My Launch School RB101 journey: Things will take longer than I think, and that’s OK

I’m currently going through the Ruby track of Launch School, an online training program for software engineers, and I’m just about to complete the first course, RB101.

Since Launch School is a self-paced program which focuses on mastery-based learning, it’s pretty much impossible to know how long moving through the curriculum will take a given person. Everyone’s learning pace, life circumstances, etc. are different, and there just isn’t any way for us to have a specific timeline. This is repeatedly communicated to Launch School students, and I did my best to take that to heart.

I’m also aware of a psychological phenomenon known as the planning fallacy, which states that things will take longer than we think. That same idea is referenced in Hofstadter’s law, which says that things always take longer than we think — even when we take into account Hofstadter’s law. (A nice little bit of self-reference in there for a budding programmer such as myself to enjoy.)

Despite consciously reminding myself of the fact that I can’t count on a specific timeline in this case, and telling myself that things will always take longer than I think, I somehow latched onto the idea that I’d complete the first course in about a month. That became my default goal without any kind of intentional decision, a line in the sand drawn by my subconscious.

I didn’t make it through the whole course in one month. I didn’t even make it through in two months. There were a couple of points where I just got hung up and stuck implementing something, even though I often didn’t even feel that what I was stuck was that hard (or “should” be that hard) at the time.

I’d being lying if I didn’t admit to some disappointment and frustration that things have taken so much longer than the deadline my brain randomly pulled out of thin air, but what’s important to remind myself of again…and again…and again, is that this is a part of life. There will almost certainly be another point if not many in my Launch School journey when I miss a self-assigned deadline. There will absolutely be many more occasions in my life where this happens.

And you know what? That’s OK. It’s OK to be a human and have things take longer than I expect. The important thing is continuing to move forward and make progress.

Perhaps the best thing about this lesson is that it’s applicable outside Launch School as well. This is something I can remind myself of throughout my life. I knew it before RB101, and I’ll come back to it again. But it’s nice to have such a concrete reminder.

Things will almost always take longer than I think; it’s a part of the human condition. But as long as we move forward — even if it’s slowly — they will be done sooner or later.