What Is Productivity Anxiety and How to Beat It, with Matt and Eric from Self-Taught Devs Podcast

🎙 About the episode

Meet Matt Ehrlich and Eric Winkelspecht 🇬🇧! They are the hosts of the Self-Taught Devs podcast. And, you guessed it, they are self-taught devs and career changers to boot. Matt was a park ranger, and Eric worked at an IT solutions company but didn't code. Today, they are a front-end developer and a full-stack developer, respectively, who met through LinkedIn and then decided to host a podcast!

In this episode, you will learn about their coding journeys, the resources they used, and why they decided to be self-taught. They talk about motivation and keeping yourself going, how to create structure, and what to do if you feel guilty when you take a break. If you're curious about what makes a successful self-taught dev, this episode is for you!

🔗 Connect with Matt and Eric

• 👨‍💼 Matt's LinkedIn, Eric's LinkedIn
• 📻 Podcast
• ✏️ Matt's blog
• 📹 Matt's YouTube, Eric's YouTube
• 👨‍🚀 Matt's GitHub, Eric's GitHub

🔗 Timestamps

• How Matt Ehrlich took up coding after being a park ranger for years (01:09)
• A coding career gives you the opportunity for unlimited growth (02:44)
• The Self-Taught Devs podcast tries to fill a gap in information (03:39)
• Eric just landed his first full-time software development role! (06:19)
• How Eric decided to learn to code (08:06)
• How does it feel to change careers after more than a decade (08:43)
• Eric's learning resources (10:10)
• Community break with Jan the Producer (10:58)
• Why Matt took the self-taught route (13:39)
• Matt's learning resources (14:54)
• Quitting your job to learn to code: pros and cons (16:11)
• How long did Matt take to learn to code (17:45)
• Can you learn discipline, and how can you stay motivated (19:12)
• What can you do if you get stuck (27:26)
• Should you be taking breaks from your job search? (29:55)
• Listen to this if you get discouraged after getting a rejection letter (30:54)
• What is productivity anxiety (33:03)
• How did Matt and Eric meet and what makes them work as podcast co-hosts (36:15)

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