2016 Update
Well I’m about 4 months into my re-invent project and I realized a few of things.
I’m busier than I thought I was.
Learning something new is not as easy as it sounds.
I don’t have to learn as deeply as I originally thought.
So that being said lets take a look at each of these.
I’m busier than I thought. Yes well duh. But I knew that going into this little experiment, but as usual I under estimated the extent of what I was doing and over estimated my ability to juggle it all. I started well and with great intentions, but life got the best of me but I have learned some valuable things in the process and some interesting stuff as well as refined what I should learn.
Learning something new is not always as easy as it seems. I jumped right in and signed up for a free on line course (that was the idea right). I quickly learned that I was in over my head, so I signed up for a more basic course just so I could begin to understand the course that was on the list to study. In the process of the new (lower) course I realized that I don’t think the way the language I was trying learn does. I was over thinking it and it was really a lot simpler than I was making it. So it;s not always easy to retrain your mind to think differently.
In the process of following my list I found a lot of interesting stuff through some of the articles and blogs I was reading. Some things that led me down a similar but different path. So in the process I learned that what I was trying to do, or what I might be good at does not require all of the technical learning I was trying to put myself through. Basically I’m a front end user not a back end programmer and their are a lot of basic programs or tools that are already readily available. If I simply spent some time learning or mastering those tools it would put me in a good position to help most small to medium business or non-profit which was my original goal.
So, what I’ve done is adjusted my original goals to include learning some of those tools instead of the deeper programming languages, I’ll leave that to the experts. I’m still following through with the process (that was one of the original challenges) and trying to be flexible along the way to see what new avenues it will open up. I’ll continue to report back as we move toward the end of the experiment.
But what about you. It’s the start of a new year. What goals have you set for yourself what new thing are you going to learn this year? If you don’t set the goal you won’t start. If you don’t start you won’t learn. But if you do start it may open up a whole new arena of ideas that you hadn’t considered before starting. And that new idea may lead to something truly exciting. But it requires that you set a goal and get started. So what new thing are you going to learn? The choice is yours.