205. The 5-Step Process to Improve at Anything

How do I get better at UI design? How do I improve my presentation skills? How do I grow my skills at working with a database? How do I get better at learning on my own? These are the questions we will answer in today's episode of DevQuestions. 

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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 do I get better at user interface design? How do I improve my presentation skills? How do I grow my skills working with a database? How do I get better at learning on my own? These questions may seem totally separate, but at the same time, they all have the same answer. But let's talk specifics on each so you can better understand how to apply these principles to any similar question you might have. Now, the answer to each of these questions that has been asked is the same. Practice. Practice is the most important activity to determine how good you'll be at something. But let's talk about each situation to determine how specifically to practice, because those principles will then apply to any other situation. So let's go through all four, and I think you'll see the repeating pattern starting to emerge. And from that, you can take that same repeating pattern and use it in other places. Let's start with user interface design. The best way to get better at UI design is to practice building user interfaces. So what do you build? Okay, so here are the five steps that it takes to practice this. Number one is pick a simple UI that already exists. So for example, a task list. All right. So you say I'm going to build a task list UI. It's a really simple one. And a lot of people have done it, which is great. Without, design the UI, but don't look at any existing examples beforehand. So design and build that UI as step two. So first, you identify the UI you want to build or the example you want to build. Then number two, you build it, but don't use any other reference material beforehand to kind of bias your understanding of how that should be built. After you do that, number three, look at some examples of existing user interfaces. Study them and how they work. Maybe you'll find that you missed something. Like, okay, you built this task list, but you you missed something, where you said, oh, you know what, I'm going to create to-dos, but I'm going to do it that in a way that you know doesn't have any dates. Well, whoops, a task list should have a date probably assigned to it as well as maybe a date completed. So how's a UI look for that? Or maybe you had a way to complete tasks, but you forgot about the idea of uncompleting something. Maybe you bumped the button once too many times. Okay, so look at other examples to see how other people accomplish that same goal. So you can say, oh, you know what? I can learn from that, I can do something different. Now, step number four is rebuild your user interface using these techniques that you've learned to improve on your design and even improve on designs you've seen. Now, step number five is pick another UI, for example, a library catalog, an email client, a chat app, etc., and do this all over again. So start back at step one. So that's the five-step process for learning UI design. Now let's cover presentation skills, which is a whole totally different thing than UI design. You still need to practice, but how do you do that? Well, okay, pick a simple topic that you can present on. For example, how to use dependency injection. Create a short presentation and record yourself doing it. Then watch the presentations of others on the same topic, which again you didn't do until after you did yours. Study how other people covered that same topic. Redo your presentation based upon the techniques and other ideas you learned. It's not about learning about depends on the injection as much as it is learning how people presented it. Maybe you skipped steps, or maybe you didn't have clear examples, or maybe you weren't as clear on what you wanted to communicate to the audience. So learn those things from those presentations and then redo your presentation based upon what you learned and even improve on other people's techniques. Then, step number five, pick another topic. Maybe it's minimal API, Blazor, Async, whatever you know, and do it again. Okay, so those are the five steps you would do to improve your presentation skills. Now, let's talk about improving your database skills. And by now you should see a pattern emerging. So think about how you might approach this. Maybe even pause this, think about it, answer, and then see how I'd answer. Okay, number one, pick a simple database structure you would like to build. Maybe go back to that task list idea. Okay, so build a task list in a database. Step two, design and build that database structure without looking at any other examples. After you've done that and after you built it, then number three, find examples of how others built that database structure. Step four is redesign the database structure that you built based upon what you learned and how you could further improve even off of what you learned from others. And then step number five, pick another database task, such as a library database, a vehicle database, or et cetera, and do this whole process over again. Okay, so by now you should see the pattern. Let's do it one last time when it comes to learning on your own. Okay, so pick a topic you want to learn, maybe the Uno platform. And then step number two, head over to the documentation on their site and create a practice app. Okay, so don't just go to watch a video, go to their site, go to the documentation, learn from the documentation and build a practice app. Then step number three, watch a video on how to build that same practice application and see what they did differently. So go build the, you know, an intro app and then go watch a video afterwards to see how somebody else figured out how to build that same intro app. But you've learned from the documentation, see if what you learned is as good or better or not from that video. And then number four, redo your practice app based upon what you've learned from that video. Step number five, pick another topic, maybe async, MongoDB, Azure Web Apps, et cetera, and do it again. So that same cycle applies all over again. So these are the five steps that you do. You identify how you're going to practice or how you're going to learn something. You then do the task on your own. Don't get help from somebody else, do it on your own. And then watch how somebody else would do it. This is why the internet is great. There's a YouTube video for practically everything. So watch somebody else do it or read the documentation. Whatever it takes, figure out how somebody else would do it. And then four, redo what you did in order to apply what you've learned and then start over again with a new topic. This is that five-step cycle will really help you in all these different areas and more whenever it comes to going deeper, whenever it comes to learning more. When I say practice, and people say, I don't know how to practice, what do I practice? You've got so much out there to practice. The key is don't try and think I have to create something unique. In fact, just the opposite. Create something that somebody else has already done. That way, you can have an example to then compare yours against to see how the what the differences were. Okay, so that's the five-step process I'd recommend for going deeper, for practicing pretty much anything in life, not even just tech. All right? Thanks for listening. And as always, I am Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev 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 IamTimcorey.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.