How to stay motivated

Hello everyone,

Freecodecamp is an amazing platform, and I want to succeed in this path, but there’s some struggles along the way.
I love web development, but I have this constant fear that I won’t make it through the course, or, if I do, I won’t remember everything I learned along the way. Because of this I tend to drop out for a few days or even weeks and then come back not remembering what I learned before.

I think my question here is, how do you guys stay motivated and overcome your fears of failure?

It’s fine to fail.

Actually there’d be no point to FCC if everyone found programming and web development trivial. The point is to learn, and develop, skills over the longer term.

Learning to program is an iterative exercise. You learn a little bit, then a bit more, and a tiny bit more, until you eventually have all the skills you were working on.

There’s nothing stopping you repeating previous exercises, they’ll get easier the more familiar you become with programming.

As for “fears of failure”, what exactly are you afraid of? The goal isn’t to be a professional today, it’s to be better next month than you were this month- which is wholly achievable!

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Thank you @gebulmer, that truly helped. With fear of failure I mean finishing the course yet not getting anywhere with it. But you are right when you say that I will only get better by repetition.

Automation, AI, and robotics continue to displace industries and jobs, with increasing momentum. Robot lawyers. Digital documents. Drone deliveries. Self-driving vehicles. Quantum computing. Nanotechnology. No one is safe.

Coding is being pushed as salvation for the unemployed and underemployed, underrepresented minorities, and an entire generation of children. Code automates and abstracts other code. Entry-level positions, a mirage for many. While you take a few weeks off, a million others are furiously learning, networking, clawing and scratching their way past you, just for a chance to get their foot in the door. Probably for a 3-month contract, after which they’ll find themselves in competition with the next horde of savage coders, all willing to give anything just for 3 more months of CRUD.

Motivated now?
:grinning:

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Probably more horrified and thinking “Well, what’s the point, then?” Seriously, why would you go through this process for inconsistent (and probably low) pay? I’d probably just commit to being homeless at that point.

stuff like AI require a degree

I gave a scenario to increase the sense of urgency. When the OP feels like taking a long break from learning, I want them to feel the world continuing to move outside of their personal vacuum, triggering their instinct for self-preservation and motivating them to get back to learning.

@technicolor1 I don’t know how to respond to that. Can you elaborate?

I suppose. I’d hope it would be sufficient to tell him he won’t get anywhere by “running over the same old ground.” Maybe I’m wrong.

I would give a more direct, common sense approach if the person seemed to be lacking sense or overthinking the issue. But this person’s issues are self-induced fear and anxiety, which are feelings-based. So the goal is to help them to feel motivated.

I feel like this some some interpretation of the classic “Impostor Syndrome”.

Basically every dev has the fear of not being good enough, or not learning enough. (Unless they are the opposite)

So “Why should I learn this if I’m going to forget”, or “Why should I continue, I won’t get able to get it later”, all is because of the same mentality I’m not good enough.
So if you feel like this sounds like you, defiantly look into other stories of people experiencing similar feelings. (there’s A LOT)

Now for how I get over the feeling of not being motivated comes down to challenging myself more, and focusing on smaller somewhat challenging tasks.
Doing a project that sounds interesting usually works, do what you know you can accomplish, refine what you already know and mix in somethings you don’t. Give yourself confidence you can do something with what you have learned, and go out see what else you can learn that you want to learn.

Like anything else you need to practice to get better. Laying off for weeks wont work, you must be more consistent otherwise you will forget and you wont succeed. There isn’t an easy way around that fact, you have to be consistent to get things into muscle memory, and even then you need to keep using what you learned to help you remember.

Going back to what I said about a project, do something challenging enough to keep you interested, open enough so you don’t have to grind through something super complicated, and straight forward enough that you can see it from the start to the end.

AI and ML are pretty CS and math-heavy, a degree is very useful to break into those topics. plus the fact that AI and ML jobs require lots of experience

Thank you @bradtaniguchi!

Everything’s is given to you because it’s possible. What you learn will help you, not waste your time.