Over the last few years that I’ve been coding, I find myself becoming extremely anxious at the thought of starting new projects. Whether it be a class assignment or a side project I have thought up on my own, the simple task of just getting started fills me with an overwhelming feeling of dread. Which, until recently, led me into an endless cycle of procrastination and more anxiety. I would spend days procrastinating working on class assignments by keeping myself busy with other meaningless tasks (like cleaning out the pantry or reorganizing the bookshelf) just to finally get started with my project and realize that I may not have allowed myself enough time to finish it. As the deadline would approach and more bugs would appear in my code, I would become more and more stressed and overrun by anxiety that I may not get it finished in time. This vicious cycle has brought with it many long nights, coding until the early morning hours and even more uneasiness at the start of the next project. That is, until I realized that all I needed to do was rip off the bandaid.
Last term I finally took Operating Systems after many terms of procrastinating it. I have heard so many horror stories about the class that I was so nervous for that first assignment. But to my own surprise, I jumped right into it, giving myself the full two weeks to work on it. It was the most stress free assignment I’d ever worked on and I felt so accomplished turning it in. That’s when I broke the cycle. I realized that all the time I had previously spent procrastinating projects to avoid the anxiety brought on by its difficulty, only fueled it. Hindsight is always 20/20. So I spent the rest of the term starting the assignments as soon as they became available. Some days I didn’t make any progress on them, but I gave it my best effort, and came back the next day to try again. I still struggled with assignments. I still had to fight last minute bugs. But I had more time and patience that I hadn’t had in the past.
It’s this same mentality, that I’m trying to bring with me into this term. This project has been weighing on me since last term. Knowing that it was such a big and important project brought back a lot of those same unproductive feelings. But I’m thankful that I have a group that is eager to get started and has worked to make a bit of progress everyday. I find myself thinking about the project in my spare time and grabbing my computer even if it’s just to do some research. I am doing everything I can to keep my motivation up and avoid the cycle that I have found myself in time and time again.
