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Ask HN: What to learn and where to focus your time and attention?
I a software engineer with 9 years of experience, mostly in Java/Python space. Recently I started learning C for fun. I was beginning to enjoy it. Then someone claimed I need to know AngularJS, so I tried that. Suddenly in an interview I was asked if I had ever read 'Clean Code' book (which I hadn't). Another friend said I should learn a cloud service for web app hosting, so I delved into Google App and Compute engine. My boss said Android is hot and I should pick it up, I immediately installed Android studio and tried working on it.
Now I feel stuck and in a quagmire. I have a problem of attention deficit and this quandary is causing me lose sleep. I am passionate about technology and don't mind learning anything, literally anything. But where to focus time and efforts is something I have never ever been able to figure out. The result is that I know very little about a lot of things (very very little), but nothing substantial about almost anything. This is driving me crazy. Any suggestions from anyone who faced this?
- jtfairbank 12y agoWell certainly you know quite a bit about Java / Python. I suggest setting up a micro experiment plan to try each area of interest out, and then based on qualitative ("I enjoyed it") and quantitative ("I have ideas to further my interest", "I actually spent time doing this") results delve deeper. This structured approach should allow you to try many things and pick a few to focus on in the longer term without feeling overwhelmed. Recommended reading: http://privatelist.findyourdreamjob.com/what-top-performers-know-about-passion/ http://privatelist.findyourdreamjob.com/what-top-performers-...
- sidcool 12y agoThanks for your kind words.
- BFay 12y agoI know the exact feeling! Sometimes I'm paralyzed by the huge amount of choices of things I'd like to learn. It seems to carry across disciplines - I'm passionate about music and audio, and the more I read it seems the less I know, I start reading DSP books and then realize I've missed a lot of the math prerequisites and try to study that, then I'll get sidetracked looking at something like computer vision or computational geometry. It's nice to be familiar with all of these subjects, but I fall short of actually learning the material deeply or doing anything useful with the knowledge. I can't say I have great advice for you (or myself). Maybe we just need to look at things differently - being interested in things is a good problem to have, and having anxiety over it won't help. Also, committing on paper seems to help me sometimes - if I can focus on just doing the things I write down, I can get a lot done. It's like there's more time in the day when I actually have a schedule set.
- sidcool 12y agoI am trying an approach wherein I will give 2 weeks to a technology. If I find it interesting and worth while in the first few days, I will proceed, else will abandon for something new.
- ozuvedi 12y agofeels good to know I'm not alone. thanks for asking :)
- bwe42 12y agoWhat helps me is to focus on finishing small projects or tasks. Whenever I want to learn a new technology or tool, I first come up with a tiny project I want to accomplish with that. The project has to be small and have the appropriate level of difficulty. That way I continue to be productive, and actually using something (instead of just reading about it) makes it very soon obvious if I like something or not. Then it's just a matter of following whatever interests me.