THE WOES OF A MAGIKARP

You learn a lot about yourself when you're a Makers student. How can you not, when you spend between 9 and 15 hours a day (including weekends) confronting problems?

As I sat in a frozen yogurt establishment yesterday, having a conversation with a very good friend of mine, I came upon a revelation. I told her that lately I haven't been feeling myself -- finding problems in my personal life where there aren't any/becoming disproportionately upset over things that are mostly trivial. I told her that it might be a result of stress and she said she wasn't surprised.

My schedule while attending Makers Academy online has been anything but normal. I wake up around 4 am every weekday to be on the same schedule as the guys in London, eat something quickly and then proceed to confront problems all day long. At no point do I leave my desk unless it's absolutely necessary, and even then it's not for very long and I generally don't relax while I'm away.

Programming is tough stuff. And it's not the kind of tough most people are used to. Most people, when they make a mistake in life, tend to avoid making that same mistake again. I like to think it has to do with basic survival instincts. Imagine you're an animal in the jungle. A mistake can cost you your life and if you make a mistake that doesn't kill you, it's in your best interest not to do it again. With programming, you do the opposite. Many times we even try to replicate that exact error! When we write the logic behind a program, we write tests in parallel to check the functionality of that logic. We first aim to fail the tests (in a way that we expect them to fail) and then we make them pass.

This process can be very counterintuitive for someone who has learned to avoid errors all their life, or has developed a habit of self-punishment for making mistakes, but 90 percent of a developer's job is to make errors happen and then to solve them. Every day is another step in unlearning bad habits of self-abuse and I might never fully reverse some of these deeply ingrained automatic responses, but I will also never give up trying.

But you can see how confronting all these issues can be stressful. Ideally, animals should only be stressed in life-threatening situations. Of course this is not the case for humans anymore. Most of us no longer need to hunt down our dinner, avoid getting eaten or fight for our lives on a daily basis (thankfully). However, hundreds of years later, we still have this sympathetic nervous system in place that stimulates our fight or flight response regardless of whether we want it to happen.

Now getting back to my original point, as a Ronin, the majority of our days are spent in this constant fight or flight mode because there is no other way to learn so much material in such a short amount of time. And to make things more difficult, we do everything online, so as my good friend so simply put it, we have "no car ride home from work to unwind." It makes so much sense to me now! As a Ronin, we work at home, we play at home, we do everything at home. There is no physical transition that flips a switch in my brain so I can go from intensely problem-shooting to relaxing. So all the times I couldn't sleep at night or started arguments with people I care about over trivial matters were very likely just my own way of continuing what I'd done all day. I never made the transition to relaxing from problem solving, so in my time off I was still trying to look for problems or create problems just so I could solve them.

Well, at least it's a theory. Or maybe I just had a momentary episode of madness for no apparent reason. Either way, I have hopefully come out of it for the time being.

What can we Makers do about this?

I know I've said this time and time again, but it is so important to release stress. But I find that even on the days when I exercise a good deal, I need something extra to bring me back to normal home life, and I think the key actually lies in going outside, or physically being somewhere else for a while. I am personally a major home body so I never thought I would be affected in any significant way by doing all my learning at home. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, in fact I think it has been great for my focus. But that being said, if you're anything like me, you can't get through this course without giving yourself adequate time and space to unwind.

So, what does any of this have to do with a Magikarp and its woes?

Apparently, I do some of my best learning by creating analogies, and obviously Pokemon analogies are ideal. At standup a few weeks ago I made a joke about myself being the Magikarp of the group because sometimes I feel like the slowest one to evolve.

Luckily, Magikarp eventually becomes this guy:

To anyone else who might feel like a Magikarp, hang on. As long as we work hard, our day will come.