Sustainable Learning

[00:00] (bright music)
[00:04] - All right, so I'm Josh.
[00:05] If you haven't met me yet,
[00:07] been at Test Double for about four months now.
[00:09] And I'm going to be sharing a talk that I've given before
[00:11] called Sustainable Learning.
[00:15] So bit about my story from the background.
[00:17] I'd been a developer for about 10 years
[00:20] at one point when this story begins.
[00:22] And I went through a job change
[00:24] where I had to switch programming languages
[00:26] and get up to speed very quickly on a new language
[00:28] I hadn't worked in before.
[00:30] Then a few years after that I switched from backend
[00:32] to front-end development, and again,
[00:34] I had to get up to speed very quickly.
[00:36] There's a lot of learning
[00:38] in a very compressed period of time.
[00:39] I wonder if any of you can identify in this industry
[00:42] with a need for rapid learning.
[00:45] Some of you maybe have gotten
[00:47] into the programming recently.
[00:49] Maybe you're picking up a new language
[00:50] or framework for work,
[00:52] or maybe you're just keeping up with new features
[00:54] and new versions of libraries and frameworks
[00:57] and platforms and browsers
[00:58] and just keeping up with the latest.
[01:00] There's always more to learn in our industry.
[01:02] And so the question is how do you keep learning
[01:04] without getting exhausted?
[01:06] Maybe you aren't and you're getting exhausted
[01:08] by me describing this right now.
[01:10] I know I am.
[01:11] So I have some things to share on this, some ideas,
[01:14] but first I want to start with a caveat.
[01:15] We all have different wirings.
[01:17] I was talking about this with another Double agent recently.
[01:20] So I'm going to share the experiences,
[01:22] the approaches that have worked and helped for me.
[01:24] And they may be exactly the opposite of what works for you.
[01:27] I'm not a professional brain scientist
[01:29] or anything like that, or even a hobby brain scientist.
[01:32] So, but I hope this prompts ideas.
[01:35] So certainly if something that I share doesn't seem
[01:37] like it applies to you, go with that.
[01:39] Like, trust your instincts on that,
[01:41] but maybe it'll prompt some ideas and some thoughts.
[01:44] Find out what works for you and then tell me and others,
[01:46] and share it around.
[01:48] So as I look back over the years that I've been working
[01:51] in consulting and think about what has worked for me
[01:53] for learning, I've seen a pattern and I've started
[01:58] referring to it as cyclical learning.
[01:59] And I want to share what that is.
[02:01] This is not something that I've designed from the start.
[02:03] This is something that I look back on what evolved
[02:06] and came about as I was going through this process
[02:08] of repeatedly learning technical things.
[02:10] And this is the steps that I saw myself
[02:12] going through repeatedly, cyclically.
[02:14] And so there's a lot, and so we're going to talk through
[02:16] one at a time to explain what I mean.
[02:19] First observe.
[02:20] So this is the first step that I come to go through.
[02:22] And I define observe to mean get as much exposure
[02:25] to others' code as you can.
[02:27] This is a great way to learn new technical knowledge
[02:30] as a foundation.
[02:31] Some of my ideas about this initially came
[02:33] from a talk by Kathy Sierra.
[02:35] Many in the Ruby community may be familiar with her.
[02:37] She was very influential.
[02:39] The talk is called "Making Badass Developers."
[02:41] It was from 2015.
[02:42] Then at RubyConf just two years ago,
[02:45] a talk called "Perceptual Learning Equals More Ruby Experts"
[02:48] was given and it referenced Kathy's talk
[02:51] as well as some later things about this learning.
[02:53] But a key very simplified version of one part
[02:56] of these talks, I'd recommend watching them in entirety,
[02:58] they're great, but one part of it is just observing,
[03:01] just getting exposure to examples,
[03:03] especially good examples is really helpful
[03:06] for learning and for growth.
[03:09] So places that you can observe to make yourself available
[03:11] to get this knowledge: online communities, social media,
[03:14] maybe some social media more than others these days.
[03:17] Chat forums are all great ways to learn.
[03:19] Live communities like meetups and conferences,
[03:22] in person or virtual depending on how things are going
[03:24] at that time.
