This article originally appeared on the blog of the crew
If you've built something for other people, you will know the buzz that comes from having real users. There is nothing quite like knowing you did something from scratch that helped or entertained another person.
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Once you've done something used by other people, it might seem like it does not make sense to go back and do things just for yourself. Except for a very good reason: to help you learn
.Build learning
Build small independent projects is a great way to learn and develop your skills. When you learn by building something new instead of just by reading and theory, you learn implicitly rather than explicitly, and are more likely to retain and use the knowledge you have gained.
"Forget the rules, and to learn from first-hand experience instead. There is so much more to gain from not knowing how to do things" right ", and learn to make your own way. " Richard Branson
Say you want to try a new technology. Perhaps a new tool just became available, or a new programming language has caught your interest.
So you build a small project only designed to give you a real world laboratory to experiment. You design something so small you can easily get it started and then spend most of your time learning from practical experience.
Being at that level of expertise and be able to "play" with new technologies is something beginners do not have the luxury. As experienced creative in whatever your field, you already have the skills to design and build small projects that can help you explore, answer questions, and improve your skills.
Learning by doing is often called experiential learning by educators and psychologists. In 1984, psychologist David Kolb developed a theory of experiential learning that involves four steps:
More fundamentally, the flow of this four stage process goes something like this: you have some experience with something new (concrete experience), then you think about this experience (reflective observation), combine it with your knowledge to turn into the concept or the theory (abstract conceptualization) and finally apply this concept or theory to other projects (active experimentation).
The important part here is that the basis of your future ideas comes from the experience of working with something practical.
seasoned iOS developer David Smith uses the same "learning by doing" approach when it wants to test the new Apple technology. If Apple announces a new API that David wants to learn, it will read on it and then create a small project to test it on.
These projects never become available to users, but the process allows him to conceptualize the new technology so that it can use later in the products they ship to customers.
"... you do not learn to walk by the following rules, you learn by doing and by fall." Richard Branson
Build practice
I have known him for some time now that deliberate practice is necessary if you ever really want something good. Deliberate practice is a conscious effort to focus on specific areas of your skills that need work.
For example, rather than playing songs that you know the piano, deliberate practice would play scales or to focus on a few bars you can not quite get right. It is painful, and often boring, but it is what separates the pros from amateurs.
When I began to learn iOS development I did not know how deliberate practice my skills. I could not understand how to practice the things that I'm terrible in the context of building a large project. Once you have solved a problem in the product that you build you should work again.
Of course, this means having to wait until the same problem arises again in another project to practice the same solution.
Without the ability to deliberately and regularly practicing a new skill or work on a technique we quickly lose that an overview of the issue and deal with the problem on the road may seem all over again.
The answer is to build smaller projects just for yourself projects that require you to answer difficult questions. Projects that allow you to focus on a skill or a particular technology at a time.
I recently started a small project that uses a list view, which gave me some extra practice (and necessary) establishing a list and make it look the way I want.
I still have to practice with it, so I could continue by creating several small projects, once a week, even to practice the pose from the viewpoints of the list with different data and slight layout changes.
Another thing I'm terrible is writing fiction. If I wanted to get better at that I could work on short stories. I do not need to release them, but I can use each as a playground for experimenting on a particular area of my weak skills.
One might be an exercise in character development. Another could focus more on clarity in my writing. Another might be strictly fragmented and used to experiment with twists in the story.
Jennifer Dewalt has a similar project, as she learns to code from scratch by building 180 locations in 180 days. She's gone from basic websites that include only HTML and some basic CSS to JavaScript and learning Ruby on Rails and building games and calculators.
Although Jennifer sharing all the code on GitHub, it follows a process similar to what I suggest: it uses the project a possibility of build for practice
.Build yourself
Your experimental projects could very well turn into public rendering work you are proud of. There is nothing wrong with that. But the freedom that comes from this type of work is partly because It is not intended for public .
Jennifer says on its website that it is difficult to put all his learning projects on GitHub:
"It is frightening to have all my mistakes and misunderstandings. outdoors "
I am to share your work. In fact, I think most of us could stand to share more than us. But there is a difference between your work and your experiences or learning . There is an inevitable concern we all feel to some extent when we know that other people will see that we work. Build things just to carry you all this concern.
Start with a plan to keep your work private. Let you experiment without fear of judgment or ask whether you will receive praise or make a fortune on what you are building. Just focus on your business and education or improvements you are targeting.
This may be a surprising experience humbling. In a sea of tastes and upvotes, when we are so accustomed to ourselves and our work to judging by the reactions of others, working for yourself can really change your perspective.
It is easy to make excuses about why you do not improve your skills. I do not work nearly as hard as I should become a better writer because he is hard and this takes time, and I'm so occupied .
But if we let these excuses take us along, we will be condemned to let our skills become obsolete and outdated. We all know that we must make a conscious effort to learn new things and improve our business. I gave you a plan to do it, now it's yours to run.
I wish I had known about running a startup