Coding, Caring, and Career Change after 40: How to Stay Sane
If the title caught your attention, you and I might be walking a similar path. Maybe you’ve embarked on a career change in midlife, maybe you’ve recently become a parent, or maybe you’re just trying to juggle more things than feels humanly possible. If any of that sounds familiar, then you and I have something in common.
Specifically, I’m studying to become a software engineer (yay Launch School!), coming from a background that couldn’t be any more “nontraditional” for that role. It’s a lot of work to reskill and learn all these new things while keeping up with everything else.
So why go through all this? Why change horses midstream? Wouldn’t it be easier not to? I’d like to briefly give you my “why”. Maybe you can relate.
About six and a half years ago, my wife and I moved to a new city and started a small housecleaning business. It was a solid decision — it’s allowed us to move from a place of financial struggle to relative stability, buy our first home, and start saving. Moreover it’s meant that we’ve developed a lot of skills that we didn’t have before.
I tell you that only so I can go on to tell you that I kind of hate it. Not the cleaning part. I actually do like that. But being an employer that relies on entry-level workers post-COVID is … challenging, to say the least.
As a result, for a few years I had been privately fantasizing about selling or dissolving the business and exploring new territory. After all, I’ve been in the cleaning industry for some 20 years and, trust me, I’ve mastered it. It took over a decade, actually close to 15 years because I started out with no intention of doing so. I have been bored with cleaning and absolutely sick to death of dealing with trying to employ people who just don’t care.
It was actually my then-2-months-pregnant wife (we’ll come back to that in a moment) who turned me onto the idea of a career in software. It’s something I’ve always been interested in — actually, when I was a kid I dreamed of developing games and entertainment software but I never believed I could. That is, until I started actually exploring the possibility.
I began my exploration about a year ago. Thanks to free online resources and an introductory programming course, I started to see it as a realistic path. I found out about freecodecamp.org and started working through their full-stack curriculum. It’s amazing for someone who, like I did, just wants to find out if they can even understand this stuff, let alone find it interesting. After maybe a month of that, I heard about a cheap Intro to Programming course offered by Arizona State University ( asuonline.asu.edu ) and Study Hall ( gostudyhall.com ). This was a semester long course taught in Java for the price of $25. Yeah. Twenty-five bucks. No-brainer.
After all that, I knew I was on the right track and that this was something worth pursuing. So I started looking at next steps. Another college degree? A bootcamp? How could I maintain forward momentum while keeping my business going and staring down the barrel of fatherhood?
I didn’t have the option of a full-time bootcamp (someone has to pay the mortgage!), that was certain — and the prices for the bootcamps I saw were … off-putting. The self-paced options I had seen looked pretty lackluster. And I didn’t like the idea of spending up to 4 years part-time working on an expensive degree that I wasn’t sure I even needed. Then I stumbled upon Launch School. Self-paced? Check! An affordable pay-as-you-go format? Sounded like a good fit! Curriculum focused on mastery rather than just churning out barely passable coders? Mind blown. After some deliberation, I started the free Python prep courses.
Finishing the Python prep courses in mid July, I knew my son’s birth was imminent. Like within-the-next-week imminent. I hesitated, but I knew I needed to keep moving forward. Come hell or high water, I would keep making progress. Despite the timing, I subscribed to Launch School on July 20th.
Two days later, at 4 a.m., my wife told me her water had broken, and by 9:30 that morning, we were holding our son in our arms. Awesome in the truest and most literal sense of the word.
Ok. Now what? I’m a 41-year-old new dad who has bills to pay, an old house and a garden that require a lot of upkeep, and I still have wild ideas about having some time to relax, goof off, and maybe learn new things for no practical reason at all (I’m learning to play guitar just because I’ve always liked the idea and I happened to inherit an old guitar that my grandfather made).
How can someone entering middle age make continual progress learning new skills, keep up current financial and business obligations, be a good parent and spouse, and not let one’s property fall into ruin, all without descending into a personal hell-realm of chaos, sleeplessness, and misery?!?!?
