We stared blankly at our screens after hours of frustration. There was plenty of code there. None of it was working. "Wanna another doughnut?" I asked Sam. Only the high of sugar could get us through this dip in motivation. What we were building wasn't working. I had reached mental rock bottom and asked myself, "why am I doing this?"

I come from a family of craftsmen. My grandad (grandpop)1 was a toolmaker, my uncle an electrical craftsman, and my dad is generally great at building things. For fun, he made a birdhouse with spare wood in his garage (or car hole as he likes to call it). Creating things with my hands has never been something I was good at doing. Writing code for me is digital craftsmanship. Coding means I can create software and websites and publish them for the world to see.

But I haven't coded for a while. My university course, computer science, was all about writing code. And when I entered the world of work, my job was to write it. So when I tried to do it for fun, it felt like work. I had little motivation. As I progressed through my career, I've coded less, and my job now is more high-level. I could now code for fun. Just one problem, I had no idea what to build. I’d soon hit inspiration.

This past year, I've become enamoured by DeFi (decentralized finance). And what excites me most about it is how developers can build financial products with code; there's no need for banks. So when a friend suggested I sign up for his company's DeFi hackathon, an opportunity presented itself. A hackathon is a competition where programmers build and release an application by the end of a time window. Once finished, judges review submissions and award prizes. But I've never written code for DeFi.

I spent the first few weeks learning and coming up with an idea with my teammate, Sam. The hackathon theme was to create a blockchain solution for the African market. Our idea was to build decentralized bonds on the blockchain. Users could issue bonds, and others could subscribe. Through this dApp, entrepreneurs could acquire capital without using traditional banks.

Once we had gotten through online courses, the building began. We would soon realize that no matter how much preparation you do, action is where the learning starts.

Sam stayed at my house for the first few days, and we 'hustled' for several hours straight. Sitting and working together gave me a mental boost. It stopped me from procrastinating; it was remarkable. When we faced challenges, the whiteboard came out. We'd quickly learn talking through the problem would help solve it. At the end of each day, we felt tired. It had been a long time since I felt like this after working.

As weeks progressed, we occasionally changed course, using a new framework or language to 'simplify' our workload. It complicated instead. Eventually, we got used to the new frameworks after plenty of tinkering and googling.

We spent our weeks hitting roadblocks followed by epiphanies, followed by more roadblocks, and even more epiphanies. Many times I felt like giving up. "What's the point?" I'd ask myself. I'd entered what Seth Godin calls 'The Dip', meaning I had two choices. I could quit, or I could persevere through the difficulty. I persevered.

And everything changed as I climbed out of the dip. Some nights I struggled to sleep2 because I was thinking about Bondible. Excitedly. I'd wake up at 4:30, make some coffee and sit down at my desk to get work done before starting my actual job. On some evenings, bolts of energy would come from nowhere, keeping me working into the night. It was as though my body was producing caffeine; tiredness would disappear. I could function for a full day on only a few hours of sleep. The fulfilment I was feeling powered me. Was this how Margaret Thatcher managed?

It was Sunday evening, only a few hours to go until submission. Sam and I scrambled. We coordinated the most critical bits to finish and then go to work. The final hours flew by. I recorded a video and filled out the submission form meticulously. Then, I pressed submit.

A tide of emotions crashed on me. Frustration because we could have done better. Relief because we no longer had the stress of working to a deadline. And finally, the most powerful feeling, a sense of emptiness. What would I do now? Every day I had been coding before and after work. I had dedicated weekends to Bondible. And now it was over. The birdhouse was finished.

I learned so much during the hackathon:

  • No number of courses could teach me what I had learned by trying, failing and correcting.
  • Turning up every day reinforced what I was learning.
  • I had a weekend off away from screens, and after that, I felt rejuvenated. Breaks are good
  • Few things in life are rewarding without facing adversity along the way.

I'm now at a crossroads. I want to program professionally again. Even though I've arguably 'progressed' from being a programmer. But I hate meetings, and my job causes me to get stuck in them. I miss focusing on a problem and being addicted to solving it.

We didn’t win the hackathon. We did come 3rd in one of the sponsor prizes, so didn’t end up empty-handed. But we didn’t make the top four for the main prizes. I’m a sore loser (something I need to work on), so it was tough to lose.

And as for more hackathons, I've signed up to two. Both in October! One is in Lisbon and will be my first trip abroad since C*vid hit. I'll be spending Lisbon with many other like-minded crypto hackers building dApps. I can't wait. The other has a lucrative prize, and I’ll be teaming up with Sam again. And Tom, a friend I made during my time with On Deck.

Before doing this hackathon, I didn't expect it to be as personally transformative as it was. But as Steve Jobs said, "You can't connect the dots looking forwards; you can only connect them looking backwards."

Thanks to Josh Levine, Kate Long, Kyle Allen-Niesen, Manish Gvalani, and Emily Edmonds (AKA Team Canis ❤️) for reviewing drafts of this essay. And to Sam for his teamwork and putting up with me during this hackathon.

  1. Grandpop started his apprenticeship shortly after WW2 finished. Sadly he entered the workplace in a country that no longer valued skilled manufacturers and craftspeople. ↩

  2. I am very strict about my sleep regimen, so struggling to sleep is rare for me. ↩