Don't be that Mug

I've spoken to a couple of friends recently about testers they know who continually express a desire to "learn automation" and continually fail to begin learning anything at all.

A common behaviour is to find something that blocks the goal. For one friend, the testers wanted a course on automation and ring-fenced time each week to work on it. Without those, they said, it was obvious that no learning could happen.

For the other friend, an interesting natural experiment had taken place. There had been a couple of weeks at his place where the wiki, task management system, and source control service had been unavailable. Staff who usually complained about not having time to study anything because they were too busy moving an endless stream of tickets across boards were told to spend that time on self-learning.

Do you think they mostly did? No need to answer.

I can empathise. From a standing start a distant goal can look very intimidating. Of course putting off starting doesn't bring that goal any closer, although there is always that chance that circumstances might replace the goal with something else.

An alternative approach to learning that I find productive is this: I look for any small step that I can take today, I grant myself freedom to move forward with further small steps, and I look eagerly for opportunities to do that.

Here's a non-work example: I became interested in cryptic crosswords but hadn't got a clue how they worked. The Guardian started putting a beginner-level puzzle in the paper every Saturday and I began trying to solve it. The first few took me several weeks each, five or ten minutes here and there, with help from a friend who is already familiar with the lore, 15squared, and Danword.

If I didn't have time to look at the crossword in any given week, I tore it out of the paper for later. I'm probably a year down the line at this point and have a backlog of (I just counted) 15 crosswords. My average time to solve now is probably is an hour or so, and I'm occasionally also looking at the grown-up cryptics to see if I can get a fingerhold on any clues. If I'd waited until I had time and motivation to Learn To Do Cryptic Crosswords I would have accomplished nothing.

The same applies at work. Last week I learned a little (or a little more) about helm charts, k8s, k9s, k6, Wiremock, and Cursor while doing a task I picked up because it had been hanging around on our board for a while. It was challenging, but I knew I could try, and learn, and fail, and ask for help, and learn, and move forward, and learn, and ask for help, and ...

Learning helps us do a better job, more easily, more effectively, more efficiently. Learning can be incremental and incremental learning compounds. You'd be a mug not to want that. Don't be that mug.
Image: Library of Mistakes

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