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Tracking your progress to improve your confidence

Codeidoscope on April 16, 2019

I create a log for almost every day that I code, and have done so since December. I do this to keep track of my progress mostly, so that I can see ...
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Katie Adams • Edited

This is so fantastic, and the methodology is brilliant. It's strange how I log pretty much every other passion in my life - exercise, creative writing, even recipes for cooking - but never thought to log my progress in programming! I'll definitely be making use of this. I agree that it will help 'treat' my imposter syndrome 😅

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Jamie Ferrugiaro

Exactly! As someone with ADD, I already knew this is something I would do. It's amazing how tracking something helps you, especially when creating routines or mentally when you are struggling.

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Charisse • Edited

This is such a great idea to put learnings into a repo! I also have mine, but they're in a notebook and can be hard to scan at at times. Will def try it out and see how it works for me :)
One question I have though is when do you usually get to "investigate" the stuff that's one the "To investigate" section?

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Codeidoscope

During my apprenticeship, I would block out time during my day to explore the concepts more in-depth if I felt they were going to be important. I would also use my downtime (my commute, the hour I'd be in the office for before I started work, my lunchtime, or weekends sometimes) to investigate things that were not directly relevant.

I don't alway get to all of them, because my priorities and interests change and I adapt according to these. However, having that list makes it considerably easier than trying to remember that product I'd heard of that would do this thing that I can't quite remember 😃

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Jamie Ferrugiaro

This is so amazing!! I am just starting but I truly already knew that making a daily record (in whatever way) of what I do will help me learn (and encourage me when I'm having a bad day). I'm still deciding where I want to do that but this is great.

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KerushaG

GREAT article, I'm new in the game, and I just started a bootcamp for which I decided to keep a diary, where I mostly tried to make an entry about the experience, but now that things are growing more challenging I needed a better methodology especially because I can't seem to keep track of all the new info problems and solutions that I learn through doing the exercises, so this structure is literally just what I need to improve my tracking my learning

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Nick Lewis

This sounds like a great idea!

I'm curious though as to how long per day you spend filling out the log?

Is your log now fully hosted on GitHub?

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Codeidoscope

All of my logs are on Github, but I've had to make the repository private as people would fork my own data, which I wasn't comfortable with.

I spend around 20-30min per day filling in my logs. I sit down in the morning, create a new log and decide what I want to do for the day, then fill it up as I go during the day (I have two screens, so it's always open on my smaller screen), and wrap up my day by going over it, adding resources and making notes of what I want to do the next day.

It takes a bit of getting used to, but once it's part of your routine, it's easy peasy.

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Nick Lewis

Awesome! Thanks for the reply and the in detail on how you log. Might give it a go!

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Rose Day

This is a great idea to track progress. Especially at work when you need to explain what you have been doing over a period of time or for any type of project!

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SyntaxSeed (Sherri W)

I love this.
I have my own wiki which would be a great place for this.