Dealing with Stress and Anxiety When Learning to Code

hey everybody what's going on I'm Andy I'm a self-taught software developer and in this video I'm gonna talk about how to deal with stress and anxiety on your journey to become a software developer a lot of you guys who watch my channel are doing everything you can you're working nights weekends you have a full-time job in a family and dealing with this new lifestyle where you're working a ton where you're trying to learn the skill that's very difficult to learn you're experiencing high levels of stress and anxiety so how do you manage that well I'm gonna share my experience because I'm not a doctor I'm not gonna tell you guys that this is the best way to do it but I've certainly experienced my own stress and anxiety very high levels at different periods and so I'm gonna share with you what I've found to work now if you're new here I'm Andy and I coach and mentor people who are looking to become software developers so I help teach them the skills I help give them a system for landing that first job so I would highly recommend subscribing below if you want content that's similar to that and make sure to hit the bell icon to get notifications anytime I put out a new video so let's just get into it so what do I mean by you know what is it what does it mean to have stress and anxiety well for a lot of guys who are working towards this goal of becoming a software developer whether you're doing on your own or you're going to school you're putting in a lot of time and effort there's a lot of uncertainty right so you don't know necessary right now that you're expending are going to equal the result right there so you're maybe you're sacrificing time away from friends and family and it can cause a ton of stress a ton of anxiety for me I always experience a lot of stress in two main ways number one is expectations right so having perfectionist tendencies and expectations that are so high will cause you a lot of stress because there's no you cannot make progress quickly with this right like progress is very slow and incremental and so for you who or I myself who is a perfectionist it's never quite good enough even if you have some sort of breakthrough today well tomorrow you're gonna be just back to the monotonous routine of working through an application or working through one of your learning resources so that can cause a ton of stress and anxiety if you don't manage that the other part of stress and anxiety for me that's a big one is working too much right that means they can be working too much in a day it can mean not taking breaks in between your work periods right like not following your Pomodoro Technique and you know 25 minutes on five minutes off or it can mean a prolonged period of time maybe a month where you're just working too much you're just you know 7080 hours per week that causes a ton of stress and a ton of anxiety because you don't have time away from the computer so for me those were always the biggest ones now let me tell you what I have done to help deal with the problem of stress and anxiety number one I monitor the hell out of my emotions now in other words and this is the if this is the only thing that you take away from this video this might be the best is that when you're sending there on the computer you're working when you begin to feel the emotion or the the negativity the emotion negativity then it's already time to step away so if you are working through one of your apps you're building one your applications that's say for your portfolio and you're frustrated because this thing isn't working right which happens all the time like you've you reviewed every line of code but nothing is making sense and you're trying to be to that point where you're like you're tensing up you're grinding your teeth you're ready to punch a wall it's already too late like at that point you need to step away from the computer whether that's 5 minutes 10 minutes an hour or for the rest of the day I don't know but the point is you have to monitor your emotions constantly it's not enough to not be aware of your emotions with this because there are so many times in my own experience where I thought in my head that I can just barrel through any problem right if I can just sit there and the more frustrated I get I assumed that I could just keep on pushing and pushing and pushing but the truth is that the the emotion the the negative emotion of frustration of anger of any of anything like that will only make the situation worse like you don't become a better problem-solver when you're frustrated you actually become less better right so the key takeaway is monitor your emotions and as soon as you start to feel those tinges of anxiety of stress of negativity take a step back maybe you need to just do some meditation maybe need to go for a walk outside and spend some time in nature maybe need to go have a socialize but be hyper aware of that and don't let yourself get to the point where you're frustrated you can lose a lot of time doing that the next thing that has really worked for me is understanding the sweet spot for effort right and what I mean by this that with software development specifically there is a certain amount of mental strain like I meant like I was saying before like you know where your furrowed brow where you're just like yeah I'm gonna try to figure this out there's a certain amount of that that just actually is counterproductive right so if you push yourself too hard and you're trying like so hard to figure things out it just doesn't work and then there's the opposite end of the spectrum you need to have a certain amount of stimulation right some amount of motivation and sort of like mental concentration to actually make you learn more and progress through something that you're working on so you really have to understand that sweet spot for yourself and it's only gonna come from testing those boundaries like it's almost like a car's engine like the RPMs on a car's engine you want to get as close as you can you want to rev that engine as much as you can without redlining it because when you red line it the engine will explode the same thing with working hard when you're spending a lot of hours and you're in that intense work mode well your is the problem with that is that if you're going so hard for so long you will burn out like instead of the engine exploding