Learning in the sun - HTML and the Pomodoro technique

It has been yet another delightful day here in the UK and for once I managed to time a day off just about right. The wife has taken the kids off to see her mum and grandmother so I'm at home looking after the dog. It has been a perfect opportunity to get the laundry done and get some studying out the way.

I decided I wanted to learn some coding and had started studying web development through Codecademy. I'd tried a few free resources but the Codecademy style and structure really worked for me and I found it all rather enjoyable. Unfortunately things have been a little tight and the monthly subscription fee was better spent elsewhere. Things have been a little easier in recent months so I've managed to get started again.

Due to the break I decided to start again from the very beginning; I've found this has been a great help and have managed to retain a little more detail than the first time around. Over the course of the past two weeks I've taken a good few pages of note so decided to spend today typing those up whilst sat in the garden; again another opportunity to drill in a number of concepts and a bit more detail.

Why web development? After many years of working in the field of IT infrastructure my career took me down the software route nearly 4 years ago. HTML is fairly straight forward and I was advised a good starting point for creating code. It's certainly great that you can see the results pretty much instantly.

I'm not great at many things but am an absolute expert at procrastination and diverting my attention to anything other than the item I should be concentrating on. To keep me focused I decided to use the Pomodoro technique to keep me concentrating on what I'm doing.

What have tomatoes got to do with concentration? Well you've seen those little kitchen timers which are styled like a little tomato right?

The Pomodoro Technique entails four simple steps:

1. Choose a single task or subject to focus on.
2. Spend 25 minutes (how however long you fancy) working on that technique and avoiding any distractions. Don't answer the phone, check emails or social media.
3. Take a short break - usually 5 minutes.
4. Repeat 4 times and then take a longer break.

You can set yourself a number of focus sessions (rounds) you wish to complete in a day; the total number of desired focus sessions is your goal. I used this technique heavily whilst studying for my bachelors and it really helped keep me on the straight a narrow.