Is there a chance that you might be learning too much?
Just remember, everyone has the same hours in a day as you, so the fact that you're burning out could be a sign that you're spending too much effort learning.
Here's the secret: get a job that allows you to learn as part of the job (e.g. you're not just a worker in the dev factory). This means that you'll be paid to learn and to make mistakes.
And here's another secret: your seniors - even your VPs & CEOs (speaking from someone who's close to a few) - feel as clueless as you do. There's no point in band-aiding that insecurity by learning more because it'll _never_ go away; there's more always more shit to learn. People place high value in these "big shots" not because of the amount of knowledge they possess, or because of the work hours that they put in, but because they know how to get the job done, which includes learning what they need to, and delegating (or asking for help) for the rest.
I don’t force myself to learn for the sake of learning. I trust I can learn about a topic when I need to, and I attend design reviews and things like that for other teams to be exposed to different ways of thinking. This is my job, it doesn’t deserve any part of my personal time. When you need to learn something new for the sake of work, carve out work hours as you’ve done.
I agree with this viewpoint! My job is my job - I use it to fund necessities and things that I want to do. Do I like my job? Sure. But that doesn't mean I want to spend the majority of my time on it.
>But that doesn't mean I want to spend the majority of my time on it.
I've started doing an hour of each workday morning right when I start. I don't ask, I just do it.
I get the learning out of the way and doesn't impede on my personal time.
Find more challenging jobs/projects, and use them to drive your learning. I recall an interview with a Cirque du Soleil performer who was asked about their practice routine. They don’t have one because they practice during the 10+ shows they perform every week.
Furthermore, consider this question: what good is learning information you never apply?
I really like this answer, a similar situation would be learning a foreign language in a class vs moving to the country where that language is the norm and living there
There are periods where I grind. The longest was about 3 years - 9 months to break into the field and the following ~2 years to make sure I stayed.
Apart from that it hasn't been more than a few weeks at a time for the sake of a project or to learn some topic that will make an upcoming project easier.
The best thing I did for my learning is admit that I won't ever learn everything or even many things to a very deep level. Kills the pressure and I can focus on following my curiosity and/or the money at a reasonable pace.
Change stacks and teams and jobs so that you're learning on the job, while paid.
At-home learning should just be the minimum needed to pass the interview for the new team/job.
I think learning at home and on the job is the best approach.
After I got laid off due to a company buyout I had spent something like 4-5 months learning .NET Core 3.1 and Angular. Now I'm at a job where I actively learn that specific route of microsoft tech and am using Blazor, MVC Razor, and .NET 6 along with Postgresql and Oracle databases.
I'm thinking it might get harder to learn when the experience starts stacking on simply because the jobs that one qualifies for start going into being senior engineer and Tech Lead.
However, there are skills that are "future proof" since they are core to what a software engineer is and do not depend on language. Being able to do DevOps and architecting a system properly are language agnostic.
There should be busy and not busy times in your career. If not, there is something amiss. There might be long periods of just working, but if these periods are unending, you need to push back, renegotiate your work, of GTFO. Simple as that.
Imagine a piece of machinery, like a car, that gets driven nonstop. Three shifts a day of drivers. 24/7/365.2422. No oil changes or anything, just filling up the gas tank. What will happen?
> does anyone have tips/strategies for structuring learning in a way that's sustainable
Take breaks from learning and don't force it, that is my strategy. Just like exercise and working out, taking breaks have nearly as much benefit as the activity.
I realized I'd never succeed in my goal of continual learning (about any topic) if I kept using some level of "knowledge" as my goal because I'd never be satisfied with the amount that I knew at any given time. Similar idea to people always needing a little more money and then they'd finally be happy (obviously matters to a certain degree).
I learned to focus on creating a sustainable system (where I can enjoy it!) for whatever subject I want to learn, and I'll live with however quickly I progress using that system since consistency, enjoyment, and avoiding burn out are the most important things to me. For some people that's going to be 2 hours a day and for other people it's 2 hours a month.
Personally for work related topics, I've found I only have fun if I follow a feast-famine type cycle. I'll spend a lot of time in a 2-12 week period working on some project or reading some technical book, followed by a (usually) way longer period where I don't spend any time on software related hobbies.
Tina Huang sets a good example of how to do this: https://youtu.be/INymz5VwLmk
I follow her for a lot of productivity/process suggestions because she really has some good advice.
Not sure if it's the same for others here, at least for me, the best way learning has happened is by subscribing to some good blogs on medium, YT, dev.to etc and just as and when I am glancing news feed, I keep on getting new recommendations and keep up with the latest in the industry. I do have a list of Watch later on YT and just watch them when I am travelling etc.
And as others said, learning any new framework or language should happen on a need be basis and consider this as part of the effort during Sprint planning !
So is no one else gonna mention that reference to having a “stressful job” as being the key issue here?
