First Successful Pull Request

The last three weeks have seen my eleventh pomodoro cycle (1,100 completed), and my first as an intern at Gleam.io.  My learning curve is very steep, for it includes, amongst other things:

• A new IDE. (Rubymine instead of Atom)
• Tighter security settings around my Github account, which is rather a good thing.
• Getting a large and complicated server with many dependencies running on my machine.
• Getting a new System76 Gazelle Linux box. (Amazing!)
• Writing RSpecs at a level of complexity far above anything I've learned.
• Using Rubocop — really not hard, I actually quite like it.

Edging out the excitement of my very own System76 laptop — I've been on cloud nine since Gleam.io generously purchased it for me — is my first successful pull request.

To a seasoned programmer, it was a small thing, but it is a momentous occasion for me.

And may it be the first of many.

800 Pomodoros (400 work hours)

I have officially spent 400 hours in my pursuit of a career in software development.



I summarised my achievements at the completion of 700 pomodoros, and I don't have an awful lot to add, except that I understand HTML and CSS a bit better and am in the process of refining my knowledge of programming fundamentals in Ruby.

There are days when I feel a little disheartened by not having a job yet, but I knew it would be a long process when I started it and there's plenty to take heart from.  Let's see how I'm situated by the end of this cycle.

State of the Mission: 700 Pomodoros!

Update:

Now up to 800 pomodoros.

Pomodoro Count

Since the beginning of this year (2017), I have invested a total of 700 pomodoros towards the following:

• Studying programming
• Coding
• Looking for work
• Self-promotion on social media

What Do I Have To Show for My Efforts?

I have a growing body of code: https://github.com/clockworkpc

I have interviewed strongly for junior positions at a number of companies:

• Envato (2nd round)
• Zendesk (1st round)
• reinteractive (2nd round)
• GreenSync (3rd round)
• MYOB (3rd round)
• BlocksGlobal (3rd round)

The feedback has been overwhelmingly encouraging, and with each interview, there is evidence that I am even closer to having the package of skills and knowledge that will distinguish me from other candidates.  Moreover, most of the companies have pointed out to me the precise areas of improvement, and I have incorporated their feedback into my curriculum.

Do I have a job yet? No.

Am I moving inexorably in the right direction? Absolutely.

What Is A Pomodoro?

Italians have been bemused by this term ever since, I imagine.

One pomodoro is 20 minutes of pure, uninterrupted, focused work.

For about 60 seconds before I start the clock, I orient myself; for about 60-120 seconds after the clock rings, I summarise my work.

Add to that the time spent getting up from my desk and making notes on the whiteboard, and that comes to about 25 minutes when all is said and done:

• Preparation: 1 minute
• Pomodoro: 20 minutes
• Summary: 2 minutes
• Whiteboard: 2 minutes
• Rest: 5 minutes

Thus, allowing five minutes of rest between a pomodoro and its surrounding activities, one pomodoro amounts to half an hour of productive labour.

Working on the assumption that about five hours of a software developer's eight-hour day are spent on his primary task (coding), and the rest is taken up by meetings, etc, this means that 700 pomodoros are the equivalent of...

• 350 hours of productive labour
• 70 working days of productive labour
• 14 working weeks of productive labour

Pomodoros: A Photographic Overview

Unfortunately, I did not record my pomodoro counts fastidiously from the outset, so some of the data are missing, but a glance across photographs of the completed pomodoro cycles, shows that the amount of time spent on each activity varied.  Sometimes I was focused on my studies, sometimes on coding, sometimes on looking for work.

I spend the least amount of time on promoting myself through social media, which makes sense, because it is more important to me to learn how to code, to code, and to look for work, than to blog and network on LinkedIn and Twitter.

2nd of January 2017 to 15th of January 2017 (100)

16th of January 2017 to 30th of January 2017 (200)

(Image lost to oblivion)

31st of January 2017 to 15th of February 2017 (300)

16th of February 2017 to 6th of March 2017 (400)

7th of March 2017 to 30th March 2017 (500)

1st April 2017 to 23rd April 2017 (600)

(Image lost to oblivion)

April 24th 2017 to 10th of May 2017 (700)

Getting Better At This Coding Thing

Day 4 and 36 pomodoros in. I got stuck on writing Rspec tests, so I purchased an Rspec manual, studied it for precisely three pomodoros (black cells) and found I could write the tests I need. I have spent so far 3 x 20 minutes on study and 33 x 20 minutes on planning, writing, and coding for this exercise. The brevity of the study break excites me, because it is tangible, documented evidence that I have the intelligence, self awareness, and discipline to take a break from the main project, learn what I need, and then get back to work without wasting time.

100 Pomodoros for the Month of February

This cycle was dominated by study (black) -- Toy Robot, Ruby documentation, 'Rails 4 in Action' -- and job seeking (red) -- lots of calls, emails, and networking at the Ruby Conference (2017) in Melbourne, Australia.

Let's see if we can make it two hundred pomodoros for the month of February.

At any rate, it's been a very productive one hundred pomodoros so far.