Sleep is an important part of our life. While it may seem to be a waste of time, nothing is further away from the truth. Without sleep, you will be unable to do those many things you would rather do than sleep.
We can use many attributes to describe a good application: changeable, future-proof, well designed, or flexible are just a few of them. What does this mean? Is this just a challenge for the most uncommon word pair? Or is there something behind those words that we can measure?
Repeating the things you learned in your own words is a great way to make that knowledge stick. That is especially true when you not only say it but also write it down. By transferring the words from your mind into characters you write down, your brain gets a chance to sort itself and that again helps you to recollect that knowledge much better. Moreover, by having a writ-ten note on the topic you learned, you have something you can go back later to refresh your knowledge should it no longer be present.
I had the great opportunity to speak at this year's NDC Oslo to share my ideas of how we can improve our continuous learning. A topic I find most important, not just for software developers, but for all knowledge workers. You can find the slides of my talk at Speaker Deck:
Not everyone has the luck to work in interesting projects that allow you to learn while doing your job. Some companies do not even define their technology stack, meaning you don't know what technologies you should learn. Do not despair; you still have many options to build up your knowledge while doing your work.
As software developers we have a great benefit: our work offers us endless opportunities to learn new things. It is the jackpot when you believe in lifelong learning. However, we often do not make good use of those opportunities and end up with the feeling of not learning anything at all. I am convinced that this is due to how we persist our knowledge and the unfortunate idea that learning can't be fun.
We can create a lot of software in a short amount of time. However, code is not everything and there are many important aspects of our application we can’t find in the code. If we document the decisions we make today, then we have a written explanation to help our memory in all those cases where we can’t remember the details. Instead of guessing, we can find answers quickly and persist our knowledge.
For one of my applications I had a simple task: the business needed an easy way to download all PDF files we create in various places inside our application. Offering them one single button who combines all those different files into one big PDF looked like a good idea. Little did I know about all the obstacles I had to overcome to get it done.
One of the simplest improvements for an efficient environment is to define the technology stack you want to use at your company. A little bit of upfront documentation can safe you endless discussions at the start of a new project. Instead of debating what framework you could use, you check if the one you defined is a good fit. Only if this is not the case you go and search for an alternative. Let’s look how you can define your own stack.
How long does it take to learn something? Not 10,000 hours, as many people think. If Josh Kaufman is right and you do not aim to be one of the best performers of that field, you may get away with just 20 hours of deliberate practice. Does it sound too fantastic? It is all a question of how good and comfortable you want to feel by doing it – and how you spend those 20 hours.