Finding time
Published by Keith Radcliffe,
One of the biggest hurdles I’ve had to face is the biggest one that everyone will face, where do I find the time?
I don’t think there is a one size fits all approach it’s really something you have to sit down with yourself and say ‘Right where and when am I going to dedicate time and effort to learn this stuff?’ So below are just a few pointers that I found works for me.
Grab it when you can
Everyone has their distractions some more than others, I’m a dad to a three year old with number two due literally any day now, my job doesn’t always lend time to focus solely on development work as we need to focus on business priorities whether that work is project focused or I may need to jump into site maintenance content tasks so finding the day to day learning and dev time between work, daily life and family time (and keeping up with The Walking Dead and GoT...) there really isn’t much spare time available.
But there is time if you look for it, spend your lunch looking at tutorials or reading blogs, if your partner dozes off on the sofa take that 20/30 minutes to do some more reading, you might find yourself with some time at the weekend sit down put the music on and write a bit of code or jot that idea down. My point here is that when you start looking your start finding when you can fit learning time in.
Work it in
Some of us will be lucky enough that we can learn on the job, if you can and an opportunity comes up for you to write a bit of code that will also be of benefit to the team or business then do it! Start small, build that library of utility scripts up and before you know it you have accumulated a whole heap time of learning on the fly.
For example are you carrying out manual entry of repetitive copy and paste content, is there a way to automate or bulk do this task with some code? Would the 3 or 4 days it would take you to write an automation script actually be quicker than a manual task that would take 10 days plus you then have that automated script to use and call upon in future? Think outside of the box and make your opportunities worthwhile.
Positive procrastination I may coin this I don't know if its a thing or not ;)
Ok so lets all be honest with ourselves, we are humans, humans procrastinate. Our minds wander, we get bored of the same routine and sometimes just don't feel like it so we look for distraction. Use this to make that extra bit of time, read that blog you bookmarked, search that class library you wanted to understand more, look around for inspiration for a project that might help you focus your learning.
We don't need to spend those endless hours on bookface, Instagram and Twitter, have a flick through but don't get stuck in there! Open up that procrastination time to use it on something worthwhile.
Just start!
I know learning something new can be extremely daunting but it can also be incredibly rewarding. Please don't be put off because you have a busy lifestyle or because you don't think you will ever find the time, you will if you go looking.
Thanks for dropping by,Keith.designerDoesDev
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