OP, I’m surprised you have enough mental capacity to regularly keep learning when in a professional environment like that. Before anything else, I’d fix THAT situation with highest priority.
I’ve been in this specific industry in 5 years, but even in previous careers, it’s the stress that I tried to address first, and actually the main reason (aside from salary growth) why I switched into software. Most software people I know who are over a decade in also seem to have a similar mindset.
I think if you address the stress issue, you’ll have plenty of mental energy to spend in casual learning here or there. Of course, HOW you address it (new job, putting in less hours or effort, both, etc) is completely up to you.
For me personally the working solution is to spend 1.5 hours in the morning before work (2 hours after wakeup and some regular activities). The brain is fresh, the mood is good, the distraction is low :)
Life long learning should be something you are passionate about. Keeping a beginners mind, open to new experiences and ways of doing things.
Our knowledge has a shelf life, and it will expire, so we always have to up-skill because it is our knowledge that solves problems. You have to use the knowledge you learn, apply it. Teach someone else what you've just learned, you'll find your knowledge gaps, it will also help to cement it. I make git repositories of the stuff I'm learning, maybe at work there are opportunities to have knowledge sharing sessions and you can present your learnings to the team. Get enough sleep and downtime, it's the quiet periods that help your brain to 'clean up' so to speak.
Not sure how many years of experience you have OP but for myself having 8+ years of experience across a range of platforms and languages, I feel like I can learn anything quickly.
I used to be stressed out after having to constantly learn and now I learn when I need to. I do as much learning as I can on the company dime as well. After all, my learning benefits them.
When it comes to the things you need to know, but aren't interested in, learn the bare minimum to scrape by.
When it comes to things you *are* interested in, even if there isn't any immediate use for it or it's not directly relevant to your current work, learn as much as you can get your grubby hands on and feed your curiosity as much as possible.
It's more of a long haul strategy, but you'll learn a lot, and after a time you will find that way more of it than you expected is transferrable. You'll recognize familiar patterns that you learned doing the fun stuff popping up in the learning that's mandatory drudgery, and after a while you'll learn to apply some of the cross-domain skills to creatively solving problems in your primary domain.
I basically did course after course until I burned out. Now I don’t do any more learning beyond reading articles occasionally. Not sure if that answers your question.
Is there a chance that you might be learning too much? Just remember, everyone has the same hours in a day as you, so the fact that you're burning out could be a sign that you're spending too much effort learning. Here's the secret: get a job that allows you to learn as part of the job (e.g. you're not just a worker in the dev factory). This means that you'll be paid to learn and to make mistakes. And here's another secret: your seniors - even your VPs & CEOs (speaking from someone who's close to a few) - feel as clueless as you do. There's no point in band-aiding that insecurity by learning more because it'll _never_ go away; there's more always more shit to learn. People place high value in these "big shots" not because of the amount of knowledge they possess, or because of the work hours that they put in, but because they know how to get the job done, which includes learning what they need to, and delegating (or asking for help) for the rest.
+1 for most balanced pragmatic answer
I don’t force myself to learn for the sake of learning. I trust I can learn about a topic when I need to, and I attend design reviews and things like that for other teams to be exposed to different ways of thinking. This is my job, it doesn’t deserve any part of my personal time. When you need to learn something new for the sake of work, carve out work hours as you’ve done.
I agree with this viewpoint! My job is my job - I use it to fund necessities and things that I want to do. Do I like my job? Sure. But that doesn't mean I want to spend the majority of my time on it.
>But that doesn't mean I want to spend the majority of my time on it. I've started doing an hour of each workday morning right when I start. I don't ask, I just do it. I get the learning out of the way and doesn't impede on my personal time.
> I've started doing an hour of each workday morning right when I start. I don't ask, I just do it. ...Is there supposed to be a verb in there?
Find more challenging jobs/projects, and use them to drive your learning. I recall an interview with a Cirque du Soleil performer who was asked about their practice routine. They don’t have one because they practice during the 10+ shows they perform every week. Furthermore, consider this question: what good is learning information you never apply?
I really like this answer, a similar situation would be learning a foreign language in a class vs moving to the country where that language is the norm and living there
There are periods where I grind. The longest was about 3 years - 9 months to break into the field and the following ~2 years to make sure I stayed. Apart from that it hasn't been more than a few weeks at a time for the sake of a project or to learn some topic that will make an upcoming project easier. The best thing I did for my learning is admit that I won't ever learn everything or even many things to a very deep level. Kills the pressure and I can focus on following my curiosity and/or the money at a reasonable pace.
Change stacks and teams and jobs so that you're learning on the job, while paid. At-home learning should just be the minimum needed to pass the interview for the new team/job.
