One month ago, on 21st July, I decided to start a new streak. One hour (at least) of code every day, in the mornings or at night. Rain or shine, busy or not. Code every single day, or bust.

“A year from now, you’ll wish you had started today.” - Tony Robbins

I was tired of the competency-aspiration gap, between my coding skills and the goals and dreams of the kind of software I would love to make. I wanted some level of ‘minimum viable mastery’, enough to build and launch a SaaS, but not so high that I need to be world-class. 

It’s been a month since I made that commitment, and I’m happy to report back that I’m enjoying coding more than ever. It’s actually surprising for me to say that out loud to myself, because I had complained a lot previously about having to learn coding, not really enjoying coding even though I enjoyed the rush of making new products. But after a month of daily coding in the morning—frequently more than an hour per day—I’m at the stage where I’m literally feeling like jumping out of bed to code. To learn new stuff. To make mini-projects. To debug, troubleshoot and the “fuck yeah!” when you found the solution. What made this time any different? I think it’s got to do with discovering Codepen and how I learn best when it comes to coding.

“Easy or not, time will pass anyway.“

The beginning of this one month #decodingcoding journey started mundane enough. I signed up for Vue School, went through the lessons for Vue.js fundamentals, learning about data binding, components, slots. The individual lessons were very bite-sized, each just a few minutes in length, with the blow-by-blow walk-through practice taking up the remaining of the hour. That format was useful as it gave me the daily structure I needed. Just finish at least one lesson, actually practice typing out the code. I loved starting my morning with my cuppa black coffee, watching the videos and learning new things. After Vue fundamentals, I went on to learning about Vuex store, and Nuxt, all the while creating little mini projects along the way as tangible evidence of my progress. It was nice but nothing mind-blowing. Deeper down, I was beginning to feel restless. Fact is, towards the end, I started to skip some parts of the course because it just felt like I wouldn’t need them yet. I wanted to follow my curiosity. I gave myself permission to stop whenever, just like how I did with books (ala Naval style). 

But all these while, I had been using Codepen as a sort of code editor for the Vue School classes. Right about 1.5 weeks after I started, I started browsing the different cool stuff that others on Codepen did using Vue, and I never looked back since. It was such a eye-opening experience, because rather than walk through video classes making one mini product, I was browsing the catalogue of Vue.js product line, so to speak. All the cool and wonderful things I can make using Vue, I saw on Codepen, and it made me desire to make them so bad, I got ten times more motivated to learn. Using Vue with the Wordpress API, Google Sheets API, making delicious and sleek animations, even games! I played a few games made using Vue, like Pacman and Hangman. It was so sooo fun, and I was hooked. The difference was how Codepen made it so easy to tinker and play around with the code repositories that other coders made, and that’s exactly how I love to learn. By tinkering, fooling around, playing with the others’ ‘recipes’ and adapting/customizing it for my own use and fun. I curated and collected more than 100 Vue repos on Codepen, and I’m still adding to it daily. From this collection, I started my learning all over again, this time with gusto. I made tools and embedded them into Carrd sites:

1. Draw Anything, a whiteboard in Carrd - https://drawanything.carrd.co/
2. A blog in Carrd - https://wpblog.carrd.co/
3. Using Google Sheets as a database in Carrd - https://gsheets-list.carrd.co/
4. An invoice builder for makers - https://invoicebuilder.carrd.co/
5. Using a Vue design system and template called Argon in my latest product Grant Hunt - https://gogranthunt.com
6. Accordion drop-down bars in Carrd - https://accordionfaqs.carrd.co/
7. A healthcare costs calculator for Singapore - https://care-costs-calculator.netlify.app
8. A listing with dynamic filters, ala NomadList - https://listingwithfilters.carrd.co/

I think the results speak for themselves. 8 mini projects in 1 month! And that’s not even including the 2-3 that I made during the Vue School classes. Joy truly is the ultimate creator. That level of productivity is testament of that discovery of how I learn best when it comes to coding. Since I started on making these little by-products as useful products in themselves, I’m feeling more and more confident about coding, and even more raw desire to keep doing it. With proficiency comes passion, too. And with passion, comes possibilities. There’s a little voice, a feeling in my heart, that quakes with quiet excitement each time I’m coding. And this feeling grows by the day. And with each learning project, it amplifies it a few times over. 

I can’t quite find the right words for this sensation, but it sure feels right as hell. As sappy as it’s going to sound, it feels like…love.

And there. A month of daily code. 

Imagine what a year will bring.