Category: Learning

Insomnia Log 7

arthurhovinc

It’s that time of the night when the only thing I can think to do is write. This seems to regularly happen after a decent streak of nights of going to bed “on time”. Maybe I feel defeated about missing “bed time” one night and just stay up with an attitude of apathy. I don’t think that’s all of it, because I’m not yawning or feeling that heavy sack-of-sand feeling in my head, so I’m also not physically tired.

I’ve got The 88 stuck in my head but I’m happy to have them as guests. OC is OK with me. Before that I was listening to how quiet it was in this room. I couldn’t tell if what I was hearing was coming from my head or the space around me. Sort of like how when it’s dark enough black looks black with your eyes opened or closed. Sort of like how dark it is in the room except for this lighted screen.

A mentor of mine at work reminded me on Monday that it will always take a long time for anyone’s impression to change of anyone else. Put another way, trust is built slowly like habits, but it shatters like porcelain with a few mistakes. I won’t go into those mistakes here, but I’ve got some habits to work in that I think will allow my coworkers to trust me as one of their own. These will take time to develop. I think I often want instant results, but there’s no magic pill or “program” that I can throw money at. (Believe me, I’ve thrown some serious money at “programs” before. The lasting effect has always been, “Wow, I guess I really should do that,” while leaving it to me to do the work on it. No quick fix.) I think it will work the same way that I don’t realize how much my hair grows in a day but notice it over a few months. (I don’t cut my hair very often.) And yet, according to Annie Dillard, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

I realized this the other day: I think it’s challenging my ego and self-esteem to have so much “constructive” feedback from coworkers all the time, but I think I prefer it to the non-feedback I used to get on the job. “Yeah, you’re doing fine. [“Fine.” No better way to sound insincere.] Just keep doing what you’re doing.” There’s no path for growth or mastery there! A book I’m leafing through called Apprenticeship Patterns (appropriate for me as an apprentice in this company) suggests to “Be The Worst”. To surround myself with people who are far above my level and gain whatever I can from them. Seems like it would work like learning a foreign language by immersion in another country, immensely stressful at first, but builds a language in my brain out of necessity rather than sheer willpower (which I know is a limited resource I’m good at burning through). I think while I’m still “learning the lingo” I’m going to be stressed because I don’t know how to speak yet.

I’ll need to accept that I have some shortcomings as a developer.  Some are inherent to my character, because whether we call traits “strengths” or “weaknesses” are just labels for perceptions of how common inner mental structures affect other things. In that way, my strengths lead to my weaknesses, and vice versa. I’ll do what I can to go further than my short arms can currently reach. Until I’ve developed confidence in this “pattern language”, as the book calls it, I’ll look to this image for inspiration.

You can do anything.
The sun’s the closest star, but it’s dang dark,
Art 

Reflecting on Reflecting

arthurhovinc

I’ve been reflecting a lot more often recently. Autumn has that effect on me, and this autumn has had a lot to reflect on (more on that in other posts). I’m trying out a new reflection technique at the end of every meeting I have and at the end of every workday. It’s pretty straightforward, but I don’t see a lot of people doing it.

Reflection Technique:
I simply take out my pen and a piece of paper and I write down the thoughts in my head after each meeting or after the workday. When I say “meeting”, I mean any discussion with another person or other persons, formal or informal. At the end of day reflection, I answer the questions “What went well?” and “What could go better?” The whole technique takes between two and fifteen minutes each time. It’s time well spent.

I’m finding written reflection very useful to my learning process. My brain generates a lot of ideas, but if I don’t write them down or dictate them to my phone within two minutes of their creation, they are gone forever. I’m finding that I can consolidate my fleeting thoughts into long term memory just by writing down what I’m thinking after an experience like a meeting or a full workday. I may never read the notes again, but it doesn’t matter. The act of writing itself commits the thoughts to memory. Writing it down puts clear words to what I was thinking and feeling, and these clear words are retrievable in my brain, unlike fleeting emotions or vague thoughts.

I had left meetings and workdays in the past with many thoughts storming around my head, and not doing anything about them but letting them sublimate. Collecting those thoughts is analogous to finishing up a piece of art and properly stowing all materials and tools used to make it. It’s tidying up, leaving a meeting or workday cleanly. It helps me see what to-dos come out of meetings and what I want to focus on the next workday.

For instance, I reflected after an all-team meeting last week at work. The team was discussing being open and honest in communicating. Easier said than done. One of my thoughts after the meeting was that I could host some Lunch and Learn sessions about the techniques I’ve learned to communicate clearly and actively listen. I wrote it down on my notepad with my pen. Now I can recall it even without referencing my notepad, as I type this. It matters to me, and I intend to study more on the subject of communication and listening, and then implement and teach what I learn.

The act of reflecting is one level of the Four Levels of Learning. I’ll be writing more about these levels in the future, but I’ll list them below. Credit goes to ZingTrain for introducing me to the Four Levels of Learning.

Level 1: Listening or Reading (where good and active listening is an art and good and active reading is a system)
Level 2: Reflecting
Level 3: Assimilating and Implementing
Level 4: Teaching

Reflecting,
Art

Announcing A New Blog Series and Category: Learning

arthurhovinc

I’d like to announce a new series and category I’m writing on this blog. The category is “Learning”, which is a very broad word, but here it means sharing my own learning process. I’m going to focus especially on topics that I used to think were out of reach for me to learn. I’ll cover how I learned topics such as Java and Android development for my new full-time (paying!) job, self-management that works for me, making electrical circuits that work, entering the huge world of 3D printing, and so on.

To give a little bit of context without giving to much away (more to share in this series), I have a TA at my current job, where my current full-time job is to learn as much as I can about application development and working in teams to deliver. Today the TA and I sat down for an hour and talked about feedback he’d written about me after I completed a project last week. He wrote, “I have not seen him expose his ignorance.” That got me to thinking—I don’t really expose my ignorance. I don’t really let others, especially those who care for me or those who are trying to help me learn, know where I need help. I try to take on everything myself, and I don’t share the struggle. We also discussed how I don’t even have a feel for the boundaries of my “learning zone”, that is, the zone between comfort and drowning. I’ll be reflecting on this as I try to find those boundaries.

This series then is about sharing the struggle of learning. Learning is hardly ever easy, but it’s fulfilling. I do share my successes when I get there, but I notice that I haven’t been creating or writing much in recent times, and I think that’s because I don’t have much to share as a “success”. Learning is intrinsically valuable even without “success”. I’m learning, and there’s lots of failure on the path of learning. But I’m starting to accept that. This series will be a reflection of what works and what doesn’t for me. There will be lots about failure. Perhaps my readers will find value in that. Even if they don’t, it’s therapeutic for me to expose my ignorance for my own sake.

A long journey ahead,
Art

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