Gotcha! No this is not an article about Rest API's or anything like that. Nor is it about representational state transfer. Yes, I am talking about the one word that seems so foreign to us nowadays, "rest". As of late, I felt encouraged to do a quick post on the love of my life and why it is so important. Coding can become quite a taxing task. People just look at the average coder and assume that the work we're doing isn't exactly hard to us. As if you're automatically an expert just because you know how to read what's on the screen. To the average viewer, It's a phenomenon even to understand this stuff. Even though they are accurate in their interpretation of it's difficulty, that difficulty doesn't get thrown out of the window just because we "know" it. As most of us may know,coding is filled with those "I don't know" moments! And if you are someone who doesn't like the idea of being ignorant, then boy are you in for a roller-coaster of emotions! This stuff isn't easy! Some days you have those creative juices flowing, you're on a roll, everything seems to be going your way. All until you come across that one error that you can't figure out for your life. Just to find out (sometimes hours later), that it's because you forgot to include the "s" at the end of your variable name! Yea, a long day. Now our day has gone from being a productive, relatively easy one, to a pain in our butts! All because we've just wasted so much time on that one silly error. Now, imagine you still have a ton of other projects to work on. No fun at all. Which is exactly why as coders, it is ESSENTIAL that we rest.
For a field such as ours, we have to be at our best mentally at all times. Sometimes when coding, the cycle inside of your brain goes a little like this; you're trying to create representational algorithms, something like telling an event listener when to trigger throughout your app. Well, in order to know which event you wish to tamper with, must know what the components within your app consist of. There's also those moments where you're like: "But wait, I forgot!", or "let me go back and check what's referencing what". Followed by you finding out that the variable you're looking for is actually undefined because you're not accessing it properly (-_-). The list of tedious activity never ends. Unless you're an alien, human beings can only produce so much results before their brains go haywire. At most, we're only capable of true, maximum focus for the consecutive amount of 4 hours. That means, that for those 4 hours, you were at your sharpest, most productive self for every second of that window. But once that time has elapsed, the mind then starts to wander. And as your mind is wandering, the clock on all of your other projects is still tickin'. So would it be smart to try to aim for another 4 hours without so much as a break? Yeeaaahh, I think not.
We have to realize that we are not immortal! The general consensus of the coding community have an innate desire to be the best. Deep down we are perfectionists! However, do be careful not to cross what I call, the "no-return" zone. Which means that you've gone so far down the rabbit hole of possibilities, that you end up neglecting all of the other more important aspects of your life. For example your family, your loved one, or even worse, yourself. True your love for them may reach beyond the stars, but in order to make sure they're okay, you have to be okay as well. So, get your rest! Just like any job, you can't come to work groggy and un-alert. It makes a job such as coding twice as hard since it requires 100% focus. Therefore, attaining your rest saves you, and everyone else's time.
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