Give your learning a structure

Technology is ever-evolving and as developers, we are in a constant chase to keep ourselves up-to-date. If you are someone like me who often suffers from FOMO ( Fear of missing out), you might have found yourself with a never-ending TODO list of things to learn and yet had a feeling that too little has been achieved. Below are some of the tricks that I have used over time to keep myself focussed and manageable.

The 12-week-a-year plan

I first come to know about this concept from a blink in blinklist. The idea is simple yet powerful. Instead of trying to make a plan for a whole year or a long period, make a plan for only 12 weeks. Instead of trying to focus on too far future focus on just 3 months. This will also force you to prioritize your items. To keep focus for 3 months one can further divide it into monthly or bi-weekly sprints. We can use any tool like Trello, or a simple google sheet, keep your tool simple which just works.

Pi shaped developer

pi

Now that we have a framework on how to schedule our todos, this time we see how can we pick what to learn. A PI-shaped developer is a concept that talks about developers can have two areas of expertise and have generalist ideas of some other stuff. We can choose what are the two areas we want to develop ourself as an expert. It depends on oneself. Most of us already have an area of expertise which may be one’s day job it may be front end, back end anything. In that case, another expertise area can be something that keeps you relevant in the market for the future. Chose your area of expertise which you have interested in, if you don’t have interest you will lose out steam pretty soon. If you are not sure take time, try out different things before you settle there’s no rush as your other area of expertise is already taking care of your bread.

Habit of completion

It is important to close each learning. We often start learning too many things and leave everything in the mid-way. It happens to me a lot of times. Starting too many things at a time may give an impression of learning things fast but the idea is to go deep rather than go wide. I am not a huge multitasker so going wide for me often leads to shallow knowledge. You cannot rush things. It is better to take time. To learn a concept do hands-on or go for certification it will bring closure. Don’t worry there will always be something that you will not know but you will eventually know it. Rushing things will only make you come back to the same topics 6 months later. So when you pick a task bring that to a conclusion.

My own experience in trying to follow the above has also taught me some more things like

  • Don’t beat yourself up if you fall from your schedule. It is absolutely fine to take time off and do something other than reading and writing about code. Sometimes a nice time off brings more energy.
  • Think of your skills as your line of business and you being the CEO who constantly tries to stay afloat in the market and be future-proof.
  • Do pet projects and try out new technologies.

Below are some of the resources that had left an impact on me

https://www.blinkist.com/de/books/the-12-week-year-en?r=1&st=12+week+a+

https://www.blinkist.com/de/books/start-finishing-en

https://www.blinkist.com/de/books/deep-work-en

Happy learning.