[03:25] Articles, books, videos, podcasts, code reviews.
[03:28] This is one that folks can tend to miss,
[03:30] but on client projects and at work,
[03:33] when you're doing code reviews, you can learn,
[03:36] you can learn from how someone's approached something,
[03:38] if they're more experienced than you
[03:40] or more experienced with the technology,
[03:42] or even if they've just taken a different approach.
[03:43] Even if you kind of feel like there are weaknesses there,
[03:46] by observing it and thinking about it,
[03:48] like, you're getting more data,
[03:50] you're getting more options to consider.
[03:52] Pair programming and mob or ensemble programming
[03:55] is another great opportunity to observe.
[03:57] A coworker of mine that I used to work with,
[04:00] and I'll share out the link to this blog post,
[04:01] used a phrase "optimize for learning."
[04:03] He got the advice,
[04:04] "Choose a job where you optimize for learning."
[04:07] And I really feel like Test Double is a place like that.
[04:09] It's a place that I'm learning all the time
[04:11] and others are doing the same.
[04:13] So observing is the first step.
[04:14] Get this raw material, this data about approaches to code.
[04:18] Second, capture, and by capture I mean record things
[04:21] of potential interest to investigate later.
[04:24] This was really transformational for me
[04:26] when I ran across the tool to help me start to do this
[04:29] because it helped me to decouple "I've heard about it"
[04:32] from "I'm looking into it."
[04:34] So this allows for the ebb and flow of your schedule.
[04:36] You can hear on Slack or somewhere about a new idea,
[04:39] library or book or something, and you don't have to decide,
[04:42] "I'm going to look into it now or I'm going to forget about it,"
[04:45] or have it constantly running in your head,
[04:47] "I should get back to that thing."
[04:49] You can file it somewhere where it's captured
[04:51] that you can get back to it when you have time
[04:53] or when the need arises.
[04:54] It allows for filtering later to decide later
[04:57] if you do or don't want to look into it.
[04:59] And it allows for cyclically revisiting things repeatedly
[05:02] when you want to reinforce them or check in multiple times.
[05:06] So some ways to capture, there's different categories
[05:08] of information to capture: taking notes,
[05:11] saving links to websites, to a reading list,
[05:13] and keeping a personal to-do list,
[05:15] which seems not quite related, but I'll explain
[05:17] why I think this is essential to consider here.
[05:20] First, taking notes.
[05:21] So here's some of the attributes that I found, for me,
[05:24] are essential attributes of a note-taking system.
[05:27] And I do use digital notes almost exclusively.
[05:30] Some folks really swear by paper notes,
[05:32] and there's different parts of the brain
[05:34] that get exercise and things about focus.
[05:36] So this is not me saying don't use paper notes.
[05:38] I'm just sharing where I'm coming from and what I found
[05:40] is helpful on the digital side.
[05:42] Number one, low friction to create a node.
[05:45] You don't have to think about filing,
[05:47] you can just start recording something.
[05:48] Second, it's successful everywhere.
[05:49] Work computer, personal computer, phone,
[05:51] as long as the client or a company doesn't have restrictions
[05:55] on data being shared in some way.
[05:57] But it's easy to get to in whatever your context you're in,
[06:00] 'cause you might hear something in one context
[06:02] that maybe apply more in another one.
[06:04] Full text search, you don't know if you've titled that note
[06:08] in something that's easy to get back to or tags.
[06:10] And so if you just mentioned something in passing,
[06:12] you want to be able to find it again so you don't lose it.
[06:15] Syntax highlighting support,
[06:16] I often have code snippet examples,
[06:18] so that's pretty important to make sure that's something
[06:20] that I want put code samples in there instead of feeling
[06:22] like it's messy to put it in.
[06:25] So note-taking app options.
[06:27] A lot of folks that I talk to
[06:28] have a lot of thoughts on this.
[06:30] if you're not taking notes currently,
[06:31] even something as simple as the notes app built into the OS
[06:34] for your computer OS, your phone OS could be good enough.
[06:38] Notion is really popular these days,
[06:39] has a lot of powerful features.
[06:41] Obsidian maybe a bit more targeted
[06:43] towards individual note-taking, really, really great.
