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Discussion on: When and how do you make time to learn?

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Dmitry Diukariev

I learn when I'm working on a task. When you work on a task you basically solving tons of problems (some are easy some are not) at some point you come to a problem that you don't know how to solve (that is most often an indicator that you lack some knowledge). Now you have two courses of action:

  1. Find ready made answer to your problem
  2. Explore the subject and solve problem yourself

So giving preference to 2nd option you will learn new things every day (even without dedicated time for learning) and develop solid problem solving skills. The only reason to choose 1 should be when you are in rush (i.e. deadline, etc). But that should be rare.

Naturally a question may arise "What about learning new technologies?". Well lets first consider couple of things from my experience:

  1. It is impossible to learn everything
  2. You forget what you don't use

So if you foresee that technology X is smth. you really gonna need in near future and that there will be no time to learn it by doing (i.e. using approach I described above) then it totally makes sense to invest your time and learn it. But keep in mind that if you spent N months learning smth. that you never gonna use it is a waste of time. (unless you really enjoyed learning that)