If you’re anything like me, you’re looking at your stock portfolio getting destroyed. Crypto is way worse. Bitcoin is below $19k as of this writing. Ethereum just hit below $900. I’m not even going to mention the other alt-coins. It seems that there are key players taking advantage of the situation for eventual gain. Celsius froze everyone’s accounts. It’s just mayhem out there. What can you do about it? When it comes to your portfolio, it depends on what your risk tolerance is. Mine is relatively high. I’m in it, even if it hits $0.
Talk of recession went from potential to certainty at this point. Articles are starting to circulate now like a recession is inevitable. This article talks about how a recession will drive people back to the office. Michael Novogratz, just said that “the economy is going to collapse. We are going to go into a really fast recession.”
You may think that it’s not affecting your mental state, but you’re still reading this article, an article about how to escape from thinking about the recession. We’re all addicted to negative news, and this is a big one. While you’re most likely not going to stop consuming negative news, you can at least take some steps to improve your mental state. The one that we’ll discuss here is the 100 day coding challenge. There has been a recent uptick of tweets regarding this topic: #100DaysOfCode.
I personally love challenges. They motivate me. They’re set for a predefined period of time. It becomes a thing you must do each day since you’re on the goal to complete it. If you miss one day, you have to restart, which is why most people never complete it when they miss a day.
I’m Already Doing Challenges
I’ve already started a 365 day writing challenge where I’m writing an article each day for 365 days. Since I’m a couple of months into this venture, I’ve decided to tackle a few additional challenges for myself:
- Create a reel each day for 365 days and post it to my @think.dino account.
- Post 2–5 tweets each day for 365 days on my Twitter account.
- Walk a minimum of 10,000 steps each day for 365 days. My daily average last month was 21,000 steps.
- Post a YouTube video each day on my YouTube channel for 365 days. This one is starting July 1st, 2022. I’m currently prepping the content for this.
It sounds like a lot, especially considering that I work full time as the Director of IT at LifeSpan BioSciences, which purchased 5 additional biotech companies. We’re undergoing a massive merger and as you may guess, it’s heavily focused on IT. And yet, with proper planning, it’s definitely achievable.
The 100 Days of code Challenge
Seeing the 100 days of code challenge has awakened my inner developer. After working through the logistics, I see that it’s feasible. Day 1 is June 19th, 2022 for me.
My goal is to build out the features that I’ve been sitting on for my Automotive SaaS company, My Auto System. I’ve always said that I just need 3–6 months to complete these in full. My OCD self has gathered and organized all of the requirements already. Functional Requirement Documents and Jira tasks have been created. I just need to sit down and pump out the code.
Considering that my day is pretty booked, and I sometimes catch up late into the evening, I’m giving myself a pretty minimal goal: 15 minutes of writing code per day for the next 100 days. Ideally, this will be closer to an hour, but as long as I can say that I’ve done it for 15 minutes, I’ll call it a success.
While I do think that having a successful application at the end of your coding challenge should be the goal, learning a new language/framework is also a worthwhile endeavor. In my more junior days, I’ve unintentionally gone through 365 x 10 years of coding challenges.
What is a simple way to get started with a coding challenge like this? If you’re in the process of learning a new language/framework, starting with YouTube tutorials is the simplest approach. You’ll find that as you become more familiar with the language, you’ll write more code each day. If you’re an already experienced developer, 100 days is exactly the amount of time that you’ll need to transition successfully to a new language. If you’re a junior developer, 100 days gives you much needed practice. At the end of the 100 day period, starting a new, more complex 100 day challenge is something that you should strive to accomplish.
Supercharge Your Challenge
Are you looking for a real challenge? The 100 day challenge is just not good enough for you? Try to complete at least one challenge each day on CodeWars, LeetCode, or HackerRank. The more you do, the more challenging these get. Get ready to almost miss some deadlines. If you are going to do this, reach out to me; I’d like to follow that journey.
Finally
Personally, a 100 day challenge is just an excuse for me to start something. I don’t plan on stopping at the end of the 100 days. For me, 100 days is the perfect amount of time to push an additional routine into my daily schedule and optimize my time across all of my routines. To hold myself personally accountable, you can follow my 100 day challenge on my Twitter account.
https://twitter.com/dino_cajic
If I fail, I hope that you call me out on it.
The more you focus on your journey, the less focused you’ll be on the gloom and doom surrounding you. The recession will become something positive in your mind (hopefully). As the cycles continue, each time an economic downturn comes around, you’ll know exactly what to do. Keep the negatives out of your line of sight and focus on improvement while everyone else is focused on worrying.