Help Sticking To It

Hey guys,
So i am really struggling with finding it in me to work on this stuff. I have anxiety and bipolar disorder, and i know those affect me, but this is really important to me, and frankly to the future of my life. I love coding, and everything that it is. The whole concept of programming is a beautiful art form for me. But i’m struggling. Do you guys have any suggestion in getting myself to code more, to doing the lessons and practices more? once i get going, i end up doing like 3 hours, it’s just getting going…getting myself to get to a point of effort i am comfortable with. this is probably winding and confusing, but i hope it’s clear…

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Treat it like a chore similar to making the bed or brushing your teeth. Allocate 30 mins day to just work on something.

You might like codewars.com, you do javascript challenges and rank up in belt levels like karate. the higher you go the harder the challenges. Some of the challenges are pretty entertaining. I’d get pretty wrapped up in them sometimes like trying to solve a good brain teaser puzzle.

I think theres a good chance if I didnt find that site I’d have given up on trying to code. but it showed me that coding (under the right circumstances) is the 2nd activity that I can get so mentally involved with that the whole day goes by and it felt like an hour tops.

It might help you to have a sort of ritual, like every day you have a coffee and that signals that its time to do an hour of coding. For me, I used to take piracetam with a coffee, before starting some coding, and once I took the piracetam I wouldnt back out otherwise it would be wasted. I often find myself in the same boat as you, but I seem to be coming along at a decent pace.

Accountability might help your motivation, and teaching (studies seem to say) is the best way to retain new information. You can combine these 2 principles and look at new posts on the forums for questions that you have enough knowledge to answer (especially if its a little out of your comfort zone, google and see if you cant find an answer you yourself understand, and only then post an answer)
This may improve your understanding and confidence, leading to…for lack of a better term, a lower activation energy to start coding.
or at least that’s been working for me lately, but I have pretty bad social anxiety, so the concept of making a fool of myself publicly puts me in overdrive and I hardcore fact check.
…I also started taking 5htp everyday (since you have bipolar, this might not be for you) starting 2 weeks ago and its helped my anxiety problems some.

Hope everything works out
Good Luck!