One of the worst mistakes I've ever done in my career is that I embraced technologies so much that I became a learning machine for trending and cool technologies even though I didn't see the problem they're trying to solve but they were so much hype around them.
I think that's harmful for two reasons:
- First, that will make your learning journey as a life-time learner so overwhelming and stressful. I bet you do see how infinite the technologies you need to learn and it's breaking you apart.
- Second, you most probably will be making technologies centered products that solve no particular problems that users need to solve, but rather less interesting products around the hype of a new technology.
So what should we do?
For the learning dilemma part, accept the fact that you can't learn every single technology that's coming, whether it's a programming language, a library, a software, a tool or what ever. It doesn't even matter if it's a technology, it could be some concept. You can't learn everything and that's okay. In fact, you're not supposed to.
Embrace the fact that you're trying to solve a particular problem to ease the life of someone. It can sound idealistic but it's real. Sometimes it's obvious but sometimes you have to dig deep to find it.
In fact what we're doing doesn't have a human "side", it's human in its core and that comes natural for me as a product designer but I believe no matter what you're doing you can always be rediscovered.
So from now on, if a technology comes out or became trending, ask yourself this particular question:
Is this going to help me solve the kind of products I'm interested in or does it solve a particular problem that I am having, for my workflow for example?
If not, don't learn it and focus about the technologies or tools you already know. Don't be jack of all trades and master of none! And I'll be talking about that in the next article.
Top comments (11)
That's an important reminder for sure! When my colleagues start diving into the "new stuff" pool, I usually just post this in our Slack.
Hahahaha I love commitstrip :D
hi!
I definitely agree with you but there is a question that comes to my mind every time I find something new that I don't know: how do I know that this new technology is just a trend and will not help me if I don't learn it?
Go to their website and see what's the problem they're trying to solve. Ask some experts, if it's not so clear to you, don't learn it or you can taste it for some very limited time and try to understand it. Try to figure it out, it doesn't matter how, if it doesn't make sense to you, delay learning it even if you want it so much.
I hope I helped you, if not please tell me.
yes, you idea is clear.
thanks for sharing!
Yeah, but that's hard.
It's like asking people to not micro-optimize.
No, it's not that. Perfecting programming is a must if you're a programmer, I'm not saying don't do micro-optimization, but rather don't learn any trendy programming language just because it's cool and trendy and that's hard because we enjoy learning very much. I hope the programming example clarified what I'm trying to say further.
Yeah, but that's what I mean.
Focusing on delivering features is not the path of least resistance :D
I misunderstood then, thank you for your comment Mihail :D
Agree especially the buzzword kind, you really need to dig in deep to think and reflect is this really solving a problem that is painful.
Exactly