[06:45] Obsidian is what I'm using for note-taking currently.
[06:48] Logseq is an open source product
[06:50] that has a lot of the benefits of Obsidian.
[06:52] Or if you have something else that works, that's all great,
[06:54] but these are some options to consider.
[06:56] If you're not consistently note-taking,
[06:57] you find that you're in a system that doesn't facilitate
[07:00] the kind of attributes that I was talking about.
[07:02] Second, saving links to a reading list.
[07:05] So what qualifies as a reading list?
[07:07] I think these features are essential for this kind of tool
[07:09] in the workflow that I'm describing.
[07:11] It needs to have an unread or read feature
[07:14] so you know what you've looked at already.
[07:16] It needs to be accessible everywhere.
[07:17] Again, work computer, personal computer, phone.
[07:20] If you need more boundaries to keep you
[07:21] from being overwhelmed, that's fine too.
[07:23] Like for me, this fits into the flow of my life
[07:25] to have access to these things,
[07:26] to pull 'em up at appropriate times.
[07:28] Ideally, it has tagging-by categories
[07:30] so you can group things and find them.
[07:32] Some things that I would say personally don't work
[07:35] as reading lists include browser tabs.
[07:38] They're not permanent enough.
[07:39] Maybe your computer is very stable
[07:41] and you haven't rebooted in three years.
[07:42] Mine crashes and I lose my browser tabs,
[07:45] and sometimes that's good to just let them go.
[07:47] But if I want to capture something,
[07:49] it needs to be somewhere more permanent.
[07:51] Browser bookmarks I think don't qualify as well
[07:53] 'cause there's not an unread or a read feature.
[07:55] There needs to be a very low-friction way to just record,
[07:58] like, "Oh yeah, I haven't yet checked this out,
[07:59] I want to make sure to get to it."
[08:01] I've already read it,
[08:03] and it's now it's available for future reference.
[08:04] So some software you might consider,
[08:05] your web browser of choice may have a reading list feature,
[08:08] that's becoming more built-in now.
[08:10] Pocket is the tool that first got me into this approach.
[08:13] It's by Mozilla, and it's a great way to capture links,
[08:16] and integrates with links sharing
[08:18] from all kinds of different places.
[08:19] So yeah, I recommend that as an option.
[08:23] So personal to-do list as a way to capture information.
[08:26] How does this relate?
[08:27] This is not really related technically
[08:29] to technical learning.
[08:31] I think keeping a personal to-do list is essential,
[08:33] and this is just great professional advice
[08:35] because it helps you ensure you don't forget things
[08:38] you need to do.
[08:39] You don't have to just keep them in your head.
[08:40] It helps you do one thing at a time.
[08:42] You don't have to keep remembering the four things
[08:44] you need to do today 'cause you have 'em on your to-do list.
[08:47] It gives you mental space to look up,
[08:48] to take a breath and say, "Oh, is it time for me
[08:51] to learn something, to go a bit deeper and brush up
[08:54] on my knowledge in between the tasks that I have assigned?"
[08:57] And it helps you fit in learning in that way.
[08:59] So if you're not using a personal to-do list
[09:01] for your daily tasks and work, I think,
[09:04] I mean, people are wired differently,
[09:05] but I think it's worth trying to see if it frees up
[09:07] some mental space so that you can not just be trying
[09:10] to make sure you get the things done that you have to,
[09:13] but you have time for learning.
[09:15] So there's a million different to-do apps.
[09:17] That's the joke, even in the Rails community in particular.
[09:19] Any one of them is fine to get started.
[09:21] So just check out one and, you know,
[09:24] once you get into the habit of using a to-do list,
[09:26] you'll know when you need something different,
[09:27] when there's a feature that's bugging you
[09:29] that's missing that you need.
[09:31] So that was capture.
[09:33] So the next step after we observed knowledge about code
[09:36] and we've captured it, next is focus.
[09:38] I summarize that by saying you don't need to learn at all.
[09:41] In fact, it's literally impossible to learn everything
[09:43] there is to know about programming in 2023.
[09:46] You may feel like there are people who know
[09:47] everything about programming, it is not true.
[09:50] And in fact there's no need to learn all those things.
[09:53] So what does expertise look like instead?
