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As we all know, being a worker in information technology is dedication to continued learning. Forever and always. No matter your field of focus. Whether it be workstation/os, networking, wireless, servers, storage, security, or maybe multiple of those and more…it is a never ending grind. This honestly applies to any job/industry but I’ll write this post kind of on an I.T. concept.
That grind crosses multiple arenas. For one, there is simply personal growth. We all have something we want to learn because it intrigues us. From what I see from I.T. colleagues is we always have something we just want to learn/play with because we are curious people. We have to keep our brains moving. It might be an older technology or concept but something that sparks our brain and we want to tackle it.
Additionally there is learning to keep up on what’s new. This is a key thing in the I.T. industry because everything is always changing. This is certainly a challenge that kind of crosses paths with the above of being curious about something new to us that intrigues us. On the same note it’s key in our industry to stay up on what’s neat and new and becoming prominent in the industry.
There is another thing that triggers learning. That is our day to day/day job. Having worked in retail, corporate, and consulting you never know what’s going to pop up. Maybe your business is buying a new I.T. product that you need to help integrate. Or maybe transition to a new technology like from a traditional WAN to an SD-WAN solution. As I once had to do add in a TAP-AGG solution to our main network. That required learning that product/solution.
So how do you balance all of these learning area’s at once. It’s challenging for sure because you want to learn what intrigues you, what’s new in the industry, and what’s required of your day to day job tasks. It’s key to keep things straight and separate in a way.
I’m going to continue this post with the assumption you play in all of those arenas. The first thing that is key is time. This can be a tough one. Hopefully if you need to learn something for your job your company will let you set aside time during your day to focus on that. This can also come into play with learning to keep up with industry new trends. That last one is quite dependent on how your employer views emerging technology and keeping it’s staff up to date.
When it comes to the idea of learning new things that intrigue you for personal growth that more likely requires you using your own personal time. My best advice for this is use “down” time to your advantage. That may be your drive to/from work (or other places), lunch time, waking up an hour earlier, sitting in a waiting room (Doctor, car service, etc) for some sit down learning time.
There are multiple ways to leverage all this time. Drives can be a great time for listening to what I’m going to quote/unquote as “podcasts”. This could be a literal podcast, listening to a video such as youtube, udemy, other training platforms (please don’t watch and drive but leverage listening). Lunch and waiting rooms are great for watching video’s. Most videos from companies/training platforms/video bloggers are short and you can get one or two in.
We all have a life outside of this industry. Some of us have significant others and kids to take care of that may have functions going on in the evening. Family to meet up with from time to time for different events. Friends and Family to meet up with for a beverage or dinner. Sports and hobbies are a thing for us all. Maybe even a show/sport you like to watch. For me a key is to walk my dog as A: it’s good for me to get some exercise, B: it’s good for her as she is a senior dog so it keeps her moving and her joints health, and C: it’s a great time to clear my mind and even get the occasion interaction with neighbors and their kids. Don’t give any of that up. For me, I try and spend 30 minutes before bed reading something, but don’t stay up too late and be tired the next day because that doesn’t help.
Now to keep balance between studying multiple things set a schedule. Maybe that extra hour in the morning is the “keep up with the industry” time. Then your driving time/waiting rooms/lunch time is for the “what I want to learn that intrigues me” time. Since it’s a “just for you/fun” learning effort those distracting times can be good as you don’t have to be AS focused. Hopefully if you need to learn something for work you get that time as part of your job to learn it. The key is to set certain time’s for certain learning tasks to keep them separate and not be jumping back and forth between focuses during a sprint.
With that, keep boards on apps such as Trello. Break down what you are learning into chunks and keep track of it. That may be chapters in a book, videos, topics on an exam blueprint, or sections of a vendors training outline. I like to use Onenote and keep notebooks broken down into sections for whatever I’m trying to learn. I know some people prefer to do hand written notes in notebooks as it helps them with retention writing it down. Do what works for you but try to keep track. Keep a schedule and mark things off as you complete them.
The TL;DR is that in this industry there is always something to learn from some reason or another and often we have to juggle learning multiple things at the same time. This is fine but you have to dedicate time to each and use that time to focus as opposed to bouncing back and forth between things you are learning. You can’t tie your shoes and rake leaves at the same time. You need to give them each their own committed time.
