Recommended amount of FCC practice per day?

I just joined. Before this I was in another coding bootcamp so I know a bit, but I wanted to start over just to review.

Anyway, I just was wondering, how many lessons or how much time should I spend per day on freeCodeCamp? What is most effective without getting burnt out? It is the only course I am in right now so I do not have to juggle multiple things. I also do not work, so I have plenty of time. I would just go as long as possible per day but I know that is going to lead to mental fatigue and a reluctance to practice at all so I want to avoid that. I want to make sure I stick with this and actually complete the program successfully.

Does anyone have any advice on this? I realize it will vary from person to person, but I would just like everyone’s thoughts and advice.

the best way to know is to try

also, some lessons and projects will require more mental energy than others so it’s really difficult to tell you

so, maybe partecipate in #100daysofcode challenge?

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Hey Lexi,

nice to meet you!

This is a very interesting and hard question.

Research shows that, on average, most people have 4-6 hours daily for focused work. Focused means: no distraction, no social media in between, because context switching is wasting a lot of mental energy.

Newer research also shows, that mental fatigue is probably a self-fulfilling prophecy, meaning if you think you are able to work for (only) X hours, you will be tired after these X hours.

My additional two cents:
Although I think the “hour”-question is interesting, for most people it is the wrong question. Why? Because this question is about the theoretical maximum.

But before we talk about a theoretical maximum, we should ask ourselves if we have all the right habits to actually be successful:

  • a lot of free running sleep (for max retention of the learned stuff)
  • good eating habits (feeling energized)
  • good exercising habits (feeling energized)
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I’d focus less on the time spent, and more on the subjects learned and re-enforced.

Not all time is spent equally, you could spend 8 hours watching youtube videos and learn less than if you spent 2 hours trying to build something from scratch.

Specifically for freeCodeCamp, if you fly through all the challenges and end up in the projects but feel like you don’t know how to approach it, then maybe you went through the challenges to fast, or didn’t get any “extra” context around what your doing to be able to approach the projects. Such as learning “how the internet works”, or “what is HTML”. No single resource will teach you everything, so its important to branch out and “expand your knowledge horizon”.

You also shouldn’t get to the project and expect to know 100% of everything. Rather you should know enough to start tackling it and debugging what you’ve done. Search, read and ask. Development is less about doing things perfectly and more about learning how to get “unstuck”.

So yes, focus more on the concepts, subjects and what your learning to make sure you learn it. Don’t focus on the time spent you do learning this stuff. Your welcome to try to improve how efficiently you learn concepts, but experience is built on experience, not on the time you spent.

Good luck, keep learning, keep building!

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