How to Create an Efficient Study Plan for Any Development Stack?

Saturday afternoon, you just got out of the shower and sat comfortably at your desk to start your tech study session of the day.

While you turn on the your computer, and enjoying the freshness and cleanliness on your skin from the recent bath.

You open your favorite online course website, see several courses in progress and another long list of courses to start.

The peace of minutes ago goes away as quick as a lamen to be ready to eat, and you freak out.

At this moment you realize that you don't lack motivation to study, but you lack the correct direction.

Today I'm here to help you to adjust your study plan, looking forward to achieve more satisfactory results in the medium and long term.

Let's start with the 1 million dollars question:

Which Development Stack Do I Want to Work?

There are several stacks in the technology area, such as:

• Mobile;

• Front End;

• Backend;

• Data analysis;

• Among others.

And inside of each stack you will find a lot of information that you need to master in order to build quality softwares, and consequently become a skillful professional.

“But Laura, how will I know which stack I identify with, so I can focus my studies on this stack?”

Calm down young padawan, we're getting to that point.

After a series of trials and errors, I realized that there are some questions that a person can ask themselves so that they can identify which development stack you have more familiarity.

1. What are my main personality skills? For example: I consider myself a super organized person, I like to play with colors and arrangement of elements to have pleasant visual elements, etc;

2. What does technology mean to you? For example: I believe that the function of technology is to make people's lives easier, and break down geographical barriers by bringing information to the 4 corners of the world;

3. What gives you more satisfaction: after cleaning your room get the feeling of satisfaction by seeing it clean, organized and viasually pleasant, or just net the pleasant by knowing that everything on your room were placed at strategic places, in order to make your daylife easier?

4. What do you consider more important: building something functional or something functional and visually pleasing?

If you answered “clean, organized and viasually pleasant”, you may probably identify with stacks such as: Mobile, Front End and Data Analysis (Dashboards creation).

If you answered “everything on your room were placed at strategic places”, you may probably identify with stacks such as: BackEnd, Embedded, Networks or some area that does not require graphics.

After identifying the development stack, search for study guides focused on the chosen stack.

Identify the skills need to master to become a skilled professional in that stack.

Here are some examples of study guides you can follow:

• Mobile;

• FrontEnd;

• BackEnd;

• Other Roadmaps.

After choosing the stack, create a study schedule. Set aside up to one topic to study per day.

Keep in mind that you need consistency in your studies to achieve better results.

I recommend that you set aside a block of 1 hour for your development studies per day.

This way the content will be fixed by a constant pace speed.

But there is no point in being consistent without organization, and this is the key to an efficient study plan. To organize your study routine you can:

• Create a study schedule with macro areas to study on each day of the week. For example: Monday: study programming logic and algorithms; Tuesday: study good programming practices;

• For each macro topic, choose a mini topic to study on each day of the week. For example: Monday: for programming logic study repetition structures, for algorithms study the bubble sort algorithm;

• Practice! Anything goes here: list of exercises, internet challenges, personal projects, etc.;

• Review frequently (a tip is to review your notes at the end of the day).

Consistency must also be implemented when following the created study plan.

Because without organization and consistency, your progress will probably be slower or it will be hard to understand your progress.

Remember: organization and consistency must walk side by side for you to be able to evolve as a professional and net better results.

Laura Oliveira

Mobile Developer and Content Creator

Fascinated by technology since she was a teenager, she loves solving problems and learning new things.

I currently work bringing ideas to life for Android apps.

I have +2 million people impacted through the production of digital content.

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