I’m Addicted To Programming… What Should I Do?

Written By John Sonmez

People often say that they wanna learn programming but they are afraid of taking it one step further. Learning takes time and effort, and you won't go anywhere if you're not committed to it.

When you're committed to something, it can only render you good fruits and good results, after all, you're going to get what you want.

However… What if you consider yourself addicted to programming? What if you NEEDED to do other things but you couldn't because you are committed only to programming? Are you wrong if that's your objective?

Watch this video and find out![responsive_video type='youtube' hide_related='0′ hide_logo='0′ hide_controls='0′ hide_title='0′ hide_fullscreen='0′ autoplay='0′]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZEu1EU14zs[/responsive_video]

Transcript Of The Video

John Sonmez: Hey, what's up? John Sonmez here from simpleprogrammer.com. Tired of pushy recruiters sending you LinkedIn requests for jobs you have no interest in? Tired of blasting out resumes into the dark? If so, you should check out Hired.com. Hired.com flips job searching on its head by having top employers like Facebook come to you after you fill out one simple application. You also get your own job coach to help you on your next job search. If you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend you at least fill out the application. Just go to Hired.com/simpleprogrammer. When you get hired with Hired, you'll get double the normal sign-on bonus for using that link.

I got a question—a good question, I think, here. I'm addicted to programming. What should I do? I thought this was going to be something else when I first read this. I thought it was going to be, “I'm addicted to, you know,” but it's programming, so this is good. We're safe. It's okay. We're in the safe space. Nikan says here—he says, “Hi, John. I'm Nikan. I'm 18 years old. I'm an Android and Java developer. I love Java very, very much,” and there is a happy smiley face. “Currently, I'm last year in high school and my exams are near and I know I have to study, but I have a big problem. When I have time to spend, I spend it on programming instead of studying. I think my problem is prioritizing my tasks. I'm addicted to my passion and prioritize that over anything. Please help me to do what is more important for now. Thanks.” He says, “Sorry for my grammar. I read a book some time ago and learned about quick reward which our body wants. The good feeling we get when we code is the reward and the long reward is the goal. I thought the book chapter was about bad addiction and I don’t want to completely destroy my passion LOL.”

I don't think you got a problem here. Well, okay. You've got a mild problem here. You need to pass your school—your study, Nikan, right? You need to get your degree or your diploma. You're in high school. Don't fail out of your courses, but at the same time I'm going to give you advice that most people aren't going to give you and your parents aren't going to like, which is your grades don't really matter. Don’t waste a lot of time—like this is what matters, your passion, your programming. This is what's going to get you paid. This is what's going to be beneficial to you in life, not what you got on your biology test, so get by, right? There's a lot of stuff in life that you just got to get by and there's a lot of stuff in life that you put it all in.

Now, don't get me wrong. I've done videos on doing nine or above, and I do think you should give the things you're going to give effort to a nine or above, but those are the things that you choose to do. Some things you're kind of compelled to do. You got to finish your high school and you got to get enough good grades to graduate. I think you've got to do that. Don't waste time and effort doing more than you need to do in that area. Just get that down so you can do more programming. I think that's going to be much more valuable to you.

There's actually a really good book that I'm going to recommend to you by Grant Cardone. I did a review on it. It's called Be Obsessed or Be Average. This is going to be some encouragement for you because I think you're on the right path because a lot of people are going to say you're crazy. A lot of people say I'm crazy. A lot of people say, “Hey, you're too addicted to this. You're too obsessed about this thing like stop being so obsessed with programming. Find some balance in your life. Stop working out so much. Stop recording so many damn videos,” and you should give them the middle finger.

Not really, but you should basically ignore them because they don't know what it takes. I mean what you have is rare and what is required for success is what you have. Right? You've got to be able to put in those hours. You got to be able to put in that time. You got to be obsessed about something to really, really be successful at it. The most successful people are the most obsessed people and they don't let people tell them that their life is out of balance. Life is not balanced. Life has seasons. Someday you're going to be obsessed about one thing and then another thing. You still have to have the ability to follow through and have the commitment and continuity to actually accomplish things.

I'll warn you this as well. Right now, you're super passionate about programming. That's not going to be the case forever, but take this passion and what you feel now and advance it as far as you can and just recognize that there's going to be hard days ahead where you're not going to feel like programming anymore and you're going to feel like, “Oh, I don’t like it anymore and it's not for me,” but you got to push through that, okay? That's one thing that I know that you will face because everything that you love, you also will hate. This is the way of life, right? It's so true. It's true in passions. It's true in relationships. It's true in just about everything in life, especially when someone pays you for it. I'll tell you too. You love programming now. Wait until you get a job and you have to do it and then see how much you love it.

Now, it doesn’t mean that you're going to hate it and always hate it. It just means that you're going to go through these hot and cool phases where you're going to love it, you're going to hate it. You're going to have this love/hate relationship with most of the passions in your life, so get used to that, but yeah. You know, don't be an idiot though. Don't think short term and just do programming when you're supposed to be doing some studying because you got to finish this up and get through your high school, and get your diploma or whatever and don't funk out. Don't get all like Ds and just barely pass. Get a decent grade, right? Just do the 80/20 here. Apply Pareto's law. Okay. What is the 20% of effort that I can do in my courses to get 80% of the grade that I need? Maybe that's an 80%. I don’t know and then devote as much as you can to do the programming because that's what's going to carry your further in life.

Education is antiquated. The idea of being a generalist used to be valuable, but it's not anymore. Being a specialist. Being a programmer. Focusing on that. That's way better than learning history and biology. It's not going to help you. Not going to help you in life but becoming a better programmer, if this is what your passion, if this is what you're going to pursue, that's also going to help you.

I'll point you to one other book about your passion just because you've used that word a lot and I don’t want you to get caught. I want you to think beyond passion. Passion is great to get you started, but it's not necessarily the guide post that you should be using in life, which is a book by Cal Newport called So Good They Can't Ignore You. A really good book. I don’t think I did a review on it because I think I read this book before I started doing reviews, but maybe I'll re-read and do a review. You should definitely check out that book.

All right. Keep programming. I'm glad that you're so damn passionate about it. That's awesome. It's great, you know, but don't totally neglect your schoolwork. That won't be good if you have to repeat your high school year. You don't get your diploma and you know a lot of programming. It will hurt you in life. You got to get that. You don't necessarily have go to college. All right. If you like this video, click that Subscribe button below and click the bell to make sure you don't miss any videos. I'll talk to you next time. Take care.