Keeping Discipline Simple

A decade ago I graduated from college. Ready to take on the world, I hastily applied for a number of roles that I was oblivious to the fact I was unqualified for. Months went by without so much as a rejection email and to make matters worse, I was now facing a layoff from the job I secured while I was in college. However to my benefit, in a rare and kind gesture, they gave me six months to figure out what was next.

Newly married with a kid on the way, I was in a panic. My options were pretty simple, find a new business role (which was a departure from my new Video Game Design degree), move out of state, or quickly learn something new. Immersive learning programs like the one I help lead now, were not an option then. At the time, I had an absolute disdain for the idea of a non-creative role and moving out of state was not going to happen. Learning something new seemed like the only reasonable choice.

From that moment, with the pressure of a growing family weighing heavily on my mind, I committed to daily learning. Every day after work, from 6 p.m. to midnight or later, for roughly five months, I hit the books to teach myself how to program. I gave it everything I had and thankfully came out the other side as a developer.

I learned in those days that Discipline in learning would create security for my career. But discipline is capable of doing so much more. I discovered there were five truths about discipline, or more specifically, lack of discipline that were affecting my life:

• An undisciplined mind will become stale and bored.
• An undisciplined body will become unhealthy and slow.
• An undisciplined family focus will create disconnect.
• An undisciplined soul will not be at peace.
• Undisciplined money will put you in debt.

Fast forward 10 years, while I absolutely love spontaneous decisions, I do have a core set of routines that I follow to ensure that I do not fall into the categories mentioned above. In our immersive programs at our school, I have the complete attention of my students when they walk into the building. They work amazingly hard and love the experience, however we do notice that post graduation many new challenges await them as they take on new daily routines. For some, they want to remain active in their learning, but they lack the structure and other essentials to be effective in daily learning. This was true for graduates who were working, and those who were not.

It would be trite for me to get on here and talk about daily learning. We all get it. If you commit to learning every day, then you will be better off.

Keeping it simple

Perhaps more of what I want to share, is how that actually happens. From what I have seen, it's all about the approach and 'not coming in too hot'. When I talk to graduates about their plan after Prime, many place the same expectations on themselves - high intensity, high commitment.

I have learned various programming languages, 3D modeling, motion graphics, game development, raster and vector graphics, various psychology and sociology topics, guitar, history, healthy eating, and precision workouts, not through grand gestures, but frankly a rather casual discipline.

Anything new that comes into my routine only gets 15 mins a day.

That's it. I give it a window of time to stick with it - for example, a week. If I like it, it sticks around. If I'm less than thrilled with it, I move on. But a key here is that it needs to stick around long enough for me to see a result. I struggle through the process to see if the struggle is something that I enjoy. Of the list I have above, there are dozens more than did not make the cut (looking at you freehand art).

But that's me.

I wanted to see if this is something that would carry over to other people, so over the past couple years I launched two challenges. The GitHub Challenge and the Blink Challenge.

The GitHub Challenge

Once upon a time, I was sitting on a Google Hangout with a graduate who really loved programming, but really hated her current situation. She wanted to be doing more Wordpress development and less JavaScript development. I asked the simple question, "What have you done to learn Wordpress development so far?"

Long story short, I could see that we needed a structure to encourage people to get out there and learn. In order for people to have an effective learning plan, they need curriculum, structure, and accountability (more on that in a future post). The idea became simple - every day for 30 days, make a commit to GitHub that was focused on learning something new. Each day you commit, you get a little green square on GitHub's profile calendar. So 30 days, 30 little green squares. But a core part of the commitment was getting the learning bite-sized, aim for 15 minutes a day. If you felt inclined, you were welcome to go longer.

There were certainly nights that fell victim to the '15 minutes and done'. Other nights it was 2 a.m. and I forgot I was trying to keep it simple. What I learned was that I needed to give myself the opportunity to just get into learning, it was never just going to magically happen on its own.

To date, we have run nine sprints of the GitHub 30-day challenge. Hundreds of Prime graduates have made thousands of commits, focused on learning additional technology, outside of the core Prime curriculum.

A couple of us even took it a full year. Our thought process was all about simple math:

15 mins a day * 365 days = 5,475 minutes / 60 minutes = 91.25 hours per year

At 90+ hours in that year, I was able to knock out numerous Lynda, Udemy, and Pluralsight courses. I might even go so far as to say I learned more in that year than I did in college.

If you are interested in joining the GitHub challenge, shoot me a message on LinkedIn.

"I love it because I wouldn't get my coding practice in without the challenge. The daily practice of coding is so helpful and important. For me, the commitment of joining the daily challenge is enough to actually make the practice happen." - Katie, GitHub Challenge Veteran

"It had a direct impact on me landing my current role as I walked through the code of one of the projects I made during a challenge. It also has a knack for making you keep yourself accountable." - Jeffrey, GitHub Challenge Veteran

The Blink Challenge

After running numerous sprints of the GitHub challenge over the years, many of us were feeling burnt out on grinding technology. I wanted to come up with another challenge that was less focused on tech.

Blinkist.com is a website that condenses popular non-fiction books into 15 minute 'blinks'. They extract the core parts of the book and give you the ability to either read or listen to the blinked content. To evaluate their content I blinked a few of their books that I had already read, and was very impressed with the results.

It became clear that this would be a great challenge. We are only in our third, 7-day sprint, with a very skeleton crew actually completing it. But overall, I am definitely getting a lot out of the experience because it is opening me up to books that I would not normally pick up at the store. To date, in the three months I've been on Blinkist, I have blinked over 30 books.

Rachael and I listen to the blinks on the way to work, so it fits nicely into our day.

Once again, if you want to join the Blink Challenge, reach out to me on LinkedIn!

"I really like doing this. And in ways I’ve not expected. I’ve dedicated more time to reading books as a result of engaging with this. I like the rhythm of it." - Keith , Blink Challenge Veteran

I love it. I have learned a lot and blinked books I never would have chosen for myself. - Ally, Blink Challenge Veteran

Closing Advice

Grand intentions in learning rarely see traction without the correct plan. We seriously put our best foot forward, but Netflix or other real-life responsibilities often calls us after a long day, and trust me when I say I am not immune. What I have found to be incredibly effective however, is very small commitments each day toward improvement.

I would event say before trying to tackle something like the GitHub or Blink challenge, try something very small and low commitment. Make it something that will still improve your life.

Here are a few ideas:

• Lay your cloths for the next day out before you go to sleep,
• Write a one-sentence journal entry for the day,
• Express gratitude through prayer or meditation,
• Put $0.50 in a piggy bank each day (but do not pay ahead!),
• Make sure your dishes are done every night. Leave a clean sink.

Visual cues of your accomplishments also really help. If it is a 'consumed' habit, such as laying your clothes out each day, build a simple tracker with a piece of paper and check boxes. Set a goal of a week. If you hit that, make it 30 days. And if you miss a day, don't sweat it, I miss often. Just get back on the plan the next day.

When the time is right, move onto a larger commitment, like 15 minutes a day hanging with me on the GitHub or Blink challenge! Also worth mentioning, is that the practice of discipline is one of the most humbling things you can do for yourself.