Building projects takes time

So you’ve decided on your idea, you know what tools you’re going to use, you’ve picked your layout, colors, and functionality. Now you’re ready to build your entire app by the end of tomorrow.

Only… it doesn’t go quite as planned. You realize that you actually have no idea how to incorporate your apps desired functionality. You’re having a hard time styling your app, and there’s a few things that you forgot about in the planning phase.

So what do you do?

This is the dilemma that I faced recently when I wanted to build a project with React js. I understood the basic concepts but didn’t quite know how to implement certain functionalities. Instead of quitting the project in hopes to return to it in the future when I had a better understanding of the concepts, I decided to struggle through it.

I asked myself, “What’s the most basic way to implement the functionality that I’m looking for? To answer that question I did a quick Google search and found my way to a YouTube video.

Did I get it right away?

Guess what? I still didn’t understand so I watched another YouTube video, and another. After watching 4 videos and trying things out for myself, I finally figured it out. I applied the concepts from those videos and created the most basic version of the functionality that I was trying to implement.

Then after that, I revisited what I had previously created and made it better until it was exactly what I wanted. I repeated this process until I had a completed app.

All of this was over the course of about 2.5 weeks. This didn’t happen overnight. I didn’t wake up and decide to build a Discord or FlappyBird clone like some of those YouTube tutorials would have you believe. It took planning, lots of time, failure, struggle, and lots of redoing.

So how can this help you?

Well if you’re still new to development like me, don’t be so hard on yourself. You can’t plan for everything and the best way to learn is to struggle through building something.

Give yourself permission to not make the best product the first time around. If you’re just starting the building process of an app you’ll probably change things around a lot. Don’t worry about making things perfect, just worry about understanding what you’re trying to build and learn how to make it better.

Give yourself enough time.

Don’t try to give yourself some arbitrary time limit to have your project completed by. It’s good to have a timeline for completion but that shouldn’t come at the expense of your mental sanity or your ability to learn.

Be kind to yourself and keep building!