Free Code Camp Is Like The Codacademy I Used To Remember

I have no idea why I didn't use this sooner; I had been subscribed to the FreeCodeCamp Blog for a few months now, as it had lots of little bits of coding news and things like that. I honestly thought it was solely a blog with new ideas on, and maybe a little side community!

However, the main FreeCodeCamp itself is made up of it's free main web design "certification" course, alongside local communities and a scheme in which you can contribute coding to non-profits later on in said course. I nags you once for a donation, near the beginning of the course itself, and that's it.

And I have to say I am impressed. It reminds me of the old design of Codecademy, which would encourage you to start learning from the homepage itself. Although FCC isn't quite from the homepage (there are a couple of pages of logging in and introduction to the site itself), the barriers between the homepage and learning are very small, and you start earning challenge points from your first log in.

This challenge point thing is the one idea that keeps me coming back to FCC at the moment... Each goal is incredibly small, maybe change a piece of code here or there (based on a similar example in the learning materials)... So it's very quick to delve in and start learning, even if there has been some time between learning sessions. This has the effect of making it much more likely you will return to it, and means you're also likely to learn for much longer. This is the kind of concept I hadn't quite been able to find up to now... But FreeCodeCamp definitely ticks the boxes for accessibility and ease of use.

Stuck In A Rut (Again)

I appear to have got myself stuck in a rut, going from lots of little successes each day through learning, to spending most of my evenings pigging out on the sofa watching Vinesauce and Ricky Gervais. It is quite understandable; my Wednesday's and Thursdays away from home involve pretty strenuous work. Also, I've had some downers related to situations out of my control over the past few years (and how they impacted on some shitty decisions which were within my control, and my own responsibility).

Licensed under the CC0 License. From Pexels.

I think it's worth pointing out, to everyone, it's absolutely fine to feel like shit. Don't listen to these people who say "...for every negative there is a positive",  or to have a positive outlook rather than dwell on the negative. It implies that it is wrong to feel crap when nothing can be further from the truth. Feeling low is part of human emotions... And if you are depressed, feeling low is an inevitable outcome. Although there is research a positive frame of mind can make you feel more positive, there's also research that suggests a low mood and depression are likened to an inflammation of the brain... Feeling like shit because of depression is as natural as feeling in pain because someone punches you. This isn't about making light of depression and dismissing it as something casual, but rather about accepting there's no need to beat yourself up even further for feeling low and not doing anything to get out of that.

In a nutshell, you have every right to feel down. You have every right to do sod all when you get home from work (or, for those who sadly can't work, doing nothing while you're at home). Whether it's full-blown depression or even just feeling a little lazy, it's no-one else's business but your own. It seems linked with an obsession to always be doing or learning something new, to feel like you have something new to show off to others. But really, just focus on yourself. If you need another night chilling out watching TV, it could be just what you need in that moment.

Measure The Time You're Wasting In Your Worth Per Hour

Having a brief flick through my Lifehacker feed, I came across this brilliant article introducing "Sloth Worth". 

Image licensed under CC0 License

It is an extension, for both Chrome and Firefox, that measures the amount of time you are wasting based on how much you earn (or value yourself) per hour. It needs to be enabled for specific sites, but once enabled it shows your total for all measured sites in the top left corner of that site (right now, my total is at £27.41 since this afternoon at £8 per hour, although I also turned it on for Duolingo and Lingvist to experiment how much value I'm using on "positive" endeavors).

Even though the extension is pretty simplistic, it's an eye-opener to how much time you actually spend doing unimportant things or procrastinating. Not to say that relaxing in your preferred way is useless. On the contrary; it's vital for your mental health. However, it's certainly a brilliant way to spur you onto more productive work or learning, if that is something you keep putting off.

The extension has its limits; I'd prefer breakdown of how much value is spent on each site, along with maybe catagories such as "education" or "entertainment", and a breakdown of the time of the day usually spent doing either. It'd also be cool to have a separate "positive" value indicator for time spent on more positive sites, to encourage you to engage with those sites more.

However, as I said, it is an eye-opener.

You can install the extension from their site at  https://qotoqot.com/sloth-worth/