Launching Developer Overload

My name is Travis, and I'm the creator of Developer Overload. I meant to start everything much earlier, post articles, record videos and officially launch the site sooner but...I fell off the wagon. I've sat back and overthought a lot, got in to my head, got beat down with rejection after rejection on job applications, and I've come to realize I just need to get started. So this is it. Ali Abdaal really inspired me to get my life organized, improve productivity and show my work. I'm a mediocre "developer" that can do the thing. I'm pushing through the eDx CS50 course to help improve those skills that are quite lacking, documenting and taking notes and creating my own lessons and structure of sorts to help others also pick up developer skills and improve their life. It's a rough journey, and while it "just clicks" for many people, others like myself, struggle and combat distractions and mental health and other numerous day-to-days, so it's my goal to share my struggles and how I push through them in hopes of it helping someone else out there that's much like myself. I've created a loose "schedule" at this point on how I plan to spend my time:

Which seems like a lot of hours, though this doesn't account for breaks, fluctuations/changes in the day, and the uneven pattern of "Every Other Day." I could clean this up and get more accurate totals, but I didn't want to spend too much time focusing on that. The goal of this table is to give a general, eagle-eye view of my day-to-day and weekly commitments, gauging how it goes from here forward and adjusting as necessary.

I'm giving myself 1 hour per day to focus on CS50, which some days may barely cover a lecture, but that's okay. I want to learn a couple languages as well, particularly Spanish and Japanese at this moment, so I will commit at least 30 minutes a day to this, starting with Spanish. In this day and age, there's absolutely no reason to not know at least 2 languages. With only 30 minutes a day to commit to it, it's going to be slow progress, but I am okay with that. I am allotting 2 hours a day to exercise. This will trim down as programs change and fluctuate, but as I'm currently rebuilding some old skills in the weight lifting department, this allows time for rest between sets as needed. I want to spend at least 1 hour on active recovery on my non-workout days. Active recovery is simply a recovery day with a light, fun activity. This can be anything from walking or jogging to playing football or basketball or really any sort of sport for fun. It keeps me from being a lazy fatass like I have been for some time now and improves recovery time. I also want to commit at least 1 hour a day reading. This can be reading fun books or technical books, anything to get the mind going, learning new words, expanding imagination, whatever. I'll also spend at least half an hour applying to jobs because I need money and the market has been tough. I'd love to spend more time applying to jobs but I know I'll fall down a rabbit hole and end up shotgun blasting resumes to random places hoping for someone to bite. On the weekly side of things I'm limiting myself to committing 8 hours a week to a friend of mine's start up in the political landscape. I won't talk politics, it's not my thing, but I do enjoy contributing to tools that help our potential elected officials, because they are there to serve us and we need to make it happen some how. Last but not least, I will be committing a minimum of 2 hours a day to Developer Overload. This time will go in to structuring course material, writing up blog posts or drafting out these videos. A lot of the blogs will go along with the videos as the structure isn't meant to be strictly developer talk, though there will be plenty of posts in regards to it. The whole idea of this thing is to help diffuse the mind of the stress that is keeping up with trending technologies and maintaining skills and networking and everything that comes with the life of developers and engineers and just...enjoy random stuff. I will officially launch Developer Overload by May at the latest. That is my goal and I'm stating it publicly to attempt to force myself to truly commit to getting this done. So, over these next few weeks you will get to learn about me as a person, or I will get to learn about myself as a person, while I dive in to this adventure and make the most out of it that I can. Thanks for watching, and I hope to provide some value to...anyone, as this progresses!

UPDATE (April 22, 2021):

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Back at the beginning of April when I originally started drafting this article, I had a lot of huge goals to take on. Things, as life tends to go, have slightly shifted. I'm launching the site in a state that's not quite ready, but will hopefully serve as a foundation to start committing more work to it. I'm also stepping away from working with my colleague on his project. It's been difficult, and a lot of self-exploration has been required to come to the realization that this work just isn't quite in the books yet. I still talk with him regularly and provide what feedback and encouragement I can, and I certainly believe his product has solid ground to stand on, as soon as things can get straightened out more. With that being said, working out has taken a big priority as I push for larger goals in the fitness department to get back in to MMA and I've cleared up a chunk of my schedule to commit more time to Developer Overload. We'll see where it goes!

** PS, with the extra time I will commit to this project, I fully promise my writing will be more structured and easier to read and navigate moving forward.