🍅April Pomodoro Reflection

I've completed 123 Pomodoro's (3075 minutes) in April. This is an increase of productivity by 8 Pomodoro's compared to last month, a difference of 200 minutes.

Having reflections allow me to measure how much I've done and what I've accomplished to achieve my goals. It helps me stay accountable in my journey in completing The Modern React Bootcamp and continuing my journey in programming.

What I completed:

• Completed The Modern React Bootcamp by Colt Steele
• Created multiple React projects
• Added MDX support which allows me to use Chartjs on my Markdown blog posts, specifically meant to spice up my Pomodoro Reports
• Added a nicer dark and light mode toggle on my blog
• Experimented with Gatsbys-image by creating a portfolio
• Added Algolia's search on my blog and learned about debouncing searches
• Completed a Book: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
• Created an fullstack online board game over the weekend, pair programming with my friend - notcodenames - Blog post

Reflection

One more Pomodoro away from hitting my all time high of 124 Pomodoro's!

Now that I am using a different Pomodoro tracking service, I started exporting my data in Excel and use the pivot tables to generate my data. MDX allows me to use React components in Markdown files.

I decided to separate them by days to see which days I perform the best. It's interesting to see that my Saturdays are the worst days since I reserve them for playing gamings with my friends.

Despite being in a lockdown, I managed to keep myself pretty busy.

I completed the React Bootcamp and quickly realized that near the end of the course, the material I studied became outdated with the recent introduction of React Hooks which my knowledge is currently lacking.

But that didn't stop me from applying the new skills I learned! I finally have a nicer dark mode toggle that I've been meaning to install on my blog.

I'm still hesitant on applying for front-end positions at the current moment, I feel like I have so much to learn, my algorithms and data aren't so great, but at the same time I haven't come across interviews that asked for these tests yet.

This monthly reflection definitely shows that I haven't been putting in enough work on algorithms and data structures, about only 4.1% of my time has been spent there.

I hope to have this up by 30% by the end of next month and at the same time working on my applications for any job openings. However, this pandemic proves it to be very difficult. Perhaps I need to try a different approach and reach out to a recruiter.

I had a pair programming session with my friend, we built a full-stack application using React as the front-end and Firebase as the backend. I learned a lot in the past few days and also learned what I need to work on.

I'm glad to be able to have the experience and mentorship my friend has given me and it has deepened my understanding of how a full stack application is built from the ground up.

My next steps

• Dedicate more time in studying algorithms and data structures
• Learn React Hooks and build multiple projects using Hooks
• Apply for jobs and hope for the best! 🤞