I’ve noticed that sometimes I can have a really hard time trying to learn new things compared to most other people. I spend a lot of time thinking about the way that I learn, and I am trying to improve ability to learn.
A good analogy to describe situations I sometimes find myself in would be to imagine you are learning how to “use” a car. You’ve never seen a car before, and you’re not exactly sure what they’re used for, but you’re tasked with learning how to “use” a car. So, unsure of where to begin, you pour hours and hours in to learning how an engine works, the importance of the oil and how to change it, etc. The someone comes along and says “hey you’ve been spending ages learning how to use that car, can you now drive me to my destination?”. But of course you can’t, because you’ve put zero time in to learning how to drive it, despite thinking all along you were learning how to “use” it.
In my field (web development), I am often in a position where I need to learn new technologies/methodologies, but I can have a very hard time trying to learn these new things, partly because I can’t figure out exactly which parts of some new thing I am supposed to be focusing on. The simple answer would be to try and better understand in what manner this new technology is going to be used, but I just don’t seem to have a “knack” for drawing the connections even if I have the best understanding that I can of what the actual purpose of some new thing is that I am supposed to be learning.
I’m after tips to make me a better learner. How can I break complex learning tasks down in to more simpler pieces, and better determine what things I should focus on, compared to the things that are just irrelevant details, when learning something new?
Let me ask, are you an IT developer with no experience on the other side of IT products?
Does this comment - *The simple answer would be to try and better understand in what manner this new technology is going to be used, * mean that, while you appreciate the functional spec and the technical spec, you can’t get in the head space of the actual user?
Because these are very common problems for IT professionals without real world work experience and poor BA support.
Yes I’m an IT Developer. The main problems with learning that I have tend to be around software technologies and methodologies. I seem to lose hours and hours trying to find online tutorials only to then be unable to make head nor tail of them, I try looking through code samples… it’s like I’m “shooting blank” hoping to eventually hit something.
In summary, no, I don’t think the problem relates to not being able to understand users.
I’m not tremendously technical myself, but let me try and understand the problem. You are instructed to learn a new technology, but you have a hard time conceptualizing what the technology is intended to achieve.
I don’t mean to be simplistic, but do you have any colleagues? People with different strengths and weaknesses, that you could discuss the new thechnology with, and get their take on what the new technology is “for” (and maybe what its “good for” which possibly is something else).
If you don’t, instead of trying to find tutorials, why not try to find articles, or forum posts, where people talk about the technology in terms of what it can and can’t do?
I feel I do this, and yes I do consult colleagues, but I still struggle. I just seem to be utterly hopeless and being able to differentiate between the important, relevant stuff and the useless stuff. On a lot of new things I spend my time learning, I often later come to realise that I wasted hours and hours on irrelevant components (ie, the car engine analogy in my OP). I am hoping that I can get some tips or mental tricks I can employ to be able to quickly figure out what I should focus on when some new piece of technology comes my way that I am expected to be able to learn.
When it comes to the technical stuff, computers, electronics, software, spacecraft, whatever, my approach is find the the immediate detail, instruction, procedure, document (insert appropriate knowledge data here) needed to accomplish the immediate task at hand. You’re not trying to become a rocket scientist all in one day. Search the online manual, Google, ask a colleague, etc. for that one specific item needed to accomplish the next step. It’s slow going sometimes, but eventually after awhile it starts to fall into place and make more sense in the “big picture” way. Keep at it long enough and maybe you will even become an “expert.”
Piece it together bit-by-bit while you are actually doing it. Experience is the best teacher.
I’m a person who has a BA in journalism, who went right in to being pretty damn good at HTML, to being placed in the position of a programmer and DBA over the past 10 years.
My learning…it sucks. I CANNOT read an article or a book or even a tutorial and even begin to comprehend what I am supposed to be doing. But yet here I am - pretty proficient at ASP/VB, ASP.NET | Open-source web framework for .NET, Javascript, SQL, etc (I don’t quite get Linq or Ajax yet, but I still use them).
My one saving graces, the things that got me here are:
What Hello Again said about colleagues. My business partner can and does learn from books and articles. He learns it, he writes some stuff, I cut-and-paste his code in to what I need, Google some stuff and viola! Working application! Eventually by the end of the project, I am doing pretty well.
What Nadir said. Git-er-done. Find a code sample of something similar to your task, use the code sample, manipulate the code sample, and by the end you’ve both finished a task and learned something. Experience is indeed the best teacher.
Know when to ask for help. If you know someone else who is better at SQL than you are, for example, write out the framework of what you need them to do and see if they can execute it. Don’t spend 5 hours on something someone else can do better in 5 minutes. Once it’s done - then you read what they did, to learn. Now you have a sample to use later, too.
Now, having come at it with these approaches I still can’t tell you exactly how it all works, but my code is pretty tight and my apps are robust. I don’t think I could have done any of this on my own. With me, it took a good partner and the ability to ask for help.