[09:55] What does growing your career look like?
[09:57] Ken Beck has used the term paint-drip developer,
[10:00] and this link that'll be in the slides that I share out.
[10:02] Takes you to a blog post where someone wrote about it.
[10:05] You think about the visual image you see there.
[10:07] You have both breadth and depth.
[10:09] You work across a wide variety of different things.
[10:11] Think about a paintbrush going across the top.
[10:13] And in some things, oh, you don't go very deep.
[10:15] You just, for whatever reason,
[10:16] other things, you go very deep, it drips way down.
[10:19] And so you have areas of depth and broad areas
[10:22] where some of them are not quite as deep.
[10:24] So that is expertise, that is, none of us get beyond
[10:29] paint-drip levels of experience,
[10:30] and so you don't need to know at all.
[10:32] So you need to focus and choose what to focus on.
[10:35] So you have an item on your unread list,
[10:38] and you have options to decide what to do with it
[10:40] when it comes to focus.
[10:41] You can read it fully.
[10:43] You can skim it until you learn enough or lose interest.
[10:46] I mean, you go with your instincts, go with, you know,
[10:48] your energy levels.
[10:49] If you've lost interest, okay, that's enough for now.
[10:52] Or maybe you skip it, maybe you've captured it,
[10:54] but now at this later step you've decided,
[10:55] "It's been a while, I haven't gotten to reading this.
[10:58] I guess I'm not motivated in this right now."
[11:00] But I've often deleted something when I've decided
[11:03] I don't need it, and then I regret that,
[11:05] and I look for it later.
[11:06] So I would say if you got reading list software,
[11:08] like, just mark it as read, just lie to yourself.
[11:10] Or maybe there's another category,
[11:12] but keep it tracked in the system you've captured in
[11:14] so you can get back to it later.
[11:15] What was that article about that one programing language
[11:17] or that one book?
[11:19] You can find it again if you haven't deleted it.
[11:22] So how to decide whether you go deeper
[11:23] in a given topic or not with all the overwhelming areas
[11:27] of tech that are out there?
[11:28] Is it related to something you already know
[11:30] so it's easy to build on?
[11:32] Is it useful for something you're working on right now,
[11:34] it's timely?
[11:35] Is it useful for something you want to work in?
[11:37] You want to head towards it sooner or later in the future,
[11:39] it can be good to dig into that.
[11:41] Are you able to follow it?
[11:42] This was really interesting when I read the book
[11:44] "Domain-Driven Design" and I was like,
[11:46] "Wow, it's a great book and it's well written.
[11:49] I cannot follow it. I'm out of my depth on this."
[11:51] And I've tried a few times, I still haven't made it through.
[11:54] I'm sure if I force myself, but I didn't want to force myself.
[11:57] It's available. I can get into it.
[11:58] I know the kinds of things that are in there.
[12:00] I can get into it if and when it's helpful.
[12:02] So you know, trust yourself as far as if your brain
[12:05] is able to follow it or not,
[12:06] and don't judge yourself for that.
[12:09] Does it energize you? Does it make you excited?
[12:10] Or does it feel like a slog?
[12:12] And, you know, decide that I've read enough of this,
[12:15] I'm going to mark it as red, I'm going to put it on the shelf
[12:17] and save it for later.
[12:19] So once you've observed, captured and focused,
[12:21] decided to focus on something, understand it deeply.
[12:25] Dig into a topic to ensure you thoroughly comprehend it.
[12:29] That's kind of general,
[12:30] so let me put some more details onto that.
[12:31] How can you help your understanding of something
[12:34] so that you've really gotten your mind around it well?
[12:37] Applying the steps for yourself,
[12:38] like, don't just read it and say,
[12:41] "I think I understand that," but try it out yourself.
[12:44] If you don't get how a piece of it works, look it up.
[12:47] For all of us, this is common, when you're reading through
[12:49] and it just references another technology or a protocol
[12:52] or a spec or a principle from computers and you're, like,
[12:55] "Yeah, I've never heard of that before,
[12:56] and they assume I know it."
[12:57] Well you can pause and go look that up.
[12:59] You can capture what that thing is.
[13:01] Maybe you come back later or whatever.
