by Gordon Zhu, December 2024
I went down this path myself—I learned programming on nights and weekends while working full-time (as a marketer and later as a product manager). I also have 10 years of rich observational data, where I've been able to observe the study habits of Watch and Code students.
For context, nearly all of my students are adults with full-time jobs. Some are professional software engineers and use our program as continuing education. Others work in non-technical fields and are looking to develop a new skill for professional development or for fun.
In any case, when I've had these discussions in person and ask, "so what's your plan?", it's often something that sounds impossibly ambitious, like 2-4 hours a day. This happens because when you're making the plan, it feels so good to think about the most you could do. And when you have a normal 9-5 job, 2-4 hours is about that.
There's something deeply human about this. I used to run a lot, and I noticed that new runners love to fantasize about marathons. The new gym-goer dreams about six-pack abs. In any case, that's what I see the most. Grand plans.
But when you tell yourself you're going to do 2-4 hours a day, something that's out of your control will stop you from doing that. And when that happens, you're going to make a mental note that you can never unsee. That note will say this commitment you have is not real. It's fake.
At this moment, your "commitment" has transformed into a wish. And this means that you'll have to negotiate with yourself each day, when there should be no negotiation at all. And when you get to this point, it's basically over.
To avoid this common failure mode, the real question you should ask is, "what's an amount I'm sure I can do every single day, even on the busiest, worst day?"
This question is better because it prioritizes survival of the commitment. It maximizes the probability that you'll get through the hardest days without quitting. In other words, this question recognizes the fragility of habits and has built-in shock absorbers to handle the difficulties of life:
demands at work, low motivation, tiredness, whatever.
So here's a better plan:
This works so much better because it prioritizes survival of the habit. Without that baseline habit, you're ruined. So the 20 minutes is meant to be very doable, even on the busiest days. And this is so that you can't make any credible excuses and you can actually hold yourself to it.
The system also gives you the flexibility to take breaks when you need them. But enough structure so that the breaks don't get too long. So if you need an easy day, just do 20 minutes. If you need the day off, that's okay too. Just make sure that you don't miss consecutive days.
The last key thing is that it's built around the idea of the smallest significant chunk of time. 20 minutes is just enough that you can make progress on pretty hard problems. And this is important because you go too low, say 5 minutes, you can't get anything done. And then if you go too high, things start getting unmanageable. So I found that 20 minutes is the sweet spot for nearly everyone.
There's always someone that says (in a very serious voice), "Look Gordon, I really like the idea of doing 2, 3, 4 hours a day. This isn't ambitious enough." Eventually, I realized that people get high from just writing down big goals, and they don't wanna lose that feeling.
So if that's you, that's okay too. Just add a stretch goal that can be whatever you want. This still works because the main goal is still the focus. And now that the stretch goal is explicitly optional, the commitment is still preserved when you don't get there.
It's really common to do a lot more than you expect. And this makes sense because getting started is often the hardest part. Once you start, it's easy to get sucked into what you're doing. And so the system surprises people in a good way.
I have a lot of data from working with my students and here's what the successful ones do. On weekdays, a realistic stretch goal is about an hour. So they do their 20 minutes and then go up to an hour if they have time or if they can. And the most consistent students tend to do their studying before work starts. Later in the day, it just becomes too difficult when things come up.
On weekends, same thing, except the stretch goal can be a little bit longer, something like 90 minutes. I've seen people sustain that for quite a long time. And it's really rare to do more than that for a sustained period. In more than 10 years of data, I can't recall any examples of that. Sure, it happens for maybe a few months at a time, but then is followed by inactivity and burnout.
I wanted to give concrete numbers because I think people imagine really crazy schedules work the best, but I've actually seen the opposite. It's the slow and steady people that do incomparably better simply because they don't quit. I really like Murakami's take from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running:
"Sometimes I run fast when I feel like it, but if I increase the pace I shorten the amount of time I run, the point being to let the exhilaration I feel at the end of each run carry over to the next day. This is the same sort of tack I find necessary when writing a novel. I stop every day right at the point where I feel like I can write more. Do that, and the next day's work go surprisingly smoothly."