A few days ago I tweeted this idea:
The idea struck chord with the online developer community, so I decided to make the #helpmecode hashtag a reality.
My plan: make a twitter bot that would retweet coding questions that included the #helpmecode hashtag. The twitter account would act as a hub where developers could come to answer newbie questions.
Doing This The Hard Way
There’s an easy way to make a twitter bot, but it means you can only make one bot on your developer account. And starting a new account to make another bot is a lengthy process.
So I decided to go the harder route. This way I could make more than one bot on my developer account in the future. That would be beneficial in the long run. But it required creating a bot with very little online documentation about the process.
This process took days. Days of sifting through documentation and projects on github, looking endlessly for some clue how I could do this.
I contacted professional developers. Seasoned vets. Even the writer of the code module I was using. I posted my question on forums about coding and the twitter developer community.
But to no avail! No one knew how to do what I wanted to do. The writer of the code module probably knew, but he never responded.
Stagnation Means You’re Close
After several days of getting no where, I wondered would I perpetually stagnate on this? How many more days would I waste trying to solve the issue?
Then, on Saturday morning, 4 days after I started, I saw the answer. Staring me in the face. How did I not see it? But no one else saw it either.
The feeling of stagnation is uncomfortable. But if you recognize that it’s just part of the process, it’s not so bad.
Most people will give up when the stagnation happens. But those who succeed, succeed because they push through obstacles. The obstacle is the path to success.