It's Been Too Long
Tags: devjournal, react
Published: 2019-10-07 22:16:42

##Hello World,##

It has been *way too long* since my last post. I'd love to say that a lot has happened since then, however, it wasn't until the last week or two that I've found my drive for coding & learning again.

I had planned just one week off at the end of August, however, that turned into about 2.5 weeks of no coding.

The following few weeks I would dabble here and there but couldn't really *get into it*, nor was I able to tell myself to do the right thing. For me, the right thing was advancing my coding skills.

##So What Have I Been Up To?##

Honestly? Next to nothing besides my boring job, playing World of Warcraft, and watching Netflix. I've been reading and watching the occasional thing about web development, and attended another meetup that was all about Gatsby.

That meetup is what brought me back and I am *so* thankful for that. It was all about how to get started with Gatsby which I cannot wait to get started with. This brings me back to this last week's developments:

###**My Deep Dive Into React**###
![React Atom Logo in light blue on dark gray background.](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/7o3728wzuk1e96ypooyr.png)

I am finally hitting my <a href="https://www.udemy.com/course/complete-react-developer-zero-to-mastery/">React Course</a> hard with 2-4 hours per day. I started it over from the beginning as a refresher is never bad. 

As I'm not 100% comfortable with Vanilla JavaScript, I am also going through <a href="https://frontendmasters.com/bootcamp/">Front-End Masters Bootcamp</a> - just the sections I am not so confident on though. The information is presented in a clear fashion and each video is pretty short so it doesn't eat up too much time. Speaking of time, something new that I've been implementing is...

###**Time Blocking**###

There are <a href="https://blog.rescuetime.com/time-blocking-101/">*plenty*</a> <a href="https://toggl.com/time-blocking/">**of**</a> <a href="https://blog.hubstaff.com/time-blocking-simple-guide/">***articles***</a> going over time blocking within coding, so I won't go in-depth. 

Time blocking is just as it sounds, blocking off time for specific tasks, chores, things you need to do, etc. For me, I am blocking off 2-4 hours per day for React, 1 hour for working on my existing Portfolio site, 1 hour for reading Web Development articles, so on and so forth.

When the allotted time is up for that particular task, that's it! This certainly is not the best approach for everything you have to do, but it's been helping me ensure that I make the most of the time I have.

###**New Productivity Tools**###
![Checklist on tablet](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/mfx47pyywiv2ugrchrbz.jpg)

I'll write a separate post about these, but I've recently changed up some of the tools I am using to make myself as productive as possible. Previously I was using  Bullet Journaling, however, I am now moving to purely digital productivity tools - more on that soon!

While *always* looking for newer and better productivity tools would detract from one's productiveness, I *do* have one eye open at all times to see if there is someway I can increase my productivity.

##Wrapping Up##

Like everyone I've had my ups and downs, and now I'm glad to be out of the most recent down. Life isn't perfect and often times what is portrayed in many people's Twitter profiles, Instagram feeds, whatever social network, is far from real life as they only get to share good parts.

Don't be ashamed to share what's really going on. We all struggle and we all can't be motivated 100% of the time. If you rely on motivation to ensure you get done what you need to get done, you'll never move forward.

Remind yourself of the big picture from time to time, take (appropriately sized) breaks, and keep on moving forward.