Okay, wait — take a breath. Slowly in. Slowly out. Just breathe. Really though— just close your eyes and don’t do anything but feel the breath coming in and going out for a moment.
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Perfect.
Now here are the things that have helped me stay sane and make slow but steady progress. Hmm … I guess I kind of buried the lead. Figures.
We already grazed the first two, and these are probably not news to you anyway. If that’s the case, just allow me to reiterate their importance. These are the foundation underlying everything else:
- Sleep — You can get away with a lot when you’re young, but by the time you hit 40, you know you must prioritize good sleep. If you’ve been a new parent, you also know how hard it can be to get the sleep you need with a baby who eats and poops 24/7. I’ve honestly had it fairly easy on this front, as the new division of labor between me and my wife means she is typically on night duty since I have to work during the day. I get up around 5 or 6 in the morning to study (I’m mentally at my best in the morning), so I have to be disciplined about not staying up late. I absolutely notice the difference when I mess this up. I can easily accomplish 2 or 3 times as much during a study session when I am well rested versus when I am not. We won’t even get into the major health implications here, because they are many.
- Mindfulness — Did you follow along when we hit pause and just took that breath earlier? If you did, you may have noticed a feeling of calm and perhaps more clarity. To be honest, I don’t actually sit in meditation nearly as often as I mean to, but I take a lot of these brief moments throughout the day to just come back to the moment and check in with reality as it is. Not planning or worrying, not reviewing or ruminating. Just here. Right now. Noticing the sensation of the air entering and exiting my nostrils. Listening to the sounds on the breeze. Seeing the leaves rustling before the sky. It makes all the difference when I start feeling depressed or overwhelmed. There is something kind of magical about it. Sometimes just 2 or 3 mindful breaths honestly turns my entire day around. Getting out of my head, out of planning and worrying — it’s like a metaphorical breath of fresh air as well as a literal one.
These next few are things I learned to do years ago when I was focused solely on building my business. They helped me a lot then and they continue to help me now. These are the habits that help me stay on track with the Launch School curriculum:
- Schedule, Schedule, Schedule — There is a time for planning and reviewing (and maybe worrying a bit). With all the chaos of life, how else could we stay organized and stay focused on our goals? I highly recommend a weekly scheduling habit. For approximately half an hour every Sunday, I sit with my Google Calendar open, review emails and upcoming course content, and actually schedule out my week. Here’s the thing — I almost never follow the schedule completely. Sometimes I have guitar practice scheduled but the baby is sleeping. Maybe I have studying scheduled, but there’s an emergency at work. Or sometimes, I just oversleep and miss part of my morning study time. But having the weekly schedule, with time blocked out for everything (everything I think of in advance anyway) makes it so much easier to actually follow through and keep myself accountable. And those times when my schedule gets messed up, I can usually rearrange the time blocks and get back on track, more or less. I leave plenty of open space in the schedule since, for example, I can’t schedule diaper changes or other random interruptions. Scheduling too tightly leads to frustration and burnout, so keep it a little loose. I cannot impress on you enough how important this habit is to my ability to keep all the different balls in the air.
- Engage! — No, not the warp drive … Engage with the community. When I was starting my business, one of the most important things I did was join a business networking group with regular meetings. I made some new friends, established some good habits, and got a LOT of new clients. This was one of the best moves I ever made. At Launch School, the equivalent is participating in study groups, programs like Core Live, and talking to your peers on Slack and Gather. Also, don’t be afraid to volunteer for projects or to help others learn if such opportunities arise. Through community engagement, I made a few new friends, got help studying for the assessments, found a small group of other students that helps keep me accountable, and I was even asked to contribute to Launch School’s new LSBot Guide — valuable practice writing documentation with a team. I also plan to lead SPOT sessions to help others while helping myself review lessons I’ve already completed.
