How to Have the Right Mindset When Learning iOS Development

Do you want to become an iOS developer? Before you start learning about the fundamentals, key concepts, and skills you’ll need, there’s one important thing you should start with: your mindset.

Mentally preparing yourself for all that you will possibly experience in your learning journey can make a huge difference to your expected outcome.

Having the right mindset helps you overcome challenges and see them as part of the experience rather than a huge blockage that will hinder you from your end goal.

Incorporating these strategies into your learning experience should help you to form the right mindset.

Set realistic expectations

We’re talking about setting realistic expectations about the time it will take and the commitment it is going to require from you to gain valuable skills in iOS development.

You can’t start learning iOS development and expect yourself to be good at it within months, build an app that goes viral, and earn thousands of dollars. It doesn’t work that way.

What’s more realistic is that there will be days when you don’t understand what you’re learning, you get frustrated because a code is not working, or you can’t make one action happen, and so forth. But you know what? It’s okay if you face these challenges. It doesn’t make you less of a learner when you encounter these problems.

But remember that once you overcome these challenges, you’ll realize that you can do it. You’ll gain more confidence and feel like you’re slowly moving forward and that your goal is reachable.

Make time for it

Learning iOS Development will take time. It’s not an overnight thing because it involves learning a multifaceted skill that combines the elements of programming, problem-solving, and user interface design. It also involves mastering programming languages like Swift and Objective-C.

Have you heard about the book called The First 20 Hours by Josh Kauffman? It is about spending 20 hours practicing the right skills and being good at what you’re learning.

It’s the inspiration for strategy #2 which is to schedule 20 one-hour sessions to learn iOS development. Put it on your calendar and commit to it. Doing this means you’re prioritizing learning iOS development and incorporating it into your daily life.

If you keep up with this, learning iOS development every day will feel like a normal part of your life rather than a task you need to get done.

Related Video: The First 20 Hours – A TED Talk

Have two goals: Short-term and long-term

Learning iOS development is a long journey and when you’re struggling, having doubts, and tired, the more likely you are to quit. You will feel like working through this long journey will be impossible and that your end goal is so far away.

The solution is to have two goals: short-term and long-term. The long-term goal would be the initial reason you decided to get on this journey. The other one would be to have a short-term input-based goal like committing one hour each day for 20 days straight to learning iOS development or maybe committing to learning at least two months before quitting.

The important thing about the short-term goal is that it is near-term and is input-based meaning that it’s in your control because you can control how much time and effort you input.

Your long-term goal reminds you why you’re on this journey but the short-term goal helps you keep making progress bit by bit.

These three strategies help prevent premature quitting. More often than not, a lot of people quit at the first sign of frustration and their goal of changing careers, developing an app, or simply learning iOS development goes down the drain.