You could be powerful but you are not focused

Photo by Chase Clark on Unsplash

So I was watching a bit of advice by a musical mentor of mine on youtube and while he was speaking, I couldn’t help but see the application his suggested technique holds to Software development or any other craft for that matter. Come with me as I share this idea.

Jack of all trade?

The phrase jack of all trades is a master of none has been a cliche but let’s take a minute to think about it and we would see it has a more robust underlying meaning and I dare to say:

You can be jack of all trade and master of all (if that’s what you want and I got backings to prove it. So stay with me now alright?)

Now hold on, think about Leonardo Da Vinci — why do you think he was termed a polymath? That’s because he had mastery in more than one field but if that’s the case, doesn’t that go against the above cliche? So what happened? Here is my point:

You can be a jack of all trade if you focus on a few things at a time

In this era of information, one can easily slip into information limbo (just my term and it means a state where you are oversaturated with information you are doing nothing with). But our brain though it likes variety can only focus on a few things at a time (forget the myth of multitasking, it doesn’t exist). So here is my advice to attain Leonardo Da Vinci(you can put the name of anyone you admire that is famous for mastery here) order of mastery modified for the pragmatic software developer:

I once read that Michael Jordan would practice a particular technique for 100 times daily and if he misses it even once, he starts all over. Talk about laser beam focus eh? 😉

Technique shared

So here is the technique as it applies to be a world-class developer with depth.

1. Categorize: Write down 12–100 techniques/concepts/know-how you are interested in: This list will include everything you see on youtube, that code pen you admire so much, articles, algorithms, data structure, that new framework, etc. Make sure the list is 12–100(Have some discipline and moderation will you?)
2. Prioritize: Choose 3–7 from the above list that you want to prioritize. Now though your list above is cool and trust me you can easily get overwhelmed when you jump from one to the other. But choosing to prioritize a few gives you a chance to acquire depth and this is what you want necessarily.
3. Memorize: Lastly, chose 1–3 from you Prioritized list to memorize — Now this where the rubber meets the road I am talking about actions. The sad truth you can’t be world-class if you are stuck in searching for answers on Stack Overflow and you do this because you haven’t mastered anything. So in this category, you really just take 1–3 techniques/concepts/ideas/tricks and whatever and really practice it, like really really practice it that you don’t need to google anything in order to reproduce these concepts(Try thinking of being stuck in a cave with no internet connection). Make sure you take your time here so you start seeing patterns instead of mindless replication of something.

So, guys, that’s the productivity hack and I myself will be using it extensively. Would like to see your lists and here if this technique helps. You can tweet at me with a link to your list(if it’s online) @Dominus_Kelvin.

Happy Deploying 🚀 🚀 🚀