Monthly recap #1: February/March 2021

The first six week are done! Hurray! Time for a short recap to see what I have actually been doing these past six weeks. Let’s tackle that as the pro I like to become and use the PPP-method of Progress, Problems, Plans. Did I come up with that myself? No, I was more than a little inspired by this example in which a PPP-template was used.

Progress
What did I accomplish this past month?
Problems
What problems did I run into? Do I need someone’s help to solve them?
Plans
What are my goals for the upcoming period?

This approach may seem a bit over the top but I’m currently stuck at home alone in a lockdown. The only one I have to be accountable to is me and I can be quite the postponer if I want to be. Didn’t do anything for a couple of days? Never mind… I’ll catch up tomorrow. My memory is rather hopeless at times too. “Just what exactly was I working on last Tuesday? Nevermind, I’ll just start and see what comes up.”

Which neatly brings me to….

Progress

1. I learned a lot about myself these past few weeks. Holding myself accountable, writing down what I am working on and what still needs to be done works! It brought so much zen! In the first few weeks I felt I was just doing stuff. Especially when there had been off-days and then picked things up again I lost valuable time figuring out what I had been doing, what I should be doing and how to do it. These days, I check my notes and start a session with focus.
2. I learned… A LOT! Not just by refreshing my knowledge of HTML and CSS but also using new programs (Visual Studio Code, Virtual Box), work methods (Linux, Github) and got them up and running 95% all by myself! It gave me one heck of a confidence boost.

Problems

1. Silly me installed VS Code on my laptop (Windows) when I should have installed it on my virtual machine. This caused a bit of a problem. It was eventually solved by working around it, using Putty and WinSCP. Not ideal but it works.
2. Github still confuses me. I understand the theory of it but how to work with it is still not 100% clear. Tried to find Dutch info but it was even more confusing than the English explanation I found at the Odin Project. So need to look into that.
3. In the first couple of weeks I worked very unstructured. So I got a notebook and now write down weekly goals and short summaries daily what I have done during that day’s coding session.

Plans

1. Learn more advanced CSS. I feel I’m grasping the basics but things where I have to fill out numbers (e.g. dropshadows) need some more looking into.
2. Depending how I feel about progress with CSS I’d like to make a start with Javascript. Already found a manual in Dutch which I can read.
3. Not really coding related but I really should change my status on social media and Linkedin and do a “coming out” of sorts.

Bring on April!