How to work on your Coding Project while maintaining Mental Health.
This blog is based on my personal experience while working on a project. I usually plan and choose a project based on what I like and what I find interesting to work on. The first step is important, which is to pick a project you like, otherwise, it will be much harder to keep up motivation and passion. Next, draw the plan out on paper, and give your project a clear, distinct image of yourself.
After you have chosen a topic and drawn your plan out, it is time to start. For a lot of people it is hard to stay focused on one thing at a time, including myself. I always get excited, thinking of ways to make everything awesome, and I make the project bigger than was planned, or I get too focused on something unimportant and lose focus on the whole project.
This is what I learned from my final capstone: Project at the Bootcamp. I was finally able to stay focused on my plan. This was the first time I was actually able to do that.
It felt totally different than the projects I had worked on in the past. I set my goal before I went to bed and wrote my priorities on the board. That way, the next morning I’d have clear goals and visions to aim for. I had two and a half weeks before the show and teach day, I felt like my project came along smoothly, and I enjoyed when I started seeing progress. I was less stressed, which helps a lot, and my brain is able to learn new things very easily when my mind is healthy.
For this project, I choose to use React Native for my new language. It’s kind of similar to React but also not exactly identical. React Native is the Javascript framework for making the mobile app, but the design between the website and mobile app is totally different. For the website you have large scale design to play with, but for mobile app, you just have to design the small tiny screen and focus on context. There is not much space to work with. In my opinion, I am glad I chose React Native because it really opened my eyes and gave me a serious challenge.
I learned a lot from working on my mental health during this project. I am happy with how my project turned out. I kept the passion and drive to work on it every day, and I slept well, without having dreams about coding. I know a lot of the time it’s hard to stay focused. It’s natural to always look forward to the end of the project to see how far we still have to go, but we forget that if we do not stay on track, step by step, we might not ever complete anything.
