MOT Bloggers Club October 2023

How do you approach continuous learning?

This is my first post in a long time. Lots of interesting life stuff happened over the past few months. Including my wedding and our “Family-moon” adventure. I’m leaning on the MoT Bloggers club (as usual) to help get me back writing. Getting started again can be hard.

How much do I want / need to learn?

the thing could be an approach, tool, technology, domain, etc

This question helps me figure out what my learning goal is, and from there what route I can take. It’s classic “it depends” territory. Sometimes I need just enough knowledge to know a thing exists, other times I need to know how to use the thing in my team. I like to use skill levels to help me define the depth I might need. I use a modified version of Gov UK Skill levels for digital, data and technology roles.

Skill levels

Generally, going from “no Awareness” to “Awareness” should be simple enough. Things like introductions or overviews to “the thing”, often are enough. As you spend more time using the thing you’ll move into “Working” and beyond.

I use this as a guide rather than being overly strict with the levels. “All models are useful …” etc.

  • Awareness
    • You know about the skill
    • Have an appreciation of how it is applied in the environment
  • Working
    • You can apply your knowledge and experience of the skill including tools and techniques.
    • You can adopt those most appropriate for the environment, with support.
  • Practitioner
    • Share your knowledge and experience of this skill with others e.g. tools and techniques
    • Define most appropriate thing for the environment
  • Champion
    • Knowledge and experience
    • Recognised specialist
    • Adviser: user needs, generation of ideas, methods and tools
    • Lead or guide others in better practices and new ideas

What works well for me?

I like to consume different formats of information, and find the variety helps me learn. This ranges from; blogs, documentation, videos, podcasts, training courses, to random chats with people. I find a decent foundation (awareness), means I’m primed to take in more information. Thankfully there’s lots of great content out there for people to consume, so I can easily check something out, and move on if it doesn’t suit me.

I’ve had my best successes when I align my learning with a goal. As I’ve already alluded to. A recent-ish example is how I learned more about Docker so that I could solve a specific problem. I’d worked with Docker for a few years at that point, but generally just used the basics. Having a specific problem to solve helped me learn more without getting overwhelmed.

I’m guilty of being inconsistent with my “deliberate learning”. Having goals, helps me figure out a path forward, and with that make some regular time to work towards the goal. As with most things consistency is key, and that’s where I tend to fall down with my continuous learning.

What support do I use?

I try to read and learn from interesting people. Often saving things I’ve found useful into a small repo references. I like to see what pathways others have already created, and see how they work for me. Some are just what I’m looking, while others I cherry pick parts.

For example: