Continuous Learning Strategies for Successful Developers

Creating Your Learning System

After setting your roadmap and goals, shift your focus to creating your learning system. Remember, goals are about the outcomes you want to reach, while systems are the steps that will get you there.

In Atomic Habits, James Clear claims that you fall to the level of your systems rather than rising to the level of your goals. If you’re having trouble changing your learning habits, it’s not your fault; the problem is in your system.

Here are some suggestions for creating your own learning system:

When you try to piece together complex parts of code without a solid understanding of the fundamentals, you’ll make complex mistakes. Even if you find the solutions for those mistakes, you won’t know how to apply them. So even if you know a good bit about the topic, go over the basics before proceeding.

To put this into practice, take the learning plan you outlined and divide it into sections. Pick a topic from each section for your highlight each day or once a week. This keeps your attention on your learning goals and keeps you from getting sucked into your to-do list.

Atomic Habits supports this concept. It claims that the two most common cues to build a habit are time and location. By setting a specific time and location for your studying, it’s easier to overcome reluctance or procrastination.

• Start with the basics: Don’t attempt to climb Everest first; you’ll become depressed and give up. Learning the basics will make it much simpler to deal with the more challenging situations.

  When you try to piece together complex parts of code without a solid understanding of the fundamentals, you’ll make complex mistakes. Even if you find the solutions for those mistakes, you won’t know how to apply them. So even if you know a good bit about the topic, go over the basics before proceeding.

• Benefit from Pareto’s Rule: According to the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80-20 Rule, you usually see 80% of your success from 20% of your efforts. When learning something new, identify the 20%: topics that will help you grasp 80% of the subject. Focus on those first to see the biggest effect. After that, you can gradually inspect the rest of the subject.
• Pick a daily highlight: In the book, Make Time, the authors presented a productivity trick known as the daily highlight. Every day, you pick just one thing to be the highlight of the day. You only concentrate on studying that one subject each day.

  To put this into practice, take the learning plan you outlined and divide it into sections. Pick a topic from each section for your highlight each day or once a week. This keeps your attention on your learning goals and keeps you from getting sucked into your to-do list.

• Block your time: According to the time-blocking concept, you should schedule a block of time for any important task you need to do. You can take the daily highlight rule a step further and block a specific time to complete your daily highlight in your calendar.

  Atomic Habits supports this concept. It claims that the two most common cues to build a habit are time and location. By setting a specific time and location for your studying, it’s easier to overcome reluctance or procrastination.

Now that you have a system set up for studying, it’s time to create a support system to help you keep track of what you learned in the future.

Building Your Learning Support System

Your support system is a collection of resources you can consult when you want to learn something new or review information you have already gathered about a subject. Two important elements of your learning support system are your resource list and your cheat sheets list. Next, you’ll see how to create both lists.

• The resource list: In this list, you’ll include any sources you find helpful for the subject you want to study. These could include personal blogs, online courses, books on the internet, YouTube channels, apps or online tools. Also add links to your online accounts and projects to this list to make it easier to access them. Make a list of such websites in your preferred note-taking app or bookmark them in your browser.
• The cheat sheets list: Summarizing what you’ve learned is one of the finest strategies to cement information in your memory. This list also serves as a helpful reference if you want to return to the subject in the future.

Once you’ve created these valuable resources, use your favorite notes app to keep both lists organized and available everywhere. Use the websites’ highlighting tools to keep a reference list for the key information you acquired.

Next, you’ll get an overview of how to develop the art of practicing effectively to retain information long-term.

Cultivating the Skill of Learning by Doing

Of course, it’s important to learn the theory behind the new skills you’re trying to gain — but if you want to retain that information moving forward, you need to put that theory into practice. To make skills stick, nothing beats actually using them.

Practicing while you learn is crucial for several reasons:

• Firstly, it helps you understand the concepts and techniques you learned at a deeper level, making it easier for you to remember them.
• Secondly, it enables you to recognize and fix any errors or misunderstandings you could have, improving the quality of your work.
• Practicing also lets you show off your knowledge by including the personal projects you’ve developed in your resume and profiles.
• Finally, it helps you build your problem-solving skills, enabling you to tackle more complex challenges as you progress in your learning.

The best way to develop your skills is to use them in a personal project that you’re passionate about. Start simple, then advance to more challenging projects that are popular in your business or field.

Pair coding is another good way to strengthen your skills. Find a partner and work on your projects in pairs. This will let you share information and improve your performance.