This is the question I asked myself when I first started learning (well relearning really) to code a while back. Obviously I Googled this and found some really interesting answers, but generally speaking, the common wisdom is about 4 hours a day.

I call bullshit on this. In my experience (and your mileage may vary) you should code every day, but it really doesn’t matter how much. Sure, you’ll get to the destination faster if you’re able to put 4 hours a day, but that number is completely unrealistic for a good chunk of the population.

Personally, I have a full-time job, 2 young kids, and a wife. 4 hours a day is an absurd amount of free time for me each day to work on much of anything. So when I study something I work to a very simple philosophy. Do some study every day. That’s it. Change is all about momentum. You don’t have to stop sleeping to make a change, you just have to show up every day and do something.

Routine is key

My personal routine is to get out of bed early, normally around 5-5:30am. Then I do as much of my course work before the kids get up as possible. Normally I’d get around an hour or so done. Some days I might sleep in and only get 30 mins, but I still progress. To solidify my learning, in the evening I go over what I did in the morning and write up notes. Sometimes those notes turn into a blog post. In that way, I’m sort of doing double duty. Sharing what I’ve learnt and documented it for my own retention all in one.

The thing about learning anything over and above your already busy life is that you have to make it accessible or it won’t work. Lowering the barrier to just do something each day means I might only research something I learnt the day before or add some comments to code I wrote a week ago. It really doesn’t matter what it is, as long as I get started each day.

So if you’re wanting to study but don’t think you have the time? Explore study options that let you learn in small chunks and to your own deadlines. I’ve found both Udacity and Udemy great services for this sort of thing. You won’t get a formal qualification from these services, but if you’re just interested in the skills then does that really matter?