A Good Time To Learn
When is a good time to learn something new? When is a good time to sit down and learn that hot new language? When is a good time to write that blog post you’ve been writing in your head for weeks? For many of us, the answer is either “when I absolutely have to” or “never”. If you’re like me, you’ve a lot of reasons why: I should spend some time tweaking that existing site instead, I really just need to unwind, I should practice my bass, I need to catch up on sports news, there’s too much that needs done around the house, I can’t miss this game, I want to watch this TV show, my dog ate my motivation. I’ve got a million of ‘em. I use them every day.
That’s why Tim Harvey and I are going to use a method for motivation that has been around since three early humanoids first gathered in the same cave: peer pressure. We are going to rag on each other to learn something new every single day for the next 30 days. We’re calling it the “Peer Pressure Learning 30”. Tim’s plan is to read a selection from Clean Code each day, and apply it by refactoring some code. My plan is to learn a new technology every day for the next 30 days. I will spend one hour each day learning all I can about my subject, and then I’ll blog right here about what I’ve learned. Here are my subjects:
- Redis
- Riak
- Cassandra
- MongoDB
- Scala
- Clojure
- Groovy
- Scheme
- Erlang
- Haskell
- Nginx
- Varnish
- Unicorn
- Node.js
- Sprout Core
- MooTools
- HTML5
- Objective C
- C
- Factor
- Drb
- MacRuby
- JRuby
- Ruby 1.9.2
- DataMapper
- ZSH
- Emacs
- Python
- Django
- LowPro
My criteria were that it be something I genuinely want to learn, and that it not be something I’ll need to learn for work in the next 60 days. I’d consider the latter tantamount to cheating.
The inspiration for this came from David Eisinger at Viget Labs and his cleverly-named Around “Hello World” in 30 days, which came to me through Tim. I’ve copied him almost to the last detail, except he didn’t seem to need the extra motivation of a peer keeping him honest, as I do.
If this sounds like a fun trip for you, you should join us! Write up a blog post with your plan for the next 30 days. Then, get in touch with Tim and I however you’d like (Twitter, email, bike messenger, etc.). We will work together to keep each other motivated and moving on our plans.
No more excuses… well, for the next 30 days, anyway.