July 31st, 2021
4 minute read
Unlike many people, I wasn't motivated purely by money, my fuel and passion derived from something much more liberating than $$. Freedom. The ability to work anywhere and anytime was my primary motivator. I relished in the thought of typing away on my laptop at some distant beach with just the ocean and birds as company.
Now this must sound absurd but hear me out, there are people actually living like this, they call themselves Digital Nomads. And so, with hours of research on my back, I set off on this journey.
I knew I needed a plan, so I made one. After many more hours digging around online, I started to construct a pretty decent plan as to how I was going to do this. Meanwhile, I was in the middle of writing my dissertation for my bachelor's degree in Radiotherapy & Oncology. Priorities...
I decided to park this whole coding thing and focus on finishing my degree, and so thats what I did. I landed a Job in Cheltenham, England which is where I moved to a month later. This was perfect as I had the mental and physical space to chase this goal undistracted.
But to do this, I had to develop a huge amount of self-belief and confidence, I don't have a computer science degree , am I crazy? Maybe.
I took a few online courses on HTML, CSS and JavaScript and began chipping away at the massive rock ahead of me. Soon I started building my own little projects such as a simple quiz web app that you can find on my portfolio site (don't judge my design skills). The scale and complexity of my projects increased as time went on. I then created my own roadmap for the next 6 months using Notion. Admittedly It took some time getting used to living alone so I took a break for a couple weeks.
My job had me working a different shift everyday , some days I start as early as 7am or as late as 12pm, always 8hr days though. So I knew I needed to adapt my coding hours around these times. on days I started at 8am or 9am, I would get up at 5/6am to fit some coding in as well as a workout. This was probably the single most important factor that helped me land the job. Waking up early is hugely underrated, the power of the early hours was game-changing for me. My second blog post will be about this topic so look out for that!
I also made sure to cut out all distractions, this meant locking my phone. If you have a OnePlus phone, theres a fantastic feature called Zen Mode that allows you to do this. If not, leave your phone in another room and apply the Pomodoro technique to aid focus.
I started applying before I thought I was ready because really and truly , you'll never "feel ready". You really gotta have the audacity and/or confidence to apply to these jobs. And so, thats exactly what I did. I wrote a cover letter for every application, only changing the first paragraph for each. I applied to maybe 100 jobs before I had any call backs. I also knew that my chances of landing a Job in London were slim but possible, so I widened my range to increase my options. After many many rejections, I finally got an email back.
I'll tell you right now I absolutely bombed the technical part of the interview and I was gutted. But strangely, the interviewer still seemed keen on me. I was asked to talk through one of my projects which I did, with pride. Then we started speaking about the potential projects I would work on and I just started spitballing some ideas and technologies we could use. To my surprise, the interview I was dreading for a week turned into an informal and friendly..... chat. Apparently, this isn't unheard of for smaller companies.
After a couple of days, my phone rang and I was told I got the job and the rest as they say, is history...
I was incredibly passionate
I had unwavering consistency
I had the audacity
Thank you for reading my post! I hope to make more blog posts soon. I'm aiming to post once a week.