In this article, I’ll show you three simple habits to get way more done, have a much easier and stress-free life, and make more money. Almost guaranteed. Based on science!

But there’s a catch: these habits are often tough to implement for employees. I know because I have been there and done that.

When I finally created my own freelance-based business as a coder, all people in my environment were employees, and, unfortunately, nobody I knew implemented them. So I almost missed them!

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Here are the three daily habits that will increase the quality of your life and your success as a coder:

Habit #1 – Work from home

People think commute time is not a big deal.

In truth, commute time ranks among the most expensive things you can do and is highly detrimental to your financial success and your happiness.

Let’s start with happiness:

In a 2019 paper titled “How commuting affects subjective wellbeing”, researchers showed that long commute times reduce your happiness and can lead to mental issues like depression:

“It is found that longer commute times are associated with lower job and leisure time satisfaction, increased strain and poorer mental health.”

I could provide many more sources showing similar results, but let’s move on to the financial and time impact.

The average one-way commute time for Americans is 27.6 minutes, according to the Census Bureau.

In a year with 260 working days, that’s a whopping 240 hours of reduced productivity that is stressful and reduces your work energy.

For employees, you could argue it doesn’t matter. But as a self-employed freelancer, you could work 240 hours with an average freelance developer income of $50 that’s a $12,000 annual time opportunity cost.

Over a working life of only 30 years, contributing $6,000 to a passive index fund (ETF) at an average 10% annual yield would result in a whopping $1,136,118 nest egg.

You may miss out on becoming a millionaire just because of one hour per day in commute time!

Okay, let’s assume you’re stuck in the conventional mindset of believing your time is “free” and it doesn’t matter.

Question: How much does the commute time actually cost in hard dollars without considering opportunity time costs and the drain of energy and happiness?

The average American commutes 41 miles a day to and from work (US Censor Bureau).

The average cost per mile of driving a car is $0.58, according to the US Department of Energy.

So, the direct annual costs of commute time are 41 miles per day times $0.58 times 260 working days equals $6,182.

Thus, over 30 working years, here’s another missed $1.1 million USD nest egg if you’re the average American employee!

(See previous calculations.)

Summary Commute: As an online freelance developer working from home, you’d easily pick up that $3.3 million USD over 30 years — just from saving commute time and investing the difference in the stock market.

And you’d be happier too!

I’d be missing out if I wouldn’t let you know about our current offer:

*** Become a Freelance Developer Course ***

But are there more simple gains you could add on top of those?

Yes, they exist! Let’s look at the second easy productivity habit that’s easy for freelancers but often tough to implement for employees!

Habit #3 – Have a 30-Minute Nap at Noon.

I sleep for half an hour every day at noon. My wife is from Spain, and it’s normal for my wife’s Spanish family to take a long siesta at noon.

Instead of plowing through a long 8-hour day until exhaustion, they work a couple of hours in the morning, sleep and recharge, and work for a couple of hours in the evening.

I love it – my quality of life has skyrocketed since I implemented this habit into my daily life.

And I became much more productive too.

Now you may ask: Is there scientific evidence on the benefits of daily afternoon naps?

You bet there is! In fact, there are too many studies to count. Here’s one:

In a popular MIT paper titled “The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor,” researchers found that after more than three weeks of daily 30-minute naps, employees were more productive and invested more of their money into savings accounts.

Another paper titled “Effects of a Short Daytime Nap on the Cognitive Performance” demonstrated that napping in the afternoon improved all types of cognitive performance.

One study showed that the performance was improved by at least 2%, even considering the lost time through sleep. Although I believe taking a nap is way more beneficial than that if you’re a knowledge worker (=coder), let’s work with 2%.

2% of an average coding income of $100,000 USD yields an additional income of at least $2,000 per year. Put into the S&P 500, this yields an additional net worth of almost $400,000 USD after 30 years.

For sleeping…

Other results of similar studies are that people who take a daily nap are happier and healthier.

Not surprising results – but all the more powerful! And almost nobody is doing it!

Is it because today’s work environments have not yet caught up to the research? Maybe.

As a freelance developer, you can implement this simple habit in an instant — and make more money, be happier and healthier – just by sprinkling a little bit of sleep into your day!

Habit #3 – Go For a Morning Walk in Nature and Listen to Business Books.

There is strong scientific evidence for the benefits of daily walking, such as

“For every 2,000 steps, risk of heart disease, cancer, and premature death decreases by 10% […]” – with some convergence at the 10,000 steps per day level.

Also, walking in nature increases your work productivity and creativity:

“In 2014, two Stanford University researchers published some remarkable findings in a paper titled “Give your ideas some legs: the positive effect of walking on creative thinking”. […]

The results identified a clear link between walking and higher performance on the tests. In fact, compared to sitting, walking increased participants’ creative output by around 60 percent.”

