The Role of Stress in Learning to Program

I’m a pretty upbeat, positive person. I really believe we make a choice each day of whether to be happy or not. And I make decisions according to this belief. It was this philosophy that sent me on a journey learning to program.

During this process, I’ve maintained a similar attitude, and I’ve tried to convey this attitude in my posts. The sentiment is not artificial; I’m learning a ton, meeting some amazing people, and having a great time. But that certainly doesn’t mean I don’t feel stress nor anxiety.

Outcome Importance in Learning to Program

I’m headed down unfamiliar territory and that generates fear and uncertainty. Now that I’ve transitioned to building my own app, there’s an added sense of responsibility. The real work has begun and I’m feeling the pressure.

I worry about building something that will be public facing because it exposes me to criticism. I’ve taken a risk by putting my business on hold to learn to program. Aside from my own sense of pride in what I’ve accomplished, much of the value of this project is relying on me building a web app that others find value in.

It’s an interesting paradox because each step I take in learning brings me closer to reaching my goal of building a working web app. But, until I’ve built anything, I’m also that much closer to failing.

At one point I considered adding a count-down clock to my site for dramatic effect. In a wise move, I opted out. Can you imagine having to stare at that every day? Talk about stress.

Image courtesy of Scott Beale

What’s At Stake?

I’m trying to not to dwell too much on interpreting this project in a success vs. failure mindset. There are lot of great accomplishments simply in undertaking this journey. However, when I reach the end of this 18 week journey, I’ll have to face people and summarize this project and my outcome.

Many close friends and family have expressed admiration in my courage to take a chance in learning something new. But what about when I need to demonstrate a more concrete result. If I can’t build a functioning app, will people respect my courage to try? Or will they look at me and think I took an 18 week siesta on the beach?

Certainly, I’m exposing myself by admitting these insecurities, but self-doubt is by no means isolated to me. Developers and others who seek to create something from scratch, such as artists, engineers, and designers, must also face this hurdle. In fact, some level of self-inflected stress can be beneficial.

In his book, “The 4-Hour Work Week”, Tim Ferriss discusses how we can cultivate eustress, in which we have a positive cognitive response to stress. Harnessing these intrinsic emotional and chemical responses can be very powerful in propelling us towards an accomplishment.

When you have an important project, how do you harness stress and anxiety to overcome and achieve a successful outcome?

http://twitter.com/CoreyFreeman Corey Freeman

I find I can’t work well when I’m stressed out, so I have to find ways to work around the stress. One of my favorites is listening to film scores on Pandora (the online radio). Sometimes I go on a walk to check my mailbox. Sometimes I do pull-ups, and then sometimes I just take a nap. I think stress in coding is a build-up of typing in variations on code and watching it not work. You have to dig yourself out of the rut and put that energy into a new approach, which is usually stupidly simple.

Cool blog!
- http://andrewkkirk.com/ Andrew K Kirk
  
  Taking breaks is a great idea. My stress tends to build when I break code and/or can’t build a specific functionality; it definitely builds when I’m repeatedly unsuccessful. I tend to not stop at this point because I have this desire to fix it.
  
  However, that does tend to take me deeper and deeper. Perhaps, a mental break would help!
http://andrewkkirk.com/ Andrew K Kirk

Taking breaks is a great idea. My stress tends to build when I break code and/or can’t build specific functionality; it definitely builds when I’m repeatedly unsuccessful. I tend to not stop at this point because I have this desire to fix it.

However, that does tend to take me deeper and deeper. Perhaps, a mental break would help!
http://twitter.com/broberts_az Bob Roberts

A lot of times I feel the stress/pressure when working on an app. I am the type that does not give up until I figure it out which is a bad thing. What I have found that helps is to change my focus on to something easier to do that requires less thinking. A great byproduct to this is the fact that more time than not, after returning to the original issue, I figure it out quite fast.

Keep on learning!!!
- http://andrewkkirk.com/ Andrew K Kirk
  
  Good advice @twitter-199393780:disqus . There is a proven psychological benefit to successfully completing a task. I could see then how your approach to tackle something else and then return to the problem would refreshing!