- Set SMART Goals — This could be an article all by itself, and indeed many articles and even books have been authored on the subject. SMART is an acronym meaning Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Let’s briefly break this down. Specific means that the goal is concrete, such as completing a certain task or spending a certain amount of time, and not something amorphous like “spend more time studying”. Measurable is, to my mind, a bit redundant, but necessary for the acronym to work (”SART Goals” just doesn’t have the same ring to it) — for example, if the goal is to study 15 hours this week, that is both specific and measurable, as is finishing a given lesson, or passing a given assessment. Achievable means, of course, that the goal is within your power to achieve — it is realistic for you to accomplish within the time frame you have set. Relevant means that you make sure the goal makes sense given your longer-term goals, that the goal helps you along the path rather than distracting you from it and that the outcome will matter. Time-bound simply means that you are defining the timeframe within which you intend to reach the goal — I find that the week is the ideal measure of time for me, though it is also useful to have daily goals and longer-term goals (monthly, quarterly, etc.). Try to keep your goals for any given time period to 3 or less — boil it down to 1, if you can. More goals may diffuse your energy and attention, which can be both distracting and demotivating. Shorter-term goals should feed your longer-term goals. I.e. if the monthly goal is to finish a course in the LS curriculum, appropriate daily and weekly goals would involve finishing lessons in that course, attending study sessions on the material, etc.
This last set are about keeping in harmony with the other parts of your life — keeping all those balls in the air and hopefully preventing burnout.
- Prioritize Family Time: It might seem counterintuitive, but intentionally setting aside family time makes it easier to focus when I’m studying. I know I’ll have those moments with my wife and son without feeling guilty or distracted, and they keep me grounded and motivated to reach my goals. While sometimes it can feel inconvenient to have my limited study time interrupted to change a diaper or entertain my son while my wife takes care of something else, I know these are moments of my life that I will never get back. After all, what is the point of a career change if I allow it to overshadow the importance of time with the people I love? To me, this is one of the most fundamental parts of life. I rarely schedule family time since it can be unpredictable, but sometimes we do have it scheduled, such as when I am tasked with being the primary care giver while my wife goes to an appointment or to buy food. I also have time blocked out for a proper dinner time with my family (almost) every day.
- Set Boundaries for Screen Time: I realize that my son is growing up in a world where screens are everywhere. I try to be mindful of how often I’m on my computer or phone around him, both to set a good example and to stay present. Already, I’ve caught him watching me while I check messages or read something on my phone. I see his eyes moving back and forth between me and that little rectangle. This means that I try not to mix study time and family time. I really don’t like for him to see me glued to any screen for any reason at the age he is now. Soon enough he’ll be introduced to them both by school and for entertainment, but I’d like to avoid his becoming engrossed with them at least for a couple of years. And this way I have some natural boundaries that prevent me from getting too out of balance regarding my own screen time.
- Embrace Flexibility and Self-Compassion: This may be the most important piece, if you’re like me. Usually, I’m up before dawn to study so I can be sure that I’ll get some time to do that before the rest of life takes over. I’m typically busy up to dinner and then for an hour or so afterward, well after dark at this time of year. Even so, it’s almost a certainty that I won’t get everything done that I want/need to on any given day. It’s easy for me to actually feel lazy and even like the day has been a failure somehow despite working from before dawn to after dusk. This is place where I often have to check myself and acknowledge that sometimes my expectations are unrealistic. While it’s important to make regular and continual progress, every day doesn’t have to be perfectly productive; it’s okay to adjust expectations based on what life throws at you. Don’t beat yourself up if you’re unable to study for as long as you feel you should each day. To sanitize a popular and accurate phrase — stuff happens. Allowing myself a little grace and the flexibility to adapt keeps burnout at bay and makes the journey more sustainable.
Odds are, this is not the first time you’ve come across most of these tips. After all, I didn’t invent anything here. That said, maybe like me, you recognize some areas where you can do better. Or maybe there are one or two things you hadn’t considered before. If so, see if you can work those in and change your routine for the better. Don’t try to do too much at once. One small change can lead to the next. Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint.
Did any of these tips jump out at you as something that you can do to make more progress in your studies without losing it? Can you pick one thing to commit to this week to see how it helps you? Let me know in the comments.