Now, let’s layer in listening to business books on a daily basis while doing the walk.

From personal experience, I know that productivity goes through the roof as you keep compounding your business knowledge by reading business books.

It can easily increase your business results by double-digit percentage points every single year!

Let’s assume a mere 10% productivity increase from walking and listening to business books daily. (I think it’ll be 10 times that but let’s stay conservative).

As a freelance developer, your income will jump by $10,000 per year (or more). Over a 30-year life investing the difference in the S&P 500, yields a whopping $2,000,000 net worth.

And that’s not considering all the health benefits, reduced health costs, and increased life satisfaction when going for a walk daily.

By the way, here’s your first business audiobook, “Leaving the Rat Race with Python” (PDF + MP3). 100% free for you as a regular reader of this email academy!

Note: This content originally came from an email sent to my coding email academy. You can signup here (free).

Summing It Up

If you implement habits (1), (2), and (3), that is, you work from home, take a nap daily, and go for a daily walk listening to business books, you can accumulate an additional fortune of $2.2M + $0.4M + $2M = $4.6M USD.

Now read again, and look how easy these habits are! Indeed, they are fun!

And your quality of life and health will improve – it may add years to your life expectancy! Low-hanging fruits, right?

To your success!

One Final Note

Creating my own coding business has been the best decision in my career – it set me free in an instant.

If you want to learn the strategies to succeed as a business owner of a thriving coding business online, feel free to check out my Becoming a Freelance Developer course.

It’s fun and has already changed hundreds of students’ lives!

Summary: You can split a string using an empty separator using –
(i) list constructor
(ii) map+lambda
(iii) regex
(iv) list comprehension

Minimal Example:

text = '12345' # Using list()

print(list(text)) # Using map+lambda

print(list(map(lambda c: c, text))) # Using list comprehension

print([x for x in text]) # Using regex

import re

# Approach 1

print([x for x in re.split('', text) if x != ''])

# Approach 2

print(re.findall('.', text))

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Problem Formulation

Problem: How to split a string using an empty string as a separator?

Example: Consider the following snippet –

a = 'abcd'

print(a.split(''))

Output:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:\Users\SHUBHAM SAYON\PycharmProjects\Finxter\Blogs\Finxter.py", line 2, in <module> a.split('')

ValueError: empty separator

Expected Output:

['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

So, this essentially means that when you try to split a string by using an empty string as the separator, you will get a ValueError. Thus, your task is to find out how to eliminate this error and split the string in a way such that each character of the string is separately stored as an item in a list.

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Now that we have a clear picture of the problem let us dive into the solutions to solve the problem.

Method 1: Use list()

Approach: Use the list() constructor and pass the given string as an argument within it as the input, which will split the string into separate characters.

Note: list() creates a new list object that contains items obtained by iterating over the input iterable. Since a string is an iterable formed by combining a group of characters, hence, iterating over it using the list constructor yields a single character at each iteration which represents individual items in the newly formed list.

Code:

a = 'abcd'

print(list(a)) # ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

Related Read: Python list() — A Simple Guide with Video

Method 2: Use map() and lambda

Approach: Use the map() to execute a certain lambda function on the given string. All you need to do is to create a lambda function that simply returns the character passed to it as the input to the map object. That’s it! However, the map method will return a map object, so you must convert it to a list using the list() function.

Code:

a = 'abcd'

print(list(map(lambda c: c, a))) # ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

Method 3: Use a list comprehension

Approach: Use a list comprehension that returns a new list containing each character of the given string as individual items.

Code:

a = 'abcd'

print([x for x in a])

# ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

Related Read: List Comprehension in Python — A Helpful Illustrated Guide

Method 4: Using regex

The re.findall(pattern, string) method scans string from left to right, searching for all non-overlapping matches of the pattern. It returns a list of strings in the matching order when scanning the string from left to right.

Related Read: Python re.findall() – Everything You Need to Know

Approach: Use the regular expression re.findall('.',a) that finds all characters in the given string ‘a‘ and stires them in a list as individual items.

Code:

import re

a = 'abcd'

print(re.findall('.',a)) # ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

Alternatively, you can also use the split method of the regex library in a list comprehension which returns each character of the string and eliminates empty strings.

Code:

import re

a = 'abcd'

print([x for x in re.split('',a) if x!='']) # ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

Related Read: Python Regex Split

Do you want to master the regex superpower? Check out my new book The Smartest Way to Learn Regular Expressions in Python with the innovative 3-step approach for active learning: (1) study a book chapter, (2) solve a code puzzle, and (3) watch an educational chapter video.

Conclusion

Hurrah! We have successfully solved the given problem using as many as four (five, to be honest) different ways. I hope this article helped you and answered your queries. Please subscribe and stay tuned for more interesting articles and solutions in the future.

Happy coding!

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Regex Humor