BootCamp yourself and get new tech skills

I took two weeks off work with the strong motivation to upgrade my skills and adjust myself better to the “market”.

If you’ve been working hard and, honestly tired, it won’t easy for you to start actual learning instead of sleeping, resting and having fun with your friends.

There are my advises how to keep your productivity up, get new skills and enjoy your days. I used to use this learning technique in my long past.

It is simple. Treat everything as a project.

• Set the goal and deadline.
  I defined it as: “In February I have to be ready to start a small project using my new skills and be able to work on it with the average performance (not like junior but not like a guru)”.
• Make a realistic plan and stick to it.
  Do you remember “in February” in my goal? I’m on holidays for 2 weeks and when it will be gone, will be 3 more weeks till February.
  Why 3 weeks more? It’s my risk buffer and time to find a project.
  My plan you can see on the picture above this post. It looks like a bit busy but with the small gaps. I’m using this small gaps like a risks buffers too. Most of the days I’m busy from 5 am till 11 pm but not on hurry, because of this additional time gaps between everything.
• Use different channels to get information (not only reading or not only watching).
  Go to professional meetups, help your friends (even for free). Don’t forget to try and get a real experience.
• Rest and take care of yourself.
  It’ll give you energy and ability to focus (green blocks for sport and activities in my plan).

How to plan your bootcamp?

Firstly, you have to decide what you want and have to know. I wrote it down and prioritized it. My questions to create this list was: what I want to know, why I need it and how it may helps me, what happening with the market, what is in trend or fast growing, where is high demand, where is low entry threshold, do I like it? I didn’t consider salary because average salary looks fine for me. The project and team, and some flexibility are more important than anything else for me now. But you may want to consider pay level as well.

I’ve created a simple list:

DB: Mongo
Backend: Node.js
Frontend: Angular 2, SASS
Mobile: hybrid (Ionic + Cordova), native Android apps, native iOS apps (swift)
Project skills: UX (at least mockups and prototyping), Scram implementation, DevOps implementation.

When I was looking at my list I was confused. How I’m going to learn lots of different things in the short period? What to do and how to start?

I decided to focus on one technology for one day. So, one day, one thing.

Secondly, I’ve created a plan. I’ve opened my calendar and put just one 4 hours slot for learning (reading documentation and trying) every day and one 1 hour slot for watching videos before going to bed.
In total 5 hours per day. Other time I can spend for fun, sport, friends and etc. If you’re working about 8–10 or even more hours per day, to study something that you like during 4 active hours can be possible. So I’ve got a high-level plan.

Thirdly, I want to make sure, that my plan is not a bullshit and it will be possible for me to stick with it. So I’ve added some details to it. My time for sport, commute, eating, sleeping, blogging, meetings with friends. Everything.

Next, I checked it out and put the name of technology for every day in descriptions. So I don’t need to think what to do every day.

Getting new skills

To get real skills (not only theoretical knowledge) you have to use different channels. Reading, watching\listening, writing and doing.

So I’ve been reading, watching and trying.

Reading is the fastest way for me to become familiar with technologies. I just have to read a theory. Sometimes I’m making some notes to remember things better. After it, I’ve been finding simple instructions and just trying.

Watching video courses is important too, but more time consuming. It will help you to see how other people doing actual job, found a best practices and got a better ideas how you can use all this stuff and in what scenarios.

Trying — is the most important thing. If you’ve been just reading and watching you’ll forget it soon, but if you have tried you’ll remember it longer and be able to reproduce. When you’ll start to try, don’t worry, it will take longer than you expected and it’s fine, you’ll learn by doing mistakes.

What’s going on now?

I have two days left until the end of my holidays and I have 2 things which I even didn’t touch (native iOS and DevOps). Yes, I was slower than my “realistic” expectations but I have a big “risk buffer” ;).

For this 2 weeks I got just basic skills but some hands on experience too. It looks like enough to create DB, middle layer and frontend using new technologies and new platform. I still have to continue studying quite aggressive but from this moment I can do it by doing things, learning from others and reading exactly about things which I have to do to make my job done.