When you're studying something intensely, and working on something for a long time it is easy to begin to feel burnt out or start to lose your passion. Maybe you might even become a bit lost, and ask yourself "Why am I doing this?" or "What is the purpose of what I'm doing with my life?".

Coding to me is an interesting field, but can become easily filled with moments of boredom. Programming, or learning to write code in JavaScript or Python may not be the most exciting job in the world especially if you're only trying to add a small piece of functionality to a larger project, however sometimes it can be rewarding, when you can come up with a solution to a JavaScript feature for a website, or finally understand what closures are!

So how does minimalism help me with coding?

Well, I think that often times like computers if there's too much junk files scattered in a large repository, we will begin to get lost. However, once you refactor any duplicate code, pair down folders to a few you will begin to get a sense of clarity and enlightenment from understanding what you have and what you can do with them.

When I took the journey towards minimalism in 2014, I hadn't started to intensely program yet. It wasn't until I decided in summer of 2015 to stop pursuing my doctorate and focus on web development did I truly find how reducing my clutter mentally and physically was in fact the reason why I am able to focus more on the things that truly mattered.

During my doctoral program I would read hundreds of publications from book chapters to journal articles. I would have piles of these printed out, marked and highlighted. But I was scattered and didn't understand necessarily what I was aiming for, what my goal was in the mountain of paper before me. But through minimalism, I was able to start re-evaluating the meaning of my actions.

Understanding why you do something is just as important as how you do it. For me, when I think about programming from the lens of a minimalist, I see that when I code I must understand how that function or framework is practical to the development of my site or app. Refactoring and making sure my code is DRY is all related to the minimalist mindset. After all, when data scientists and journalist find patterns in repetition, and summarize them down into a meaningful chart or article, we as humans benefit from the condensed down albeit informative piece of data.

So, I just wanted to remind those who are focusing on programming, and also happen to love the concept and lifestyle of minimalism, there is very much a common convergence between these two. I believe that by making sure that my life is sorted and has a proper place, it really has helped me to find more solace when I code. And while you're developing ideas and projects to build your skills up, having a cause that you believe in really helps make coding much more interesting. Algorithms and code challenges are good for understanding how to find ways to more efficient functions, but using your knowledge for meaningful and purposeful projects will really make programming an exciting and long-lasting career path.

Minimalize and keep on coding!