Archive for June, 2016

Learning in the midst of information overload

We live in a world where we are easily inundated by information. Our news feeds constantly update, providing an endlessly scrolling list of tidbits. There are always more Youtube videos, more podcasts, and more articles in our feed readers.

My own story roughly matches this. In the past I tried to cull my list of subscriptions: follow the right people on Twitter and unfollow the ones who tweeted too much. I tried to save time by only clicking on the interesting headlines. Ultimately I found that I still couldn’t keep up, and I was afraid of missing out on what I wasn’t clicking on.

The main mistake is “trying to keep up” in the first place—or having this passive, feed reading behavior be your only way of learning new things. Reading Twitter is a good way to keep up, but it shouldn’t be the only professional development that you do. Sure, it might help you discuss the latest ideas with your coworkers at lunch, but it’s also not going to go very deep for actually improving your professional skills.

Active Learning

Stop Passive Learning. Start Active Learning,” by Andrea Angela was the original impetus for me to write this blog post. The main point of the blog post is to stop endlessly consuming news feeds, because it leaves you constantly feeling behind. Then you have free time, and this allows you to choose a topic to learn, and then look for resources around that topic.

I like that Angela acknowledges that we won’t always have the mental capacity to do “active learning,” and that it is at those times that he turns back to his news feeds in a more passive approach.

Another blog, “Improve Your Self-Improvement” has a similar idea. Don’t just learn something and then set it aside. Share what you learned with others.

Ratio of producing to consuming

After I read about active learning I immediately remembered John Sonmez’s video about the 70-30 rule. This rule talks about the ratio of consuming to producing. Spend 70% of your time producing and 30% of your time consuming. Producing is making value for others, and consuming is just a passive activity where you are looking to be entertained or “informed” but you aren’t actually using that information.

When I think about the 70-30 rule I think of several contexts where I am producing and consuming.

At work, I probably do follow this ratio. In the work context, I would associate producing with tasks like coding, debugging, documentation, and giving demos. I would associate consuming with things like reading my email, checking out the work news feed, and reading the all-company announcements and stuff.

The other context is my after-work work, a term borrowed from “Improve your Self-Improvement” meaning professional development or personal development that is career-related that you do on your own time. In this context, I am striving to move more toward the 70-30 ratio. Some producing tasks include writing blog posts (yay, doing that right now), or taking notes, or coding on a side project. Some consuming tasks include watching Pluralsight, reading my RSS feeds, or other articles I come across on Twitter.

In conclusion, I want to be more proactive, and come up with my own ideas, rather than trying to react and digest others’ ideas all the time. I want to have my own opinions about what is important to keep up with in the tech industry, rather than just assuming that the newest thing is important to me.

Investing for retirement: some recommended books

Probably the biggest mistake you could make investing your money would be to listen to “advisers” who really are making a commission off your ignorance. Instead, you would do well to learn a little and then make your own choices. At the top I’ve put my favorite resource on this topic, a 16-page booklet by William Bernstein. There are also two suggested books.

“If You Can”

For those who don’t want to read an entire book about investing, I recommend Bernstein’s 16-page booklet entitled “If You Can: How Millennials Can Get Rich Slowly.” It is also available as a free PDF (linked from his website, halfway down on his “New Books” page).

The booklet gives a high-level overview, and also gives reading assignments for those who want to dive deeper (sorry, books are inescapable). It’s organized according to the 5 hurdles people who want to save for retirement on their own will face, paraphrased below:

  1. The temptation to spend instead of save.
  2. Lack of understanding of finance.
  3. Lack of understanding of the history of finance.
  4. Human shortcomings in long-term decision-making.
  5. The “monsters” of the financial industry who give “advice”

The Sound Mind Investing Handbook

The Sound Mind Investing Handbook: A Step-By-Step Guide To Managing Your Money From A Biblical Perspective, by Austin Pryor, is a good introduction to being a steward of money for God’s glory. The book is organized into sections according to different stages of personal financial management.

Section 1: Getting Debt-Free
Section 2: Saving for Future Needs
Section 3: Investing Your Surplus
Section 4: Diversifying for Safety
Section 5: Retirement countdown
Section 6: Investing That Glorifies God

Sections 1–5 discuss the how/why of personal finances from a practical point of view. Topics covered include asset allocation, timing the market (why not to attempt to time the market), the disciplines of investing, risk preference, and, how taxes will affect your investments.

Section 6 discusses the why of investing from a spiritual perspective. Pryor discusses his own story, how he got into the financial industry, and how he had a spiritual encounter and came to know Jesus Christ. Then he goes into what the Bible says about money, investing, and stewardship.

I think the strength of this book is its completeness. It serves as a good reference guide, due to both the variety of topics covered and the depth they are covered. There are some nice example calculations as well. On the other hand, at times the book can get a bit bogged down in its handbook style.

The Investor’s Manifesto

The Investor’s Manifesto: Preparing for Prosperity, Armageddon, and Everything in Between, by William Bernstein and Jonathan Clements, focuses on how the average person can manage their retirement savings successfully.

In the old days companies would give you a pension plan, and you would be set. But now the responsibility is on us to manage our 401(k)/IRA/what have you. Unfortunately successfully managing your retirement savings is a difficult task. It requires at least 4 abilities:

  • An interest in the process
  • An understanding of the math (probability and statistics)
  • An understanding of financial history
  • Emotional discipline to execute the planned strategy “come hell or high water”

The book is broken down into the following sections:

  • Chapters 1–3 give a theoretical basis and a brief financial history
  • Chapter 4 talks about “the greatest enemy facing investors”—look in the mirror, it’s you
  • Chapters 5–6 focus on executing your investing plan in the face of hurdles, like the “piranhas” of the financial industry

I enjoyed reading Bernstein’s book. He balanced out the investment details with some fun anecdotes and a bit of humor. All of the math stuff got swept aside into “Math Detail” sidebars.

Compared to Pryor’s book, Bernstein’s book spent less time on practical concerns like the cost of personal debt or how to budget, and spent more time on investment history and theory. Bernstein also covered a few more investment types, such as real estate investment trusts (REITs), which I had not personally been exposed to yet.

Being mediocre before being great

Do you have an ambition to be a top performer in your job? Do you have a hero who you want to be like when you grow up?

I have an ambition to be a top performer in my job. I have a picture in my mind of what success will look like, gleaned from reading and looking at leaders around me. Someday, I say to myself, I’ll be able to provide trusted advice on technical direction that improves the productivity of an entire department. Someday, I’ll be able to deliver a talks or write blog posts about my work that inspire and motivate others, and provide value to their careers. This is a vision of greatness.

However, before I can be great, I must be mediocre. The thing about picturing great success is it doesn’t tell me how to get there. I need to break down an ambitious and, to be honest, at times overwhelming, goal into manageable steps. I need to build the discipline to get stuff done. I need to be okay with failure and mistakes.

I’ve already taken some career steps:

  • I used my performance review as an opportunity to ask for a raise in writing. After listening to Kalzumeus Podcast Episode 12: Salary Negotiation with Josh Doody, I realize there are a few things I can do better next time, but it was a good first step.
  • I participated in my first story mapping/story authoring session. This is an agile practice for gathering user requirements in the form of a flow-chart-like diagram.
  • I started sending weekly updates to my boss. These detail my progress on company objectives and the general sprint work. See: Selling Yourself: How by John Sonmez.

By themselves, these steps don’t turn me into a software developer guru, but they are a step in that direction.