“It’s been a year since you started to learn about coding and development, why haven’t you become an expert yet?“

“Stop scamming people, you don’t know anything about coding, why are you telling me how to learn XYZ?“

These were the comments I used to receive when I started to post on Twitter.

Guess what? They were partially right.

I used to start learning to code with excitement and after 10 days, 20 days, or 30 days? Quit. I failed every time I thought I will succeed.

What was the barrier which wasn’t letting me get ahead?

Learning from the right resource?

Not having a good tutor?

Did I choose the wrong path?

None of these.

So many problem, so little solutions

It’s like this, we all know what we want, where we want to be, what goals we want to achieve, but something doesn’t click yet.

How can it be this way?

We literally know what goals we want to achieve, and how can we achieve them, but still struggle to grasp air whilst trying to beat our competition.

Everyone is telling you the same thing, like: “Just start bro”, "learn from X website“, “learn this tech stack“, “build XYZ thing“.

But are they actually providing any solution to the problem?

Probably not.

If they were, we all would be expert software engineers by now, and earning 100s of thousands of $ every year, isn’t it?

This brought me to a full stop.

I was doing all I can to learn, and code for 4-5 hours a day, for almost 6 months, I was juggling between HTML, CSS, and C++.

I was good at? Nothing, just surface-level stuff that a 14-year-old can learn in a month if done with dedication.

The DO or DIE moment

Upon finally entering the pre-final year of my university degree, the moment of truth was getting closer.

You have 2 years left.

Then? Launched into the real world where there’s no mercy and you have to work every day, with no guarantee of success.

This was it, I knew if I don’t do anything now, I am going to regret this for life, no skills, basic C++ for loop knowledge(which has no value), knowing NOTHING about how websites work.

I had brought a bunch of courses from various platforms,

10 different youtube tutorials, and blog articles.

I started again, remember the infinite loop we talked about in the previous email? Yup, got stuck in it, AGAIN.

Drawing a conclusion here, this is not working, in fact, this is reversing my progress, the surface level of knowledge which is good for nothing, what should I do?

This path isn’t gonna take me far, I was confused, not for me, for you, who might get stuck in this, how to get out of it?

The Saviour

This was it, it was a bright summer day, in March 2022, I was looking up for something to watch whilst having a meal, and I stumbled across a video.

Titled “The only thing you need to progress as a Web Developer on social media”

Social media?

I was like, how am I going to progress by using social media? Is this guy serious?

Out of curiosity, I clicked on it.

There it was, 14 minutes later, I finally got it.

I knew what I was going to do after finishing the meal, the 1 thing I lacked during my journey.

Accountability.

In an excited state, I did what he told me, and here we are, a year later, doing all the things I wanted to, without the loop again.

Oops, did I spill the secret sauce?

Not yet, this is getting too long, I wish I could include what I did exactly, in this email itself, but nah, you are probably bored by now.

Would you like to know what I found out, that completely changed the trajectory of my progress?

Good, look out for the next email where I share the exact solution behind this, I promise.

PS: If you want to let me know you are reading, reply to this email with “SNACK” I reply to all the emails!

See you, very soon.

- Atharva “The accountability guy”