YourMondayMotivator: Programming and problem solving

Last week a good friend said I should write a co-driver training app so I can learn to code.
Really? I have people who know way more about that stuff than me working either at Spike or our suppliers.
Yup. Get into it. It will be good for you to learn how to do it.
Over the years I’ve built lots of emails and websites, but today’s responsive code is waaaay above my head. Anyway, I said OK and we drew up a plan. He gave me some steps I should follow and then he made sure he wasn’t connected to a place he could easily access my code.
I started here.

This is what it currently looks like.

To get to where I am today I have had to learn a lot. CSS and Javascript are not friend but I’ve made buttons change colour, moved objects around a page and made buttons do something when you click them. It’s exciting. It’s head scratching.
However last night I was wrestling with a problem that I could not let go. I knew if I went to bed without solving it I wouldn’t sleep. I solved it just before midnight. Midnight!
And that’s when I had an epiphany. I’m very knowledgable about email marketing and generally, any problem that comes up I’ve seen before and know the answer. No thinking required.
But I realised that doesn’t stretch me. Not. At. All. And doing what you do everyday won’t be stretching you either.
Learning about co-driving and how to run a racing car stretched me a bit. But it’s cars. I know cars. I like cars. That’s not a big stretch.
This kind of coding though is a huge step outside my everyday life. It uses something that is very logical to make things happen and requires a huge amount of time to research and test. It’s tiring too. I really have to think.
So, %%First_Name%%, what are you doing to really streeeetch yourself? What are you doing that requires you to think in a completely different way to what you generally do? A way that isn’t easy for you. A way that means you’ve stopped being complacent, comfortable, stagnant.
What are you doing? If the answer is nothing try something now. Try coding. You will be very surprised at the joy making a button change colour brings you.