Changing careers is very difficult. Add in a full-time job and a couple of kids, and the task seems nearly impossible. But even if you're busy, you can make the time to build the skills to level up your career. Here's how Michael Tombor did just that. Written and read by Michael Tombor: https://twitter.com/michaeltombor Original article: https://fcc.im/2BK2vkm Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org Intro music by Vangough: https://fcc.im/2APOG02 Transcript:  “Instead of saying “I don’t have time” try saying “It’s not a priority,” and see how that feels.” — Laura Vanderkam Changing careers is very difficult. Add in a full-time job and a couple of kids and the task seems nearly impossible. Yet, even if you are busy, you can prioritize and make the time to focus on what matters to you and build the skills to level up your career. Engineer your future with code I started my coding journey just six months ago. Now I am one project away from completing my front-end developer certificate on freeCodeCamp. I’ve also completed the web developer boot camp course by Colt Steele on Udemy. And I did this all while raising two kids and working in a full-time job. When I began using these tips, I saw my progress increase tenfold. I know I would have accomplished much more if I had implemented them earlier in my journey. I have not only benefited from increased productivity, but I feel more balanced and am having more fun than ever before. My pivot into web development After being in health care for the last five years, I realized that it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Don’t get me wrong - I loved helping people on their path to health, but I hated seeing the system break down for them. I hated when people could not afford their medication, or when their care plan wasn’t in sync with the treatment they needed. I wanted to do more to help these people. But I knew that I couldn’t do more unless I took a step back and looked at the bigger picture. I was not always interested in coding, but the more I looked at the forces making real change in today’s world, the more I saw that tech was behind these advances. I saw an opportunity to make meaningful change, and that is when I became interested in coding. Why are you coding? Whatever the reason is, really think about it and pin it down. Use it as motivation to propel you towards your coding goals. Having this end goal will help you bust through plateaus and push through the hard parts (coding is hard). Every day that I spend at my current day job motivates me to get home, boot up my laptop, and continue my journey of learning how to code. The good news is that building coding skills is simple. All you have to do is code a lot. But unfortunately, this is where the hard part comes in. Fitting time into your busy life to routinely code is difficult, to say the least. How to climb the coding mountain There is a gap between where you are now and where you want to be. That is why you are reading this article. That is why you work day in and out, and end up sacrificing time with your family and loved ones. If we are spending all this time working towards our goal, it is paramount to make the most of the time we spend learning how to code. Here are five steps to turn this dream into a reality: Create your personalized goals To make the most of your time, nothing is more important than making actionable short-term goals. This will not only help you feel a sense of accomplishment every time you meet a goal, but it will help make the coding journey feel a lot less daunting. Goals Exercise! To help you come up with focused goals, I want to encourage you to do a quick exercise that I picked up from Laura Vanderkam. 1. Picture yourself one year from now. You have crushed ALL your coding goals and landed your dream job. You have given five talks at conferences around the world, and you built up your App and it was successful. Whatever success looks like to you, picture your fu