community, and networking.
Investing in a dictionary to help you understand the meaning of complex words found in books.
You grabbed the smallest book about an interesting topic and read it from end to finish.
Give yourself gifts whenever you complete reading a book.
Start with the Bible – the way the Bible is read is in form of a book/author: chapter and starting verse to ending verse. That means you can read short-form content for a long period of time and slowly get your system used to reading.

What are some of the Benefits of Reading to a developer?

First and foremost, it will help you improve Product coding and shipping software.
Improve empathy and compassion levels
Improve your knowledge
Discover your passion and purpose
Helps you take action
Helps you complete what you started
Helps you make money
Helps you connect with like-minded people
Helps you learn and develop new skills
Helps discover ways of approaching life situations
Overall it is an activity that helps you develop habits

Do you have some thoughts about the same? Let me know by submitting your comment below.