[13:03] Experiment and see how it breaks.
[13:05] This is something that I wasn't big on at first,
[13:07] but I learned from others.
[13:08] I see something working, well, what if I don't add
[13:10] this parameter that they say is required?
[13:12] What if I pass the opposite boolean?
[13:14] What does it do? And you learn from that.
[13:16] Ask the person questions if they're available,
[13:18] if they're the author or creator of something
[13:21] on the internet, you can reach out, and a lot of times,
[13:23] more times than you would expect, they respond.
[13:26] A lot of folks care if you care about the topics
[13:28] that they've written about or tools that they've created.
[13:31] And so you can get answers, you can get help.
[13:34] So by trying these things,
[13:35] you make sure that you haven't just read something
[13:37] but you're deepening your understanding of it.
[13:40] The next step is a way to, in a sense,
[13:43] deepens your understanding,
[13:44] but it's putting it into practice.
[13:46] Repeatedly apply a technique to build the habit.
[13:49] So I talked about following the steps above
[13:51] in the context of the learning resource,
[13:53] like a book or an article described something.
[13:56] And so I try out those steps myself.
[13:57] Practice here, I'm referring more to applying
[13:59] that outside the context of the learning resource.
[14:01] I have a technique, I have a tool, a library,
[14:04] now I'm on a project or something, I'm going to pull
[14:06] from what I learned before and try it out there,
[14:08] outside of a well-prepared tutorial environment.
[14:12] So where can you practice?
[14:14] On work projects, you can practice and try out new things
[14:17] if it's appropriate for that project.
[14:19] In a REPL, a read-evaluate-print loop tool.
[14:21] This is very common in Ruby,
[14:23] it's available in Node and other dynamic languages.
[14:25] You can just get in, start writing code,
[14:27] and see what happens when you try things out.
[14:29] Code exercises, there's a number of different tools online
[14:31] for code exercises.
[14:33] Exercism.org is a great one
[14:35] on many, many different programming languages,
[14:37] and so that's a way to try out on these small exercises.
[14:39] On a side project, I wrote a blog post recently
[14:42] about side projects.
[14:43] You can do those for yourself, not to start a business,
[14:46] just to scratch an itch and just to get a chance
[14:48] to practice things you'd like to practice.
[14:51] You can build a standalone experiment repository in Git.
[14:54] Something where it's going to take a series of commits,
[14:56] you're building out a little bit, but it's not intended
[14:58] to ever become something useful.
[14:59] You just put it there and you keep, you know,
[15:02] in many source code hosts, the repositories are free.
[15:05] And so throw it up there.
[15:07] Things about data layers, things about node,
[15:09] things about web sockets that I've experimented with,
[15:11] I've stuck up all these repos so I can reference them
[15:13] in the future to see how my experiment worked.
[15:17] So you've gotten chances to practice these things,
[15:20] and that further deepens your knowledge, you're learning.
[15:22] So now I'd recommend a step of reflection,
[15:25] and this is never something that when someone encouraged me
[15:27] in advance to do it, made sense,
[15:29] so why am I encouraging you now?
[15:30] But we'll try, but when I look back when I've done this,
[15:33] this has really helped me out.
[15:35] Think about what you've learned,
[15:36] seems pretty straightforward.
[15:38] But here's some questions that I propose
[15:40] as a way to reflect.
[15:43] You could ask yourself,
[15:44] "Am I applying everything I wanted to?
[15:45] Did I say after reading this article that I was going to try X,
[15:49] but then I haven't actually done it yet?
[15:50] Maybe I just haven't gotten into the habit yet,
[15:51] and I can try."
[15:53] Is it working as described? Why or why not?
[15:55] Believe it or not, things don't always work
[15:57] as well as described.
[15:59] Maybe they're not that good. Maybe contexts differ.
[16:02] And so see if it lives up to the promises or was described.
[16:06] And there could be a good reason.
[16:08] Maybe you learn something that's getting in the way
[16:09] to improve it.
[16:11] Does it feel natural or is it taking a lot of effort?
[16:13] Would you be doing this technique or using this tool
[16:17] if you weren't making intentional choice to do so?
[16:19] It could be a sign that maybe it hasn't clicked yet
[16:21] or maybe it's not a good fit for you.
