Losing motivation

What helps you guys when motivation becomes an issue? It wasn’t until I had got the tribute page excersize, I got demoralised and struggled with motivation yesterday but powering through!

That was tough for me too. I just started adding small bits until it started to take shape.

I had some html and CSS before I even chose a subject. Try putting in dummy images, some people like to use cat images, and Ipsum text to fill it in a bit.

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My friend, you can search in this forum and no one will affirm that coding is easy. If that was the case, everyone in this world would be doing it right now. For real, HTML and CSS are not the problem. As many people said before me, if coding were easy no money was in it. The motivation is why have you started anyway? Are you looking for a new job? Are you looking for a new career? Or just want to learn something new? For real, I have been studying FCC and web dev for almost two months now and I’m really producing some stuff and doing things I’d never thought I could. The thing is coding demands time and a lot of studying… lots and lots of studying. If you are not up to this… then I’m sorry but you will have no results. And this is life and the same is valid for anything you’ll ever learn.

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Understand what your saying. Though I think you may have read into what I was asking, perhaps. Fully aware coding is hard, buddy. The question was very much directed at programming specifically not really life.

Thanks for your input, anyway.

That’s perfect. good pointers. Thank you!

Did you look at code form any other sites or tribute pages while doing the tribute page? or maybe previous exercises?

I didn’t but decided to make my tribute page very simple in order to have something I could manage with limited skills.

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Well for me listening to music while I code helps with the problem to start coding if you feel too lazy to start. Plug my headphones and usually play winamps free radios ambient or DnB, just music (no singing because that distracts a lot). When I am figuring out what needs to be done I prefer ambient and when I know and just coding then its DnB.

Or you can just go to sites like noisli and click on coffee shop sounds and start working.

And if motivation is an issue, I usually watch some cyberpunk anime, or sci-fi movies, youtube coding tutorials or just talks about programming industry or jobs or motivational videos from TED ted.com.

I did pomodoro music timer with free radios to choose I love to use it you can check that if you like http://codepen.io/MarkoStefanovic/full/ZBJKzV/

Hope that helps :slight_smile:

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Hey dude, I have the same problem when I need to build some project. What @michelmarechal have said is a truth, I think exists small and great motivations. The great is like get a job, have a good carreer, and you need remember when you get struggle to boost your motivation again. Also, the small motivations are like I need to learn and finish this project to improve abilities. “I know it is difficult, but I need to finish to prove myself I’m capable”. It’s clichê, but this is the truth, there is no secret.

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That’s interesting. Arriving at the first project (Build a Tribute Page) was also a bit of a “spoke in the wheels” situation for me as well. The exercises make it easy to keep motivated as they are very precise in their description - you know exactly what is required of you. On the other hand the Build a Tribute Page exercise requires you to be creative and come up with your own ideas.
It’s also an exercise that requires more of your time so you don’t receive that immediate reward of completing it within a short time. My resolution for this was to keep going with the exercises and just work on the Tribute Page a little bit at a time. Start simple and just build away in a span of weeks if needed. I’m already three quarters into the javaScript portion and my Tribute Page is not done. That’s ok. As long as I finish it at some point before other projects come up. I will be done soon and then I will have better ideas for my Portfolio Page. Creativity comes and goes for a lot of people so it’s not necessarily expected that you can go at it at any time. That’s my opinion anyway. Obviously this doesn’t apply to everyone.

Another thing that keeps me motivated is that I don’t just use FCC for my web dev education. I read a lot of articles (on Medium, Hackernoon, etc…), watch YouTube videos, go to W3Schools, etc… You gotta switch it up if you’re really into this.

Hang in there and good luck!

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Hey man hang in there, I would say it only gets better after the tribute page, but it does not. The challenges get harder and more in depth. Wait until you get to JS!!! YIKES :tired_face:

Don’t worry though the community is very encouraging and helpful, when I posted a similar thought, I received so many stories with campers feeling the same way I did when I felt like thrown my laptop across the room. Hang in there, and feel free to lean on others and ask as many questions as possible. @aaronwithalaser

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I second your contribution MarkoStefanovic, DnB and ambient helps me a lot. Plus listen programming stuff and TED talk.

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I went through the exact same thing: the challenges were easy enough and then I felt myself losing steam when it came to the Tribute Page project.

I found it helpful to just play around with code using a text editor and checking the results in a browser. Once I was more confident applying what I learned from the challenges on a bunch of web pages no one else will ever see (and learning a few more things along the way), I didn’t have a problem tackling the first project.

Good luck, and keep at it! :slight_smile:

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When I get stuck or frustrated with something, I change track for a while. Learn something different, or use a different resource. When I was starting, I used to jump between HTML/CSS and JavaScript a lot. When the JS gets too hard, do some HTML/CSS. When you get bored with layout, do some algorithms.

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Thank you everyone! :slight_smile:

While I think this camp is great at throwing people straight into coding, a secondary source or two on learning how to code is essential. If I was only using the information on this site I’d be frustrated too. Don’t hit your head against the wall. Have some other references handy.

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I avoided the tribute page for a couple of weeks and started JavaScript. I also have school work and a job, so that takes time. Started diving into it a couple of days ago and I am really enjoying the process. I am going back through the exercises I did previously and I am having a lot of fun looking up extra things to add! If you set your page behavior to immediately update, it’s fun seeing it come together.

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Two things are helping me with the Tribute Page challenge:

  1. I chose to make it a tribute a celebrity so I could list their filmography – no copyright issues and it’s pre-written for me so I don’t waste time creating content.

  2. I went back through every previous challenge and used them like tests to build my Tribute page – extra practice and it pushes me to find ways to adapt those principles to my subject matter. Instead of just doing an ordered list, I made it an ordered list with checkboxes so people could submit a form with their favorite movies. I looked up other ways to do a border and found something more suited to my celebrity’s style.

Thanks for the noisli recommendation!