Learn, Baby, Learn

Francis Shanahan has an interesting response to the “everyone needs to learn how to code” contingent — even better is learning to learn effectively,

The one consistent thing in that time [Shanahan’s 15-year career] has been the need to learn. Many times I have landed in situations where I have known nothing about the problem space and had to learn on the job. It’s almost like a natural reflex at this point.

In my view if you want to future-proof your career, figure out how to learn. Explore your learning styles. Try different activities. Play. Learn new technologies, new tools, new industries, new business problems. You have to get comfortable with leaving your comfort zone. Be the early expert. Go out and figure something out. Work on something you’ve never worked on before. Share something with others. When you teach you learn twice. Figure it out.

This, a thousand times. I’m always amazed how many people are very good at the narrow range of problems they’ve spent years studying, but as soon as they have to solve a new class of problems, they are completely unable to formulate a reasonable plan to learn how to tackle this new domain.

Be curious about the world around you and never stop learning, both habitually and intentionally.

 

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