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> Taking the time to master your tools is a COMPOUNDING benefit this is problematic, and the problem is made obvious when you take this fact to its natural con

> Taking the time to master your tools is a COMPOUNDING benefit this is problematic, and the problem is made obvious when you take this fact to its natural conclusion. are you juggling credit cards to simultaneously maximize the benefits of opening new cards with promotional offers, limiting your interest rates, and maximizing your credit score? have you investigated the air quality of your working and living spaces? do you know the optimal concentrations of O2 and CO2? do you have plants around you that provide other benefits besides air quality? do you even know what those compounding benefits are? what about your spinal posture? do you know about wrist shoulder hip and knee angles? do you know how this impacts bloodflow and neuromuscular activation? maybe you just run and/or stretch for 30 minutes a day and call it good enough? > I have co-workers like this: people who don't bother to learn no matter how smart you are, youve got finite bandwidth and a finite time to spend it. everyone picks most things they dont bother to learn.

danielecook 7y ago
I agree that people have finite bandwidth but we are talking about people investing in skills that are useful for the primary function of their job. It’s the first thing to consider if you want to improve your productivity at work.
- roenxi 7y ago
  I'm a very enthusiastic worker most of the time, but I have never been rewarded for improving my own productivity at work. Usually improving my own productivity is because of a certain stubborn and personal distaste for intent that can't be backed by action. I can see why people should improve their productivity at work in the abstract, but I have to admit there isn't much tangible in it for them. They will work 8 hour days however productive they are. Less productive workers are if anything more likely to clock out on time.
  - piercebot 7y ago
    Maybe you've never been extrinsically rewarded, but surely you've derived some kind of intrinsic reward for improving your productivity? A sense of pride or joy? :)
    - Jestar342 7y ago
      Resentment and contempt for the system that does not reward such self improvement which, by the same virtue, means those who do not self improve are the ones rewarded with not expending the effort to improve. So finding a new job is usually the order of the day. Doing "just enough" to get paid is the optimal course for the majority of jobs. Finding jobs that extrinsicly reward continuous improvement is hard, probably because rewarding continuous improvement is hard to do - measuring, expectations, reasonable demands, etc. Are not easy.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- Retric 7y ago
  I don’t put a very high priority on my job. As long as I stay better than average that’s enough for me. I am not trying to make top tier income as the median income for an experienced developer is plenty to hit diminishing returns. Simply staying focused on work at work, solving whatever the current issues are, and going home is fine. Languages, tools, and best practices are constantly evolving, staying current is already a significant treadmill adding mastery of everything is an endless time sink.
- take_a_breath 7y ago
  Pain in your spine, constant headaches or lung problems would also hurt work productivity. Focusing on first-order problems could lead to gains both at work and home.
  - rimlicker 7y ago
    We get it, you're more fit than your cubical neighbour
- kryogen1c 7y ago
  >useful for the primary function of their job the number of things that affect your job performance are endless and it is arbitrary where you choose to stop improving. not only is it arbitrary where you draw the line, its arbitrary that you chose to optimize your job in the first place. these things are non-self-evident choices based on personal and societal feelings rooted in first-principle thinking about the meaning of existence. "invest in your exponential job growth" glosses over some pretty significant life choices that are more important to recognize than saving 30 minutes a day at the office.
  - klmadfejno 7y ago
    This reads to me like someone telling you that you could shave 30 minutes off your commute, and then justifying that you don't have time to look at a map. Plenty of things are very easy to learn with large payoffs; some of which are so basic and so necessary that it is criminally negligible to proceed with such vast incompetence for someone in the trade. E.g. doctors spending no time to learn about new drugs and prescribing them.
  - piercebot 7y ago
    This is a useful reminder; thank you. It's true that my original comment was made in the context of having virtually all of my needs already met, and being far along the path to self-actualization.
otikik 7y ago
Boom! Very well said.
bitwize 7y ago
This is Hackernews. You're not one of the cool kids if your body and home aren't littered with sensors to gather data on -- and optimize -- every facet of your life.
Fjolsvith 7y ago
In a similar vein, I try to hack my lifestyle for possible upgrades. Anything I can change that will improve the experience for my family and myself is game. For example, I installed a personal weather system on the house so we could dress appropriately without needing to check outside first. Or, bought a Keurig coffee maker to reduce the time and effort required to make the morning joe. I call these hacks, "lifestyle upgrades."
klmadfejno 7y ago
This reads pointlessly pedantic to me. You're throwing out examples of things that might actually be important, but most people probably don't think is that important. This is very different from things which people know are important and do frequently, but don't care to learn how to do it properly. Plenty of people choose not to learn their tools, and would not choose to do so even if time were unconstrained. The inability of people to maximally use all tools available to them is a separate issue, and not an especially important one.
