A developers best asset is their ability to learn
Published: 2020-09-01 20:24:04

Those of you who are already developers, I want you to think about all of the time you spend learning, and those of you who are not, do the same.

Its absolutely astronomical. Apart from researchers, developers spend more time learning than almost every other career on planet earth. The reason being, technology changes everyday and the sheer amount of creation that is happening now can be quite overwhelming if you are not consistently on top of it.

Now, think about the last time you learned to learn.

Yes, I wrote that correctly and no it is not a typo. You spend a crazy amount of time learning now and you are not being as efficient as you can be which in return is making you less productive as a developer.

Think about it this way, the developer who knows how to learn effectively can write more code, market themselves as knowing new technologies faster and overall can just produce more.

So lets look at a two learning techniques that can change the game for you in your learning journey and that can compound into an insane amount of personal growth over the following years.

**Learn in Short Bursts**
The human mind is not meant to retain all of the information that is thrown at it, only what is important. And that information requires what I like to call a *setting time* before it is cemented in your mind and can be used at a later date. The unfortunate truth is that in any given session of learning your mind can only understand and retain X amount of information before it starts throwing out what it thinks may be less important, even if it is not. In order to combat this effect you have to figure out what your setting time is, in my case it is typically between 30 and 45 minutes, and I am usually full after about an hour of consistent learning. So my learning routine is usually as follows:

Learn for 60 minutes while taking notes.
Break for 45 minutes while reviewing notes (This helps cement learning)
Repeat.

I find that I can do this for as long as I want and my retention does not decrease, however, you may find you need to stop after one or two rotations, it is completely dependent on how your brain works.

**Notes, Notes, Notes**
This one goes hand in hand with the last technique. As you can see, I break my learning into 3 parts learning 2 parts note review. The way that I get the notes is, well, I write them.

Writing notes can be tedious for many people, but because most of the learning that I do is on my computer through videos and text, I have developed a note taking system with google docs that organizes each topic of learning into headings, important tips into bullet points and abstract topics into more verbose breakdowns.

The best part about notes is that you retain what you write much more effectively and they can be used as mental bookmarks to recall topics that you have previously explored. When you review your notes, you should be able to picture when you wrote them and the resources you were using to learn while writing said notes.



I encourage you to take the leap into learning how to learn, there are an insane amount of available resources on learning how to learn that you may find incredibly beneficial.

If there is one thing you can take away from this short article it is that learning new technology is important, but what is more important is how you learn. If you can increase your learning efficiency you can become a better developer faster than the competition which will make you a more valuable developer in the long run.

Good luck!