Moving Forward Regardless

21 Apr 2019

Keeping Up the Momentum

To-do:

• refactor head.html and sidebar.html
• followup with pages in root directory refactor
  • decide if they are all going to be markdown or html and stick to it
  • clean up format based on previous bullet
• get fonts figured out, including backup websafe fonts
• unset styling on links for all pages
• brainstorm future styling additions
• add content
  • React basics
  • React project
• Giantism in 5e
  • Add all data points
  • Define approach
  • Establish specific groups for comparing data
  • Write up one post analyzing results for each data group

There is a lot to do, and there is a lot that I want to do. It really is necessary to understand which things are the priority, and which things I need to put aside.

For the past who knows how many years, I have been spinning my wheels, learning a little of this technology and a little of that technology. Ultimately, what I learned from this is some high-level concepts and a view into what might be needed in software development environments. What I did not learn is mastery of any particular technology. You only need the skills that are necessary for the task at hand, and if you don’t have a task to do or don’t know what task you need to tackle, you won’t know what tools you need. If you don’t know what tools you need, you can’t focus on developing the right skills.

There seem to be a lot of people in the software industry who had to learn a lot of things to fit different situations, and found a way to connect those domains of knowledge into a cohesive collection of skills. They were fortunate enough to struggle in an environment where they saw a problem or set of problems, and applied themselves to fill the gap in knowledge needed to solve those problems.

If you don’t have a problem to solve, or have passion for a certain set of problems, then it going to be more difficult to develop a skill set. I speak from personal experience: a lot of time spinning my wheels because I didn’t have a specific problem to solve, or not enough conviction to settle on one problem and work it. But I did work on learning, and slowly gained traction. Now, I am in an environment where there are problems that I will have to solve. I am developing some specialized knowledge. However, I look at those people who have so much more knowledge and experience, and I want to be able to do what they can.

So, I now know what tools I will be working with, and what is needed to gain the experience. I am practicing at work on small pieces of our product. If I just focus on tackling the tickets I get assigned to at work, I will inevitably develop enough skills to be sufficient, but I won’t gain mastery of the sort that I see in others at work. I also won’t transition as quickly as I want into the title of Junior Developer.

So, the real issue at hand: staying consistent and developing mastery outside of work. There are many things that we need to make time for outside of work. There are also a lot of things that are not necessary to do, but we make time for anyway. Prioritizing the necessary (long-term gain) things over the attractive and enticing things (short-term pleasure) is not easy. Add to that the fact that professional development, even if you mitigated the distractions that keep you from focusing on what is important, will require time and will compete with the other to-dos on your list.

How do I handle self-study and working towards mastery? Well, I am not optimized for that, currently. I just try to sit down and start working on something simple until the resistance to working over the distractions gives way. Whenever it seems particularly hard, I just choose something easy to work on until I start to feel successful and build momentum.

Ideally, I would work up to 9 hours a week on a dedicated project or a series of small components that share the same skill set requirements. Ideally, I would find myself more and more fascinated by a project and want to commit myself to solving problems related to that project week after week. Ideally, I would only work on one domain of skills for those 9 hours a week.

So, that is my stated goal: Work on a focused subset of skills for 9 hours a week up to the point that I start on a long-term project that will require those skills. Also, to keep limiting the scope of my efforts and choose not to focus on things that I might like to do, but that do not have a long-term net benefit.

I’ll be tackling posts about React, perhaps as soon as next weekend. That will be my main focus for a while. Second to that will be some fun fifth edition stuff, and after that will be world building. I’ll keep up site maintenance by dedicating one or two days a month. And, as for making more time, I think I can be better at reducing the time I spend consuming media that doesn’t relate to my stated goals. As for the quantity of posts and completeness, I can’t promise anything. I would rather build up interesting content piece by piece than go crazy working on a post that could take as long as a project that I need to spend more energy on.