- _jal 7y ago
  But that is precisely the point. You're complaining that people don't meet some arbitrary level of expertise in their tooling, which is your personal metric. Not everyone shares your concerns. They may well be concentrating on posture, because _that is a very important thing to concentrate on_ if one has certain issues. Or they may just not consider their job taking them 5 more minutes to perform to be a problem, and they'd rather think about what they're building in their garage, or their kids. "Why doesn't everyone care about the things that I care about" is a very good, very difficult, question to try to answer for yourself.
  - klmadfejno 7y ago
    That is a separate point. The point I was saying was not relevant was "no matter how smart you are, youve got finite bandwidth and a finite time to spend it." This implies that people are not improving on things because of finite capacity to do so, which is sometimes true, but really just an edge case. You're saying people don't need to care about X, which is true. However, if you choose to spend 10 hours building a pile of blocks, every day, rather than spending 10 minutes learning how to turn on the BLOCKMASTER 9000, you're just being obstinate. Hyperbole and arguments to your personal choice of block building aesthetic aside, there's a large class of problem for which the effort required to both improve one's capabilities and execute the task is much lower than the effort require to execute the task to begin. No matter how much you care about your kids, and how little you care about building blocks, if you must build that tower, it is beneficial to learn how to use the BLOCKMASTER 9000. Pursuing the latest and greatest tooling mastery for incremental gains usually doesn't fall into this category. You don't need to pursue improvement endlessly. But say, people who refuse to learn how to use a debugger, but spend a great deal of time debugging? People who only share code over email while the team tells them to use git? People who only use global variables in painfully uncomfortable circumstances? If you're coming to work and refuse to invest in such things... it's fully plausible that you are a 0x or -1x programmer. Same for almost any other domain of work. You don't need to care about anything. The reason you improve is because you want to be better. If you don't want to be better, and are currently bad, there's at least going to be a large social reason why you may want to change.
tartoran 7y ago
When those tools’ lifecycle is 2 years at most fewer people are willing invest the effort to master them and instead learn on a need basis. If there was a guaranteed lifecycle the benefits would indeed compound and pay off handsomely. For example I worked on an Angular project and invested a bit of time to learn the framework and certain libraries. I completed the project and it was successful, but my new projects aren’t to be done in angular anymore and I can’t apply all this knowledge, at least for the time being. Am I glad I learned this? Sure. But, this theme has repeated so much in my career that I am reluctant to jump onto a new thing. Instead I doubled down on F# and started learning scheme.
- bonestamp2 7y ago
  I'd argue that Angular is just a framework and the tool is whatever you use to hammer your angular code together. Your text editor/IDE of choice will probably outlast your use of Angular and therefore OP would be suggesting it is worth the time learning how to maximize your effectiveness with the IDE.
  - tartoran 7y ago
    The way I see frameworks is as tools in themselves, but I do see your point, you're probably technically right. But the example doesn't diminish the idea. The ever changing software landscape makes it hard to master things that come and go. Plus, Angular comes with a bunch of tools in itself. If you take a break for a while you'll have to re-learn the new ways of doing things a few versions later. This is not only taxing, but makes one reluctant whether to invest the time in it or not, and the learning process is a bit encumbered by the idea that it all may go to waste soon-ish. The reality was that even older tools proved to be useful to me as I had to pick up and maintain older projects and having learned that it made it easier. But this may vary from case to case. Moreover, when something new comes out, everybody is hyping it and when we start using it in my work place, my gut feeling tells me to wait for v2 or v3 or so, such that I don't have to deal with the many confusing changes that take place in the few iterations. But I do that just because I had some bad experience in the past. Others break their teeth with the same frustration that I had. They too may build their reluctance as I did.
derefr 7y ago
> are you juggling credit cards to simultaneously maximize the benefits of opening new cards with promotional offers, limiting your interest rates, and maximizing your credit score? I mean, I'm not personally doing that, because that's a bunch of manual work; but if I found about an API that I could use to automate doing that, I'd probably budget myself 30-or-so man-hours to trying to set something like that up on top of such an API. > have you investigated the air quality of your working and living spaces? Yes; I even bought a CO2 meter. I was feeling ill whenever I closed the windows or when there was no wind, and I wanted to eliminate obvious potential causes. Toxic mold was another possible cause.
sanderjd 7y ago
Thank you for this comment. I often have trouble articulating why I would rather not put any time into certain things, and this "limited bandwidth" argument is exactly the right one.

