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Ask HN: How do you juggle time spent on learning vs. time building things?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you juggle time spent on learning vs. time building things?

#21

Post by mrtron »

DTrejo wrote: post #19
mrtron wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read a book on Zen. Approach everything with a "beginner's mind". Never blow through a new tutorial cutting and pasting even if you are very experienced in the area. Take your time, learn as a beginner, but leverage your experience to instantly jump from beginner to expert once you have the necessary domain knowledge.

Is there a specific book you found helpful?

I enjoyed http://www.amazon.ca/Zen-Mind-Beginners-Shunryu-Suzuki/dp/08...

A well written combination biography + philosophy book on Zen.

Re: Ask HN: How do you juggle time spent on learning vs. time building things?

#22

Post by access_denied »

Ixiaus wrote: post #8

I came to a similar conclusion as you have about seven months ago. My conclusion was that 9-to-5 takes far too much time and energy out of my own life; I'm essentially giving all of that time to someone just for the ability to pay bills and enjoy eating out on the weekends. I had very little time to do any of my personal self education or projects (not all of them are programming related either). I chose to resign fr…

The site you would use to market your part-time contracting could later be re-used as a sort of shop for related products, so you turn it into passive income and cash in on your marketing efforts twice.

Re: Ask HN: How do you juggle time spent on learning vs. time building things?

#24

Post by j_baker »

The assumption is that learning things increases your execution time. In the very short term this is true. However, if you'd spent all the time learning the things that you wanted to learn, how much more productive would you be?

It's like Jeff Bezos said:

"I always tell people, if we have a good quarter it's because of the work we did three, four, and five years ago. It's not because we did a good job this quarter."

This is a pattern that I've (anecdotally) noticed in successful entrepreneurs and programmers... the ability to focus on the long term at the expense of the short term (but without sacrificing the short-term).

Long story short, if you are in an employment situation where your employer will not let you spend any more time learning new things, you should consider employment elsewhere.

Re: Ask HN: How do you juggle time spent on learning vs. time building things?

#25

Post by j_baker »

access_denied wrote: post #23

Let's say you absolutely want to stay in 9-5... than I would constantly propose interesting projects inside the company. That way over time I would work on more exciting stuff.

Better yet, prototype interesting projects. Managers love turning down proposals. They are a bit less likely to turn down something that already has working code, even if it's just a proof-of-concept.

Re: Ask HN: How do you juggle time spent on learning vs. time building things?

#26

Post by imp »

I tend to alternate between two extremes. One extreme is "get shit done anyway you know how ASAP!" The other is "learn, explore, take your time, and do things right." I let my own ambitions determine which zone I'm in, and they last from a couple weeks to months. What I learn while I'm in the "take it slow" zone always helps me be more productive in the "do it now" zone. And the do it now zone helps keep me motivated to learn more stuff, and the cycle repeats :)

Re: Ask HN: How do you juggle time spent on learning vs. time building things?

#27

Post by geeko »

imp wrote: post #26

I tend to alternate between two extremes. One extreme is "get shit done anyway you know how ASAP!" The other is "learn, explore, take your time, and do things right." I let my own ambitions determine which zone I'm in, and they last from a couple weeks to months. What I learn while I'm in the "take it slow" zone always helps me be more productive in the "do it now" zone. And the do it now zone helps keep me motivated…

Are you doing anything to nurture these two extremes? Or do they just come naturally to you?

Your comment reminds me of a discussion I had with my cofounder long time ago (yes I have tried the startup path multiple times). We were discussing how this pattern of wildness, of strong desire to produce things follows an almost relaxing, reflecting period. The discussion arose while we were learning about the coding and refactoring cycle during the extreme programming days in Karlsruhe, Germany where I used to study.

Re: Ask HN: How do you juggle time spent on learning vs. time building things?

#28

Post by imp »

geeko wrote: post #27
imp wrote: post #26

I tend to alternate between two extremes. One extreme is "get shit done anyway you know how ASAP!" The other is "learn, explore, take your time, and do things right." I let my own ambitions determine which zone I'm in, and they last from a couple weeks to months. What I learn while I'm in the "take it slow" zone always helps me be more productive in the "do it now" zone. And the do it now zone helps keep me motivated…

Are you doing anything to nurture these two extremes? Or do they just come naturally to you? Your comment reminds me of a discussion I had with my cofounder long time ago (yes I have tried the startup path multiple times). We were discussing how this pattern of wildness, of strong desire to produce things follows an almost relaxing, reflecting period. The discussion arose while we were learning about the coding and r…

No, not anything in particular. It's mostly natural because if I spend too much time in the "just work hard" extreme I get burned out eventually. I'm also too antsy to spend a lot of time in the learning extreme because I like to see concrete results eventually. Since I'm comfortable with my long-run track record of learning and producing, I never let myself feel guilty for doing either extreme.

The only other factor is time of year. I tend to learn during Christmas because when I was in college I used that time for reading and reflecting between semesters. I still get the urge to just sit and read and explore around that time of year.

Re: Ask HN: How do you juggle time spent on learning vs. time building things?

#29

Post by geeko »

j_baker wrote: post #24

The assumption is that learning things increases your execution time. In the very short term this is true. However, if you'd spent all the time learning the things that you wanted to learn, how much more productive would you be? It's like Jeff Bezos said: "I always tell people, if we have a good quarter it's because of the work we did three, four, and five years ago. It's not because we did a good job this quarter."…

In consulting, it's usually not your employer that pushes you. It's your clients. In a startup, it's either your investors or your customer (hopefully). Either way, there's always forces that want you to execute instead of learn. There's no direct visible gain from you learning. It's like climate change. It's important, but noone in power cares.

I totally agree with your long term statement. And I do also agree with you on the fact that just learning without execution renders your learning useless.

The thing is, how do you juggle between these two extremes? @imp notes below:

"I let my own ambitions determine which zone I'm in, and they last from a couple weeks to months."

The cycle seems to come naturally to him. For others like @Ixiaus it takes more conscious effort (I assume, since he quit his job to be able to learn the things which matter to him).

Re: Ask HN: How do you juggle time spent on learning vs. time building things?

#30

Post by osipov »

If you are working in consulting for a big corp which used to be a hardware company, then became a services company and is now trying to be a software company, then you need to get out of consulting. The odds are stacked against you and chances are you'll waste your carrier being pushed around from project to project while being treated like a number.

However, an advantage of a large company is that there are many opportunities to do very different things. Look for job rotation opportunities. Seek out R&D organizations and try to move there. If you are so inclined, look for opportunities in emerging products and try to hop on board to help with marketing, sales, or anything business related.

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