One of your strengths at work lately has been quickly getting up-to-speed on technologies, techniques, tools, or skills that you’ve never encountered before.self-development is by itself already an attractive quality as it shows interest in your work/field and that’s especially true when you can use what you’ve learned to improve your work

If you decide to learn an entirely new skill ‘X’, your steps are generally:

  1. Imagine how you would do ‘X’

  2. If you hit any walls, you look up that specific step

  3. Eventually you end up with a complete idea of how to do X, so that you have a basic mental model of X to challenge and grow

  4. You then look up videos/articles/books on how to do X - important to do this before testing step 3 as “1 month in the workshop saves 1 hour in the library”

  5. Once you have seen a few different ways of X, then you try to do it. If it doesn’t work you go back to step 4 and learn more.

  6. (OPTIONAL - if you want better results) You first iterate on the ‘final product’, to see how tweaking various steps affect the final result. For example, if you’re brewing beer You shall do two attempts in parallel with one varied parameter, so You can figure out how that single parameter is affecting the result.

  7. (OPTIONAL - if you feel creative) Once you’ve a good idea on how to do X with success and sufficient quality, You then consider if you can innovate.

  8. (OPTIONAL - if you want to be a master) Once you’re done innovating on X, and feel satisfied that “this is good enough”, You try to make the process more efficient.

  9. Share results with interested friends, and use their feedback to go back to step 6.