Really struggling with retaining information

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… to the point where I don’t feel like I’m not going through the curriculum properly or dedicating enough time to the craft. I really only have 30 minutes of my day to work on fCC, during my lunch time at work, and my lifestyle really doesn’t allow me much time beyond that to practice or go through the curriculum any faster. That means I’m only able to get through one or two lectures one day, maybe get a workshop done, maybe get a lab done if it’s easy enough. Not having the video lectures anymore has really hurt me as well. Having them for HTML and CSS was really helpful and I have my Responsive Design certificate; now that they’re not there with Javascript I’m struggling. I’ve gotten to the Build a Boolean Check Function and Build an Email Masker labs of the Full Stack curriculum and I just feel so out of my depth and lost. I can get the foundation of some code put down in a lab, but it really feels like I’m relying too much on the “Get Hint” button to provide me with answers, which doesn’t feel good at all. I’m feeling very discouraged and conflicted in this moment. I really want to learn and make a lateral move in my career, but I’m feeling very stuck (attempting Javascript on fCC for the 3rd time mind you), left wondering if this is what I should be doing with my time. I’d really appreciate some encouragement and/or guidance.

Thanks,

Aaron

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I believe there’s 2 main sides to the problem you describe.

  1. Retaining information in general takes time, with only 30 minutes a day to devote to learning something, anything, you can only iterate on it before you drop and probably not think about the problem again until the next day. I’d consider it only “shallow” in terms of the depth you can usually get in.
  2. The rate in which you’ll learn with only 30 minutes a day will not be fast. Consider if you had say a full 8 hours a day to devote to learning something, you’d be going at a bare minimum 16 times faster, and covering everything 16 times faster. Just for a perspective, that means in 2 8 hour days you’d do about a month worth of learning with your current allotment. It will be slow going.

With those two main considerations, you have to ask yourself how effective are you with the 30 minutes you have to devote to learning, how “in depth” your getting, and how your spending that time to make the most of it. Furthermore with the current rate, even if effective, how long would it take overall to get some progress. It could simply be so slow you don’t see progress in the time you have to devote.

Honestly, 30 minutes a day to learn something as expansive and in-depth as web development might not be enough time to get through it in a timely manor, especially if your starting closer to “zero”. It takes a few minutes to get going, and even a few minutes is a huge percentage of the time you have.

I’d consider looking to how you can expand the time you have to devote to learning where possible, along with figuring out ways to utilize your time away from the curriculum to also “learn”. For example, listening to a developer podcast might not teach you much besides whats out there, but that’s something. Or you could start your day with some looking at some problems, and “take them with you” until lunch where you can apply what you thought about since morning. You could/should have a few ideas on what to do even without your computer, and thus able to “jump into it” much faster.

Time is the most importance resource we all have as individuals. If the time you able to give is too short to get in quality learning, it might not be worth the time at all.

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Hi @FREExM1ND

I don’t know what type of work you do, but could you consider asking your employer if you can dedicate an hour of work time each week or month to learning JavaScript? In return, you prototype a calculator, cost estimator, or something similar that is work related employees could use when you have learnt enough skills.

Some of the lectures are available on freeCodeCamp Concepts - YouTube.

Think about what you can do early in the mornings. This of course will mean going to bed earlier for the same amount of time.

Is there anything you can sacrifice on weekends / alternate weekends to free up some time?

Another thought, pause the Full Stack curriculum and look for ways you can increase productivity. There are plenty of articles on the web you can look up.

Thirty minutes may not seem much, but I used to spend two or three hours each day speeding thought the Responsive Web Design course. By the end of it, I retained just a fraction of the material. I then had to redo some of the sections to brush up on the fundamentals. Looking back, studying for two or three hours each week may have been better.

Learning JavaScript is tough. It takes time to process and make sense of the material. One of the Python lectures mentions that at the beginning things won’t make any sense. That it will take time to develop programming knowledge and skills.

To really develop programming and coding skills you will need to spend time building web pages and projects. They don’t have to look fancy, or be overly complex. When you start to combine JavaScript with HTML, you’ll have the opportunity to build simple projects, like a calculator, dark/light mode button, timer, or clock.

Learning to code can open opportunities.

Happy coding

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@bradtaniguchi and @Teller ,

Time away to reflect and to consider your advice has brought me some much needed clarity.

I didn’t consider the legacy curriculum modules, using the workshops as supplements to the Full Stack curriculum. I began one of the JavaScript modules soon after posting. I don’t think it’ll be enough, but it’s another opportunity to put some skills to practice and to feel the satisfaction of accomplishing goals and completing material.

30 minutes isn’t a great amount of time, but with my other obligations, it’s all the time I have. My desire won’t stop me from doing the work, but to both of yours point, that means it’ll just take longer. With that in mind, just going through the curriculum won’t be to my benefit. That’ll mean pausing at this point in the curriculum and doing more projects, like Teller suggested, to really refine what I know and develop skills/concepts I haven’t quite grasped yet.

The analogy I’ve come up with for my situation comes from my brother’s passion for skiing. After he learned on small beginner slopes, I’m sure his hours spent on intermediate courses were substantial, before moving to the black diamonds. He had to become comfortable and confident on easier slopes before he could begin to take on harder terrain.

All of that to say, this was a good time to reevaluate. It’s time to slow down, perfect the skills I do have, and use the new concepts I’ve learned in more practical ways, even if it means revisiting previous content until I feel comfortable moving on. It’ll be a good opportunity to add things to my portfolio, even if the projects aren’t high grade. I have to remind myself that it’s a marathon not a sprint and ultimately I can make my own pace and there’s no hard deadline for this.

Thanks again to both of you, I really appreciate the insight. It’s put things into a much more accurate perspective. I wish I could pick both of your responses to be the solution, because they’ve been equally as helpful. I have a new plan and a different, seemingly more comfortable route to explore.

Cheers,

Aaron

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