[16:24] Does it conflict with something I've learned before?
[16:26] How do the two relate?
[16:28] This could be a wiring thing.
[16:29] Some folks are totally fine with contradictory or, you know,
[16:33] different views in their heads and holding them in tension.
[16:36] Other folks really want to resolve them.
[16:38] I'm somewhere in between, I think.
[16:39] But I do find that I learn when I say, like,
[16:42] "Oh, this view from this programming community
[16:45] says one thing, this view says something else.
[16:47] Like, they don't go together
[16:48] or maybe they're at right angles,
[16:50] like, they're talking to about different things."
[16:51] Do they fit together, do they not?
[16:53] And you can learn more about both perspectives
[16:55] by comparing them with each other.
[16:58] So you've reflected, so that helps you internalize
[17:00] this knowledge some more even.
[17:01] Then record it.
[17:03] And record sounds a bit like capture,
[17:05] but there's something very different,
[17:06] and it's very significant that these are different ends
[17:08] of the learning process.
[17:10] In record, make a record of settled knowledge
[17:13] so you can come back to it.
[17:15] Now writing something down,
[17:16] once you've really internalized it and writing it down
[17:19] in a distilled form, can help you catalyze that knowledge
[17:22] and learn whether you're checking what you wrote
[17:24] or it just cements it in your brain.
[17:27] So I would recommend having something
[17:28] like a reference system.
[17:31] And I'll talk about what I mean by that.
[17:33] It's different than notes.
[17:36] It is a kind of note, but it's a way where you have
[17:38] low friction to find information.
[17:40] This isn't targeted for easily writing things down
[17:42] and capturing them, but when I need to find something
[17:44] on a topic, can I easily get to it?
[17:47] It's a setup where you have a topic that
[17:48] lives at one authoritative place.
[17:50] Encyclopedic comes to mind as far as like,
[17:53] so for example, take GraphQL.
[17:55] I might have dozens of different notes
[17:57] from different days with things that I've learned
[17:59] about GraphQL or looked into or questions I've answered
[18:02] or using it in different programming languages.
[18:04] But I want to have one GraphQL reference page.
[18:06] So it's like these are the most important things
[18:08] that I've learned about GraphQL, like a Wikipedia page,
[18:11] like an encyclopedia page.
[18:13] And it's for the information
[18:14] you're most likely to need again.
[18:16] Yeah, whenever I often have these same questions
[18:18] about Git or about Ruby or about Rails or whatever.
[18:22] So here's some options for this idea of a reference system.
[18:26] You could use a wiki for sure.
[18:28] GitHub wikis are available there on your repositories.
[18:30] If you're using GitLab or something else,
[18:32] like, those might very well be in there as well.
[18:34] And so those are easy ways to get to it.
[18:37] But I made a side project.
[18:39] It's 'cause I'm kind of picky.
[18:40] I want my tools to be really simple,
[18:42] and so I don't want to have, if I just want a place
[18:45] that my knowledge is, I don't want it hiding
[18:47] under a wiki's tab under GitHub
[18:48] when it's not really for code.
[18:51] And I asked on our slack about a Ruby-based wiki
[18:53] that's really easy to deploy on a Heroku,
[18:55] and we couldn't find one.
[18:57] But luckily I already created a very terrible one
[18:59] that I love and works great for me.
[19:01] So it's called Slapdash, and it's called that for a reason.
[19:04] And I'm not here to advertise my project,
[19:06] 'cause this is, like, I'm here at Test Double.
[19:08] This is the simplest, most trivial Rails application
[19:12] you can imagine.
[19:13] Like, you look at this, this is a list,
[19:15] this is a detail page.
[19:16] You can imagine if you're a Rails developer
[19:18] how this is implemented.
[19:19] It's implemented that way or worse.
[19:21] Like, it's just the simplest thing imaginable.
[19:23] But I wanted a place where it was edible in the browser,
[19:26] don't have to download a thing,
[19:27] don't have to make a Git commit.
[19:29] This is not publishing, this is, I just want one place
[19:32] to record my Android knowledge.
[19:34] One place to record my Google Chrome knowledge.