danielecook 7y ago

I agree that people have finite bandwidth but we are talking about people investing in skills that are useful for the primary function of their job. It’s the first thing to consider if you want to improve your productivity at work.

roenxi 7y ago
I'm a very enthusiastic worker most of the time, but I have never been rewarded for improving my own productivity at work. Usually improving my own productivity is because of a certain stubborn and personal distaste for intent that can't be backed by action. I can see why people should improve their productivity at work in the abstract, but I have to admit there isn't much tangible in it for them. They will work 8 hour days however productive they are. Less productive workers are if anything more likely to clock out on time.
- piercebot 7y ago
  Maybe you've never been extrinsically rewarded, but surely you've derived some kind of intrinsic reward for improving your productivity? A sense of pride or joy? :)
  - Jestar342 7y ago
    Resentment and contempt for the system that does not reward such self improvement which, by the same virtue, means those who do not self improve are the ones rewarded with not expending the effort to improve. So finding a new job is usually the order of the day. Doing "just enough" to get paid is the optimal course for the majority of jobs. Finding jobs that extrinsicly reward continuous improvement is hard, probably because rewarding continuous improvement is hard to do - measuring, expectations, reasonable demands, etc. Are not easy.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
Retric 7y ago
I don’t put a very high priority on my job. As long as I stay better than average that’s enough for me. I am not trying to make top tier income as the median income for an experienced developer is plenty to hit diminishing returns. Simply staying focused on work at work, solving whatever the current issues are, and going home is fine. Languages, tools, and best practices are constantly evolving, staying current is already a significant treadmill adding mastery of everything is an endless time sink.
take_a_breath 7y ago
Pain in your spine, constant headaches or lung problems would also hurt work productivity. Focusing on first-order problems could lead to gains both at work and home.
- rimlicker 7y ago
  We get it, you're more fit than your cubical neighbour
kryogen1c 7y ago
>useful for the primary function of their job the number of things that affect your job performance are endless and it is arbitrary where you choose to stop improving. not only is it arbitrary where you draw the line, its arbitrary that you chose to optimize your job in the first place. these things are non-self-evident choices based on personal and societal feelings rooted in first-principle thinking about the meaning of existence. "invest in your exponential job growth" glosses over some pretty significant life choices that are more important to recognize than saving 30 minutes a day at the office.
- klmadfejno 7y ago
  This reads to me like someone telling you that you could shave 30 minutes off your commute, and then justifying that you don't have time to look at a map. Plenty of things are very easy to learn with large payoffs; some of which are so basic and so necessary that it is criminally negligible to proceed with such vast incompetence for someone in the trade. E.g. doctors spending no time to learn about new drugs and prescribing them.
- piercebot 7y ago
  This is a useful reminder; thank you. It's true that my original comment was made in the context of having virtually all of my needs already met, and being far along the path to self-actualization.

otikik 7y ago

Boom! Very well said.

bitwize 7y ago

This is Hackernews. You're not one of the cool kids if your body and home aren't littered with sensors to gather data on -- and optimize -- every facet of your life.

Fjolsvith 7y ago

In a similar vein, I try to hack my lifestyle for possible upgrades. Anything I can change that will improve the experience for my family and myself is game. For example, I installed a personal weather system on the house so we could dress appropriately without needing to check outside first. Or, bought a Keurig coffee maker to reduce the time and effort required to make the morning joe. I call these hacks, "lifestyle upgrades."

klmadfejno 7y ago

This reads pointlessly pedantic to me. You're throwing out examples of things that might actually be important, but most people probably don't think is that important. This is very different from things which people know are important and do frequently, but don't care to learn how to do it properly. Plenty of people choose not to learn their tools, and would not choose to do so even if time were unconstrained. The inability of people to maximally use all tools available to them is a separate issue, and not an especially important one.

