Many people in the technology industry struggle with how much personal time they should dedicate towards learning new technologies. I am among one of those people. I am sure that — at one time, or another — you have been as well.
I find that striking a balance with the technologies that you want to learn, the short and long terms goals that you are striving towards, and ensuring that you have time to unplug and “smell the roses”, can be quite tough to orchestrate. I am going to go through these items today and give you some tips on how you can manage it all. Or at least what I am doing, and have done.
What is the cool thing today?
I know that I am a technologist and I want to keep up with the advancements in the industry. As one of my colleagues so eloquently puts it, “projectile technology”. I have a list of things that I do, to ensure that I keep up with the advances in technology that are coming out more rapidly than ever. Here are some of those things:
- List out the technologies that you are interested in learning. Check to see what free training there might be on the internet. I would also consider any internal resources as well. I personally like the virtual labs environments. They are setup for learning, avoids potentially long downloads and complicated installation scripts, and ensures that I don’t have to spend a huge amount of time just getting a system to work.
- Ask around the office to see if anyone else has worked with the technology you want to learn. Working with a mentor is a great way to learn. Once you understand it at a deeper level, you can mentor others, as well.
- If the technology is new, there are probably not many people around who can mentor you. I would recommend organizing some lunch time “brown bag” sessions. You can have a group of people learn the technology, all at once. You will get different perspectives on the best ways to learn and leverage the technology. This does not assume that there is a leader, just that there are people who want to learn the technology who have a starting point. This could be a simple downloaded demo, or streaming video on the topic.
- If computer time is not your thing, I would recommend some type of electronic reader. It can be a great way to bring various mediums (books, articles, blogs, etc.) with you, when you have some spare time.
Failing to plan, is planning to fail
I believe that is one of the most overused statements in time management articles. However, I also feel that it drives a point home. If you do not plan your future, it will probably not go the way you want it to.
One way to ensure that you spend a lot of time learning technologies is to not have a plan. You can waste many hours surfing the internet, going from topic to topic, if you do not have a good plan of action. I have found myself doing that before, and I have to actively stop myself. To ensure that I captured my interest, I would update my learning plan with the topic(s) that I was looking at. That way I could rank the topic(s) that I was reviewing, with respect to the others in my list.
In my experience, I have had the most success creating and sticking to my development plans when I use the following approach:
- Create an initial technical learning plan. This should include both short-term and long-term goals. It is critical to have both as they are equally as important.
- Set aside time to focus on progressing through the plan. I personally recommend an hour a day. Obviously if you have much more time on your hands, you can increase that. However, you want to make sure that you are keeping time to go offline (See next section below)
- In your plan, make sure that you put calendar checks in to ensure that you are moving forward with your plan. I like every 2 weeks. That way I can adjust my learning plan based on my current work and personal situations.
- Keep your plan flexible. I think that the worst thing that someone can do is to not change their plan. If you find a topic is not interesting or is not what you though it was, remove it. Having the topics that you want to learn ranked is a great way to progress methodically through your plan.
- When putting your plan together, make sure that your goals are specific and attainable. I have been to too aggressive in the past and it ended up burning me out. Being overaggressive is almost as bad as not having a plan at all.
Play offline to keep your personal life – well, personal!
I have read various articles on the benefits of having a good work/life balance. For the most part they are true. I find that many of the articles actually talk about “taking the office virtual” with your mobile phones. In my opinion, that is not going offline. That is still carrying your office with you; it is just a smaller form factor than your computer.
Playing offline is not something that I am particular good at. I find that I check my phone quite often to see if what is going at work. I am actively trying different ways to go offline, so that I ensure that I spend time away from technology. Some of the things that I am trying are:
- Dedicating Saturday night as my family night. (I am on the road during the week)
- Spending every other Sunday with extended family. This is typically having lunch together or spending 4-5 hours at a relative’s house.
- I am trying to work out during the week. That does not always happen as work stuff is often in the way. It is a great way to reduce stress and get your mind of work.
- Trying to engage our neighbours to see what we can do to “beautify” our neighbourhood.
- With all the above, I try to have a strict rule of not checking any cell phones. That does not mean that I won’t answer a phone call, I just don’t check email, etc.
Hopefully some of the items that I have listed here will help you have an easier time with some of the time management aspects of your life. I believe that as technologists we sometimes are too eager to put technology in front of everything else. I find that having a good understanding of what you want to learn, creating and maintaining a learning plan, and guaranteeing time for offline activities is a fairly good recipe for success both in your career and your personal life.