Be Like Water - Learn Fast Daily
When I ran a development firm, I had this quote on the wall:
Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy
1. The ability to quickly master hard things
2. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.
I loved this quote, because I saw the direct effect of people who could master things quickly and produce at an elite level. The people that thrived in highly accountable environments, produced daily and could do so very quickly. The people that were “deep thinkers” and wanted time to dig into things and think about them, invariably produced lower quality work and were almost always less confident overall. Confidence was built both in the individual and with the team when results could be produced quickly.
When it comes to learning, you need to leverage dopamine to your advantage. We want to complete small tasks that flood our brain with rewards. This means you have to swap out the dopamine from video games and social media with a higher class of dopamine. We are going top shelf.
Read Deeply using the Pomodoro technique. This time should be an actual physical book with no internet. Use index cards to make flashcards, write in the margins, or take notes, just don’t look stuff up on the internet. This approach helps your brain struggle, but stay focused.
Mastery Through Repetition - Wax On Wax Off. Build a simple plan to kick off your day with repetition. Learning a new language? Start a simple google doc and follow it every day. Learn to install, uninstall, set up libraries, and tear it all down and repeat for a few days. Move on to build simple programs or APIs to build that muscle memory. Do not skip this or more importantly, do not keep growing on the work you are doing. Even if it seems easy, follow a schedule like this:
Week 1 - Installation / Uninstall / Libraries / environment setup
Week 2 - Simple Tutorial - Build a basic database application using the language to do something simple. / tear down
Week 3 - Use 3 most common libraries to your application / tear down
Week 4- Deployment work / Complete application build
Stay Focused - Cut all distractions during your working day. This includes calendars, slack, phones, and people. Yes, people too.
References
— Deep Work p. 29