_jal 7y ago
But that is precisely the point. You're complaining that people don't meet some arbitrary level of expertise in their tooling, which is your personal metric. Not everyone shares your concerns. They may well be concentrating on posture, because _that is a very important thing to concentrate on_ if one has certain issues. Or they may just not consider their job taking them 5 more minutes to perform to be a problem, and they'd rather think about what they're building in their garage, or their kids. "Why doesn't everyone care about the things that I care about" is a very good, very difficult, question to try to answer for yourself.
- klmadfejno 7y ago
  That is a separate point. The point I was saying was not relevant was "no matter how smart you are, youve got finite bandwidth and a finite time to spend it." This implies that people are not improving on things because of finite capacity to do so, which is sometimes true, but really just an edge case. You're saying people don't need to care about X, which is true. However, if you choose to spend 10 hours building a pile of blocks, every day, rather than spending 10 minutes learning how to turn on the BLOCKMASTER 9000, you're just being obstinate. Hyperbole and arguments to your personal choice of block building aesthetic aside, there's a large class of problem for which the effort required to both improve one's capabilities and execute the task is much lower than the effort require to execute the task to begin. No matter how much you care about your kids, and how little you care about building blocks, if you must build that tower, it is beneficial to learn how to use the BLOCKMASTER 9000. Pursuing the latest and greatest tooling mastery for incremental gains usually doesn't fall into this category. You don't need to pursue improvement endlessly. But say, people who refuse to learn how to use a debugger, but spend a great deal of time debugging? People who only share code over email while the team tells them to use git? People who only use global variables in painfully uncomfortable circumstances? If you're coming to work and refuse to invest in such things... it's fully plausible that you are a 0x or -1x programmer. Same for almost any other domain of work. You don't need to care about anything. The reason you improve is because you want to be better. If you don't want to be better, and are currently bad, there's at least going to be a large social reason why you may want to change.

tartoran 7y ago

When those tools’ lifecycle is 2 years at most fewer people are willing invest the effort to master them and instead learn on a need basis. If there was a guaranteed lifecycle the benefits would indeed compound and pay off handsomely. For example I worked on an Angular project and invested a bit of time to learn the framework and certain libraries. I completed the project and it was successful, but my new projects aren’t to be done in angular anymore and I can’t apply all this knowledge, at least for the time being. Am I glad I learned this? Sure. But, this theme has repeated so much in my career that I am reluctant to jump onto a new thing. Instead I doubled down on F# and started learning scheme.

bonestamp2 7y ago
I'd argue that Angular is just a framework and the tool is whatever you use to hammer your angular code together. Your text editor/IDE of choice will probably outlast your use of Angular and therefore OP would be suggesting it is worth the time learning how to maximize your effectiveness with the IDE.
- tartoran 7y ago
  The way I see frameworks is as tools in themselves, but I do see your point, you're probably technically right. But the example doesn't diminish the idea. The ever changing software landscape makes it hard to master things that come and go. Plus, Angular comes with a bunch of tools in itself. If you take a break for a while you'll have to re-learn the new ways of doing things a few versions later. This is not only taxing, but makes one reluctant whether to invest the time in it or not, and the learning process is a bit encumbered by the idea that it all may go to waste soon-ish. The reality was that even older tools proved to be useful to me as I had to pick up and maintain older projects and having learned that it made it easier. But this may vary from case to case. Moreover, when something new comes out, everybody is hyping it and when we start using it in my work place, my gut feeling tells me to wait for v2 or v3 or so, such that I don't have to deal with the many confusing changes that take place in the few iterations. But I do that just because I had some bad experience in the past. Others break their teeth with the same frustration that I had. They too may build their reluctance as I did.

derefr 7y ago

> are you juggling credit cards to simultaneously maximize the benefits of opening new cards with promotional offers, limiting your interest rates, and maximizing your credit score? I mean, I'm not personally doing that, because that's a bunch of manual work; but if I found about an API that I could use to automate doing that, I'd probably budget myself 30-or-so man-hours to trying to set something like that up on top of such an API. > have you investigated the air quality of your working and living spaces? Yes; I even bought a CO2 meter. I was feeling ill whenever I closed the windows or when there was no wind, and I wanted to eliminate obvious potential causes. Toxic mold was another possible cause.

sanderjd 7y ago

Thank you for this comment. I often have trouble articulating why I would rather not put any time into certain things, and this "limited bandwidth" argument is exactly the right one.