you will basically get to the point where you're like and I've had a successful experience as many times where I just basically feel like empty I guess basically at the point where I'm just like like I wake up one morning like I just can't I can't do the work I just can't do it like there's something missing like with my mind and so I'll have to take a look a day or two off in the worst cases it's been I've had to take months off when I started a company when I tried to start a company and failing and which I'll post the video here so you can watch my a story about that I got burnt out at the end and I had to take two months off because I was working 12-hour days on the weekends I was working during the week for my regular nine-to-five job working after hours I was working I mean I had to be working like truly 80 hours a week not like saying that like I was working 80 hours a week least for the peak periods and it was just too much I ended up burning out so no your sweet spot and try to always stay with him that the only way you can do that is by testing it so you know try going really hard try pulling it back a little bit but find that sweet spot and be very good about staying in there another thing for me that's been very helpful is just revisiting why I'm doing this but just something you forget over time a lot of you guys out there again are sacrificing a lot of your time and you're doing this for good reason right either maybe want to make more money right there's a big driver for a lot of you guys or you want to improve your life situation and have a career that's strong and or should say secure or you just want to get in a career that you love you're doing something you love those are all great reasons but if you boiled it down to what that essentially is it's you want to have a better life you want to be happy you want to be content you wanna be more peaceful and so what I've done what I've missed a kid I've made in the past is I've traded unhappiness in the moment right I'll say that okay you know what oh the next six months I'm gonna really hard I'm gonna be unhappy as I possibly can because if I do that for six months if I just grind through everything and I worked those 12-hour days that at the end I'll come out with some sort of result that will then make me happy right it's a it's sort of like a loop that you think is gonna make sense right like if I'm miserable I'm gonna grind through all this stuff then I'll get the result be happy and then I'll be able to be happy but the truth is that it doesn't work that way instead you the quality of your work goes down because you're not happy you're less likely to sustain this long term which to be successful in anything you really have to do a long term right because you can't be just a couple weeks of hyper intense focus and so it just it's you're less light it gets to succeed but even if you do succeed even if you can persevere through all the you know the crap that you're putting yourself through if you get the result guess what happens there's a moment like momentary elation but then you go back to this this state that you were in before which is you be miserable so the make your the means justify the ends you enjoy the process it doesn't have to be this thing where you're sitting yourself down in a chair and like tying yourself to the chair to force yourself to do it like find ways to make it more enjoyable build up your your strength and stamina to work long periods of time but beyond that don't make yourself invisible to do this it never works and the last thing is a little esoteric it but it's very personal to me and that is cut back on the stimulants guys so for me I'm pretty sensitive to stimulants and despite that fact I still am a coffee drinker right now I'm off of coffee but I'm like on and off every couple months but I will tell you this for me personally I've noticed that when I'm at periods where I'm drinking more caffeine more coffee the anxiety and the stress come back very quickly and no matter how many times I've seen it happen I still somehow talk back into drinking caffeine and coffee and then I get to the point where like the stress and anxiety to come back and I quit and look we all have our different levels of sensitivities so take this with a grain of salt but for me I'm a little bit more sensitive than the average person so I definitely need to be careful for a lot of you guys just monitor your caffeine levels if you notice that you're drinking more caffeine and also there's a correlation that you notice you're also feeling more stress and anxiety maybe it's time to reduce it right maybe it's time to just cut back to instead of three cups of coffee maybe two or maybe if it's two then go back to one or if it's one try cutting it out completely and seeing how you feel little things like this they can matter quite a bit and people don't realize what the effects of stimulants have and that could be anything by the way it could be caffeine obviously there are legal stimulants that people use after all is a big one which probably is massively overprescribed a lot of you guys might be taking and don't even need it but take a look at that as well and see like other caffeine or there were stimulants that you're taking that are affecting your anxiety so you guys I hope this video helps these are all things that I've dealt with and look I still deal with this quite a bit I work a lot right now and I have to monitor my stress and anxiety levels so I hope this helps you so leave a like if you enjoyed the video other than that guys I have a free Facebook group which I highly recommend you join I do a lot of stuff there that I don't do here on YouTube like answer questions on live Q&A s I share resources that I find really helpful for myself as well so go ahead and join that by going to a nice turquoise calm forward slash group other than that hopefully you guys have a great rest of your week day whatever it is and peace out until next time guys [Music]

Channel: Andy Sterkowitz

Views: 25,627

Rating: 4.9558439 out of 5

Keywords: programmer stress, programmer burnout, how to program, how to code, learn to code, how to learn to code, how to learn programming for beginners, how to learn to code for beginners, programming, coding, software development, software engineering

Id: anfszzl3GpA

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 09 2019