This uniform represented everything I wanted to escape.
Long hours, low pay, and no flexibility. No future that excited me. That was six years ago. I used to put on my NHS uniform at 5:30am, cycle 40 minutes in the dark, and work 12-hour shifts for £24k a year. But I refused to accept that this was my life forever. So I made a decision. I'd spend every spare hour learning to code. Before shifts. After shifts. Weekends. Holidays. I'd say no to everything else. While my colleagues were watching Netflix, I was debugging code. While they were going out, I was building projects. It wasn't glamorous and it wasn't easy. But I tracked my hours, and put 1hr/day. But 6 months later, I landed my first tech interview, and 2 months after that - my first job offer Today, Alhamdulilah I'm making 6x what I made in the NHS. I work remotely from Dubai, and I choose who I work with. I wake up excited about what I'm building. But here's what I learned: The skills weren't the hard part, staying consistent was. Maintaining focus for 6 months while working full-time was. Look, just because you signed up to a program doesn't mean you're guaranteed success. Whenever I have a call with someone enquiring about the bootcamp, I ask: " Can you dedicate 1 hour per day to this?" Only if they say yes do I let them in. Because the truth is, unlimited 1-1s, weekly classes, and course content that helped hundreds learn to code are a WASTE if you don't have commitment. So what's the one secret to staying focused for 6 months straight? Say no to more things. I've read dozens of business and self-development books, and they all seem to gloss over this simple truth. Steve Jobs mastered it and his company is worth $4 trillion. By saying no to things that excite you, you stay focused on the ONE thing that actually drives results. I see this all the time: Someone comes to me saying "but I want to do DevOps" or "what about cybersecurity?" while they're already 1 month deep into a software engineering program. Or they start lifting weights, then get pulled into "maybe I should pick up yoga instead."