[19:36] I always want to know how to clear the data
[19:38] and how to disable JavaScript and reset site permissions.
[19:40] So I put it in there, but it's encyclopedic
[19:43] where this is just, like, there is one page for Atom, RIP.
[19:47] There's one page for Bootstrap,
[19:48] and I can get back to them very easily.
[19:50] I just know where to go for this settled knowledge
[19:52] in this reference system.
[19:55] For you, it might be the same as your note app.
[19:56] If you're disciplined and you know how to create those pages
[19:59] where there's one place to go,
[20:00] maybe that works fine as well.
[20:01] But whatever the tooling is like,
[20:03] have a place where you have that settled knowledge
[20:05] you can get back to.
[20:07] The last thing I'll share, the last step is sharing.
[20:09] And this is something that I'm really glad
[20:11] in the last five years we've talked a lot of
[20:13] in the about in the software industry.
[20:14] Pass along your learnings to others.
[20:17] So why is it valuable to share?
[20:19] It helps others, and that is in and of itself valuable.
[20:22] Teaching a topic helps solidify your own knowledge of it.
[20:25] This has been known in teaching and learning circles
[20:27] for a long time.
[20:28] And now, when you've prepared it in such a way
[20:30] that you can teach it to someone else,
[20:32] now that information's even clearer for future you.
[20:34] And so you can read it and you're teaching future you
[20:37] even better, so sharing this knowledge can be a great idea.
[20:40] This could be done on a link on social media,
[20:42] Slack and Discord.
[20:43] Like, literally just sharing the URL
[20:44] and maybe a few words of commentary
[20:46] is already a way to share.
[20:48] You could write a blog post.
[20:50] Test Double folks, we'd love for you to write blog posts
[20:52] for our blog.
[20:52] Make a personal blog and share something out.
[20:55] Do a presentation at work. Give a meetup talk.
[20:58] Most meetups would love to have someone volunteer
[21:00] to give a talk.
[21:01] Apply to give a conference talk as well.
[21:04] One thing I always say on this topic is it can be hard,
[21:07] the smaller the big things on here to do it to say,
[21:10] "Ah, others have already said it better.
[21:11] I'm not a speaker, I'm not a writer,
[21:13] I don't need to share anything out there."
[21:15] What I always say, and I've gotten this advice
[21:16] and I pass it along, say it the way you
[21:18] would've liked to hear it.
[21:20] And that's different than anybody else would phrase it.
[21:22] And there's someone out there that that's going to help,
[21:25] more than the docs and more than the talking heads
[21:28] and more than how I would say it.
[21:29] The way you say it is going to help someone
[21:31] who's wired the way you are, who is in a circumstance
[21:33] that you're in, so it's valuable to share that.
[21:37] So these are the steps of cyclical learning,
[21:39] again, as I observe how I've gone through these.
[21:42] And I'll put 'em back up in a screen in a minute
[21:44] for us to discuss a bit more, but just to wrap up,
[21:47] what if learning new technologies
[21:48] was energizing instead of draining?
[21:50] That's a tall order for the software industry,
[21:53] but I think it can be to some degree
[21:55] with the principles we've discussed where you filter out
[21:57] the too much that's out there,
[21:59] and you make it something manageable.
[22:01] And so I would encourage you for your own happiness
[22:03] and enjoyment in our profession,
[22:05] don't settle for an all-or-nothing approach to learning
[22:07] where you either have to stop what you're doing
[22:09] and really dig in to learn something
[22:11] or else it just goes into a browser tab
[22:13] that accidentally gets closed.
[22:15] Again, if that works for you, that's fine,
[22:17] but don't feel like you have to give up
[22:18] if you're stressed and you don't have time to learn.
[22:20] Capture this stuff.
[22:21] Have some way to go about it so you can go back to it later.
[22:24] Augment your brain with tools
[22:26] and with processes and practices.
[22:28] And definitely don't get down on yourself
[22:30] for not having infinite capacity.
[22:32] Nobody does. Zero people do.
[22:34] We're all in the same boat there.
[22:36] So I hope this has been helpful,
[22:38] and I'll make these slides available
[22:40] wherever this talk is shared out.
[22:41] And so, thank you so much for considering it.
[22:44] (bright music)