Learning to Code Mistake #5: Quitting Too Early

The fifth mistake is the worse one of all - quitting. When you don’t finish what you started you are left with an incomplete project you can’t show to employers, a gap in your coding knowledge, and a serious knock on your confidence.

This mistake doesn’t happen by itself, though. “Not finishing” comes from tripping over the first four mistakes. Let’s review:

Mistake #1: Learning the wrong coding language

Mistake #2: Looking for coding answers in the wrong places

Mistake #3: Not getting job placement help

Mistake #4: Not getting enough practice

Those missteps are a recipe for frustration that would cause even the most resilient person to quit.

One Psychological Trick to Help You Not Quit Coding

Your brain is hardwired to give up when things get hard or confusing. But, you’re also born with tendencies that can push you to finish an online course, learn to code, and finally get a job.

Neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman learned that when humans experience social pain, like being left out of a game, the regions of the brain associated with physical pain light up. “Social pain is real pain”, he explained in a TED Talk.

Lieberman goes on to explain the positive side of this phenomena:

“Rather than being a kind of kryptonite, our capacity for social pain is one of our greatest superpowers.  Research in my lab and another has shown that when you're socially motivated to learn the social brain can do the learning and can do it better than the analytical network that you typically activate when you try to memorize.”

Professional developers who take an online coding class always do well. They are socially motivated to learn - their boss and coworkers expect them to master the new topic and teach it in the office.

But you’re an aspiring developer, so you don’t have the same built-in social pressure pushing you to complete a coding course.

That’s why our online course at Coder Foundry is set-up so you travel through with a cohort of students. Unlike other online courses that allow you to join anytime and work on your own, this course moves you through with a set community of learners. Some weeks you’ll finish your work because you love to code.

Other weeks - the tough weeks - you’ll finish your work because you don’t want to fall behind your classmates.  

If you’ve tried tutorial after tutorial without finishing, then consider applying to Coder Foundry.

We’ll show you how we use positive peer pressure to help you reach your goals.