How I Study Consistently With A Full-Time Job

The author describes how he moved from late nights and video games to waking up early, studying, and writing before a 9–5 job. He frames this change through a game analogy, where the main goal is broken into smaller milestones, progress is tracked, and daily routines are arranged to make study easier.

Reading notes

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• He uses video games as a model for consistency because the main quest, side quests, rewards, and skill unlocks make progress feel engaging.
• His goal was to become a cloud engineer, and he treated learning programming, APIs, and databases as subgoals on the way there.
• Living with five strangers kept him frustrated enough to think about earning more money and studying so he could move out.
• Moving to a new town left him alone more often, which reduced distraction and made boredom help him focus on his plans.
• He changed his routine from playing late into the night to going to bed early so he could study and go to the gym before work.
• He says working full time makes studying hard because people come home tired and get distracted by apps and comfort.
• He used a time-blocking app to plan his morning, including wake-up time, shower, brushing teeth, and a 45–60 minute study block.
• He also started using James Clear’s Atomic Habits app to work toward writing online.
• He tracked his progress in Notion and recorded each new skill learned toward becoming a cloud engineer.
• He compared what he learned with job descriptions to check whether he had covered the needed and desirable requirements.
• He says gamification, goal tracking, progress measurement, and time blocking made it easier to keep learning while working full time.