News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Rabbit holes: Why being smart hurts your productivity by ttt_ on Monday March 12, 2012 @07:35AM (#3693062)
I feel the same way, and I like to have an approach I call just-in-time-learning. If you focus on formal education methods you often end up with a lot of time spent in knowledge that's not very interesting to you or that doesn't fall within your work/hobby real needs. In a just-in-time-learning methodology, you roll up your sleeves at the first sign of a lacking area in your knowledge that you need to tackle right now.

Of course that isn't without it's own pitfalls. That lacking area might need a bunch of pre-requisite knowledge you also don't have and would do if you had adopted a traditional approach early on. It also may lead you further into the rabbit hole if you don't put a stop to it somewhere along the way and turn back to the original problem.

Right now I feel that you have to be able to mix and match the approaches. Reserve some time for just-in-time and rabbit holes, but also remember to reserve some time for fundamentals too, in order to prepare for future lessons. So it is important to do a bit of studying about the subject in order to understand if that's the right fit or not for you.

Actually, I think the real drive for any kind of learning is about the same for anyone: curiosity.

Re:Rabbit holes: Why being smart hurts your productivity by TeMPOraL on Monday March 12, 2012 @08:27AM (#3693174)
I think edw519 used to write in length about 'just-in-time-learning', calling it 'pull learning' (as opposed to 'push'). See, for instance, comment 71 in [1].

My rabbit-holing doesn't always resemble your approach; I often end up reading a book on a topic I'm just interested in, without a particular project or feeling of lacking knowledge. However, I try to transition myself into more JIT-learning/pull-learning style, so that I learn things at the same time I try to get something useful&interesting done. This mindshift is probably mostly due to HN (and we're looping back to rabbit-holing :)) - especially the prevailing emphasis on 'shipping the damn thing'.

[1] - http://edweissman.com/53640595