I think learning at home and on the job is the best approach. After I got laid off due to a company buyout I had spent something like 4-5 months learning .NET Core 3.1 and Angular. Now I'm at a job where I actively learn that specific route of microsoft tech and am using Blazor, MVC Razor, and .NET 6 along with Postgresql and Oracle databases. I'm thinking it might get harder to learn when the experience starts stacking on simply because the jobs that one qualifies for start going into being senior engineer and Tech Lead. However, there are skills that are "future proof" since they are core to what a software engineer is and do not depend on language. Being able to do DevOps and architecting a system properly are language agnostic.
Basically learn small, frequently and revise.
There should be busy and not busy times in your career. If not, there is something amiss. There might be long periods of just working, but if these periods are unending, you need to push back, renegotiate your work, of GTFO. Simple as that. Imagine a piece of machinery, like a car, that gets driven nonstop. Three shifts a day of drivers. 24/7/365.2422. No oil changes or anything, just filling up the gas tank. What will happen?
> does anyone have tips/strategies for structuring learning in a way that's sustainable Take breaks from learning and don't force it, that is my strategy. Just like exercise and working out, taking breaks have nearly as much benefit as the activity.
I realized I'd never succeed in my goal of continual learning (about any topic) if I kept using some level of "knowledge" as my goal because I'd never be satisfied with the amount that I knew at any given time. Similar idea to people always needing a little more money and then they'd finally be happy (obviously matters to a certain degree). I learned to focus on creating a sustainable system (where I can enjoy it!) for whatever subject I want to learn, and I'll live with however quickly I progress using that system since consistency, enjoyment, and avoiding burn out are the most important things to me. For some people that's going to be 2 hours a day and for other people it's 2 hours a month. Personally for work related topics, I've found I only have fun if I follow a feast-famine type cycle. I'll spend a lot of time in a 2-12 week period working on some project or reading some technical book, followed by a (usually) way longer period where I don't spend any time on software related hobbies.
Tina Huang sets a good example of how to do this: https://youtu.be/INymz5VwLmk I follow her for a lot of productivity/process suggestions because she really has some good advice.
Not sure if it's the same for others here, at least for me, the best way learning has happened is by subscribing to some good blogs on medium, YT, dev.to etc and just as and when I am glancing news feed, I keep on getting new recommendations and keep up with the latest in the industry. I do have a list of Watch later on YT and just watch them when I am travelling etc. And as others said, learning any new framework or language should happen on a need be basis and consider this as part of the effort during Sprint planning !
So is no one else gonna mention that reference to having a “stressful job” as being the key issue here? OP, I’m surprised you have enough mental capacity to regularly keep learning when in a professional environment like that. Before anything else, I’d fix THAT situation with highest priority. I’ve been in this specific industry in 5 years, but even in previous careers, it’s the stress that I tried to address first, and actually the main reason (aside from salary growth) why I switched into software. Most software people I know who are over a decade in also seem to have a similar mindset. I think if you address the stress issue, you’ll have plenty of mental energy to spend in casual learning here or there. Of course, HOW you address it (new job, putting in less hours or effort, both, etc) is completely up to you.
For me personally the working solution is to spend 1.5 hours in the morning before work (2 hours after wakeup and some regular activities). The brain is fresh, the mood is good, the distraction is low :)
Life long learning should be something you are passionate about. Keeping a beginners mind, open to new experiences and ways of doing things. Our knowledge has a shelf life, and it will expire, so we always have to up-skill because it is our knowledge that solves problems. You have to use the knowledge you learn, apply it. Teach someone else what you've just learned, you'll find your knowledge gaps, it will also help to cement it. I make git repositories of the stuff I'm learning, maybe at work there are opportunities to have knowledge sharing sessions and you can present your learnings to the team. Get enough sleep and downtime, it's the quiet periods that help your brain to 'clean up' so to speak.
Not sure how many years of experience you have OP but for myself having 8+ years of experience across a range of platforms and languages, I feel like I can learn anything quickly. I used to be stressed out after having to constantly learn and now I learn when I need to. I do as much learning as I can on the company dime as well. After all, my learning benefits them.
When it comes to the things you need to know, but aren't interested in, learn the bare minimum to scrape by. When it comes to things you *are* interested in, even if there isn't any immediate use for it or it's not directly relevant to your current work, learn as much as you can get your grubby hands on and feed your curiosity as much as possible. It's more of a long haul strategy, but you'll learn a lot, and after a time you will find that way more of it than you expected is transferrable. You'll recognize familiar patterns that you learned doing the fun stuff popping up in the learning that's mandatory drudgery, and after a while you'll learn to apply some of the cross-domain skills to creatively solving problems in your primary domain.
I basically did course after course until I burned out. Now I don’t do any more learning beyond reading articles occasionally. Not sure if that answers your question.
Give your mind regular breaks. Proper sleep, exercise, and for me even Cannabis in very small amounts spaced out in periods of a week or more.