LearnInPublic01.log

Since I started my professional career, I have always wondered how I would establish a sustainable learning system. First, I had to understand how I learn. I had many not-so-good behaviors such as just consuming information first before I actually identified missing pieces in my knowledge base.

During the process of understanding my own learning habits, I got to experiment with different learning strategies. For instance, my coworker and I piloted a three-month-long program, 'Sunday Learning', after I was inspired by a career talk given by Sophia Velastegui to young Korean professionals at Microsoft. To maintain her personal learning even in a crazily busy schedule, she allocates 2 hours of her early Sunday morning (ex:6am-8zm) solely for her personal learning time. In a similar manner, my coworker and I woke up around 5:30-5:45 am and started our own personal learning from 6 am to 8 am.

At that time, the goal of this pilot program was to test whether I would be able to build a personal learning habit and stick with it for a longer-term in a more systematic manner. Surprisingly, sticking with the habit itself was not challenging. Challenges came from unexpected areas.

First, I was not sure whether I was learning effectively. I was taking a Udemy class about c++. Don't get me wrong- the class itself was really good. It has interactive components such as assignments and quizzes. But I felt like the whole process of following the course was not very active learning. I was basically consuming the knowledge of others, not actively making it mine. My measurement of success was the progress I made in that online course. But that measurement didn't capture how effectively I was learning. I need to have a different way of measuring my learning.

Second, I somehow always thought that I had to have a theme in my learning. Basically, choosing one topic and learning deeper about the topic. When I started my pilot program, I was a developer in Windows. As such having a deep understanding of c++ was necessary. Also, my curiosity about this particular language was pretty high. I wanted to answer all the 'whys' I had while I was reading Windows code. I wanted to theoretically understand C++ and wanted to apply my knowledge to my work.

Hence, taking a C++ online class was really fun - only in the beginning. As I got a bit more comfortable with C++, and my work project was requiring a different skill set other than c++, my interest level in c++ went down. I wanted to explore other topics. Sometimes, I had a different topic that I wanted to explore more in my personal time each week. But I was not sure that my learning would be effective if I let myself use my Sunday learning time to explore different topics every time. I just felt that option was not systematic and therefore it would be challenging for me to sustain my learning system.

As such, after this three-month-long pilot program, I spent some time finding that one topic that would make me keep going, still help me to do better at work, and has some hands-on learning opportunities. But finding the ideal topic was really challenging.

While I was thinking really hard about what to learn next, I stumbled into swyz's post, Learn In Public. There, the author talked about a faster way of learning - learning in public. The post itself was more about the importance of sharing one's learning in public as this tactic helps oneself to learn faster. Strictly speaking, this post itself didn't help me to reach the 'aha' moment. Two other posts that were linked in the post were the ones that provided me important answers to my challenges I tried to solve; one was Learning Gears, and the other was How to Learn in Private.

In Learning Gears, swxy defines three modes that he observed from people who successfully did learning in public. One of the modes is 'explorer'. The explorer's main problem to solve is that she does not know what she does not know. Hence, the explorer explores different areas/interests and documents the learning journey like notes to herself. I realized this 'explorer' is the mode that I am currently in.

From Learning In Private, the author shares effective ways of learning in private. One way that I found out working well for me is very similar to the Feynman Technique. First, I start with the questions that I would like to answer. I write a bunch of questions I have asked myself. Then I try to answer these questions by myself. During this process, I do two things. (1) I shuffle the order of questions so when I answer those questions in order, my answer is presented in a more logical way. (2) I identify any knowledge gap while I am trying to answer my own questions, and come up with better questions. Here, the better questions meaning actionable questions which I can use to search online :)

These two swyz's two articles helped me a lot to come up with my action plan for my personal learning.
(1) I am going to be in the explorer mode in my personal learning. As an explorer, I am going to pick one topic per week, and I am going to explorer it during the week.
(2) The success metrics of my learning are now going to be like the following:
Was I able to answer all my own questions?
Did I write snippets/notes during my exploration phase?
Can I explain the topic that I explored effectively to others?

In summary,

• Every week, I am going to explorer one topic. It can be the same as the previous week. The topic does not need to be technical.
• Considering my daily schedule, it is most likely that I am going to do heavy research on one of the weekends, and do some light research during weekdays. As of now, I am going to designate, my Sunday as the main research day. And I am going to spend at least 30 min every day to do further research on my topic.
• Every week, I am going to write a public note on what I learned for the week. This note doesn't need to be perfect as it is just an artifact during the intermediate process. Tag this type of notes as 'InProcess', and add a mindmap based on what I learn.
• When I feel like I answer all of my own questions and I feel like I reach the point where I can explain a certain concept/ a topic, I am going to make a public post on that topic. The post should be very easily understandable by anyone. Tag the post with 'final', and add a one-page mindmap.
  • At this point, I think creating a final post and a final mindmap will take a week.

Those above-mentioned rules are the rules that I can think of now. As I run my #LearningInPublic project, I hope I can find a more specific execution plan that works for me.

I am really excited about this new learning opportunity!

This week I am going to learn about Kusto.