125 How Much Learning Is Too Much?

How much learning is too much learning? Should I stop or cut back on training at some point? Is there a time when I am actually wasting my time with training? These are the questions we are going to answer in today's episode of Dev Questions.

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey. Join us each episode as we tackle the questions you are asking about a career in software development, understanding the industry, and new technology. If you're just starting out or you want to grow stronger as a developer, this is the place to get your questions answered. Now, here's your host, expert developer and online educator, Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

How much learning is too much learning? Is there such a thing as training too much? That's the question I was asked on the suggestion site. And it's one I thought would be a great one to dive into for today's episode of Dev Questions. Now, is there such a thing as too much training? And you might think, well, Tim, maybe you're not the best person to answer that because you sell training. So I know your answer. And maybe you don't, because my answer is yes, there's a such a thing as too much training. So what is that? Well, I think there's you can spend too much time training, and I think that you can learn too much. And that might sound weird coming from a person who sells training as well as gives out training on YouTube twice a week. So why is it that I say yes, you can do too much? Well, I think there is a balance to be hit because I think that every developer needs to be a lifelong learner. So I say yes, you can have too much training, but at the same time, I also say you need to continually learn. So how do I reconcile those two points of view? Well, let's talk about balance, because balance, like in any other part of life, is important. So I think the biggest thing that people forget when they learn, and I'm gonna put learn quotes here, when they learn, is that they forget to practice. So they think that they're learning. An example of this. If you read a book, let's say you're you're gonna learn a self-improvement, or gonna read a self-improvement book. And so you read a book from cover to cover. Have you benefited from that book? Maybe, maybe not, because it doesn't matter really how much you read of that book, it doesn't matter how much time you spent reading that book. It's can you apply what you learned from that book? That's one of the reasons why when I read books, I read them in chunks. Because I will read until something strikes me as valuable or important. And then I will put a bookmark in it, I will pause, I will think about it, I will go one note and start typing furiously on my thoughts about that thing. And I figure out, okay, how can I apply this? How can I practice this? How can I put something in my life, a change in my life that will implement what I just learned? Because that's where learning becomes value, is when you apply it to something, which is why I don't read a ton of books. Some people say, well, you should read 24 books a year, two books a month, or I'm gonna read 500 books a year. Why? Are you gonna get value out of that? Are you gonna change your life because of that? The same thing is true with watching videos. If you say, you know what, I'm gonna binge watch all your YouTube courses or all your YouTube videos, Tim, or I'm gonna go and get the all access pass and binge watch every single course you have, I'm not sure that's of much value. And so, yes, I think there's too much training, again, put that in quotes, training going on because you're not actually applying. And so I often will go through spurts where I will train for a little bit and then I'll apply it. And I'll train for a little bit and I'll apply it. This is the reason why I don't listen to podcasts a lot. I listen to podcasts again in spurts. I'll listen to a few episodes until I find that nugget, the thing that I'm like, oh, I could use that. I'm gonna start applying that. And I'll actually pause, listen to a podcast, to start thinking through and spend time just thinking. And then I'll spend time implementing and I'll build something new because of it, or I'll change how we do something because of it. So I think there's a balance here of learn versus do. And so when it comes to training, I think you need to approach it that way. Because yes, the traditional view on training, the idea that you heads-down focus on learning, uh, kind of the university model of spending four years just crunching more and more stuff into your brain, I don't think it's that valuable. I think at the end of it, you go, you come out of it saying, I don't remember what the first year worth of training was. I don't remember what half those classes taught me. I don't remember what most of the stuff I learned was at all, because I didn't practice it. I didn't implement it, I didn't put it into practice in the real world. So I would encourage you to kind of re-look at how you look at training and hit that balance between what we call training as a society, which is ingesting information, and what really training should be, which is ingesting information and then doing something with that information, applying that information. Start with practice and then put it into practice in the real world. So here's what I do. I start with creating a list of topics I want to learn. These are the things that I want to learn more about. I have a huge list because there's so much stuff out there that I would love to learn more about. I just haven't yet. And I prioritize it. All right. And then when I find new things that are shiny and new, and I figure out where they fit in that list. They might be, they might be the next thing I need to learn right now, but they might be something I learn in six months or a year. So then I learn what's important to right now. Learn what the most important thing is for me right now. I learn that next, and then I practice it. All right. I practice it multiple times. I try to implement it into a real world situation as well. I try to actually use what I learn so that it really kind of sinks in and it's actual learning. It's it's deeper than just I've seen that done to I've done that. And then I repeat. Okay. So I go through that process of I got my list, I pick the next thing off my list, I train in it, I practice in it, I implement it in the real world, and then I go back. So I'm not continually training, as in every day for four hours, I spend, you know, reading new things or watching new videos and learning that way, but instead I kind of take some time. I learn two or three or four new things a week, maybe. And in those times, I'm really trying to practice and implement as much as possible. When I was working for companies, I might learn one or two things in a week, and that was it. And that may be small things, but I would practice what I learned and I would slowly grow over time because it's important to have that ability to rest your mind from one type of learning. It's good to have that implementation to really solidify what you've learned and that practice to be able to kind of push the boundaries of what you think you know and convert it into what you actually know. Okay. So, how much learning is too much learning when it becomes detrimental, when it's not really learning, when you are really just pretending to learn. I know it's that sounds harsh, but when you are going through the process of learning, but at the end of it, you don't really feel like you can actually do the things that you've learned. That's when it's too much. So is too much training a bad thing? Yes. Going too fast through training, it's a bad thing because it's not helpful. It's not really pushing you forward. It leaves gaps in your education. It makes it so that you don't you feel like you should be farther ahead than you actually are. And that's because you kind of left gaps along the way because you didn't practice and implement what you've learned. So I hope that answers your question. I hope that you can take some things away from this and hopefully improve your training regimen. Because as a software developer, I think that every software developer needs to be learning continually. Meaning you should always have a list of what to learn next, and you should always be working towards that. Even through retirement, you should be learning new things. So don't feel like you ever stop and say, I'm done, because the world changes, software changes, you have to change with it. But I think it's important to know how to pace yourself and know how to effectively train. So you're not trained so hard you get burned out, and you're also not trained in such a way that's not really useful. And so you're just spinning your wheels. Okay. So if you have a question that you'd like to see answered on a future episode of DevQuestions, go to suggestions.iamtimcorey.com. Leave your suggestion there, or upvote an existing suggestion. And hopefully you will see or hear your suggestion answered in a future episode of Dev Questions. And speaking of which, it depends, you may be watching this or listening to this. If you're listening to this on the podcast, then just know there's also a video version of this episode on YouTube. But if you're watching on YouTube, just note you could have this as a podcast and listen to it on your way to work or while you're working it out or somewhere else. So check out both versions and do what's best for you. Thanks for listening. And as always, I am Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Deaf Questions. Tim is committed to making it easier for you to become a developer. If you would like to help make more content like this possible, please like, subscribe, rate, and share Dev Questions. You can also send your questions to questions at IamTimcore.com. Until next time, remember, you are too smart and your time too valuable to waste it making all the mistakes Tim did. When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to imtimcore.com and enroll in a course.