1/23/2009 by Brian Mavity
In my previous blog post, I discussed the book Pragmatic Thinking and Learning from Andy Hunt of Pragmatic Programmer fame. As part of the Pragmatic Programmer consulting practice, they present a concept called the Pragmatic Investment Plan (PIP), and a shortened version is outlined in the book. The idea is that you should treat your knowledge portfolio the same way you'd treat your financial portfolio.
Say What?
If you're investing your money, you do logical things like having a solid plan of action and diversifying your investments. You also want to keep track of your plans and tweak them when they need it. The same reasoning applies with your knowledge investment. You want to make sure that you have a concrete plan of what you're going to learn. You also need to make sure that you don't invest too heavily in one type of technology, say OOP when you could be doing some functional programming or only static languages when you could be learning how to program in a dynamic language. The best part about this is that no matter what you learn, it all has value. Even if you're not using something directly on your job, what you have learned still affects your thinking and therefore gives you a broadened perspective.
For your PIP, make sure that you
- Have a concrete plan.
- Diversify.
- Make an active, not passive, investment.
- Make a regular investment.
Be SMART
The PIP is a higher level concept, and as such, it is purposefully vague about the details of making your investment. The book does give some guidance in the way of SMART Objectives. Using the book's definition, the acronym SMART stands for
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-Boxed
Just stating a goal like "Learning Haskell" is not enough. Goals need to be better defined and broken down into smaller objectives. Each objective should have all of the properties shown above. By narrowing the focus of an objective to a well defined activity that you enjoy and giving yourself a deadline, you vastly increase the odds of actually achieving your goal.
The Power of Less
Tim Ferriss recently posted a review of a book called The Power of Less on his blog. An excerpt of Chapter 5 deals with successfully breaking habits. The author referred to a strategy he called "The Power of Less Challenge" which is focused on tackling one habit at a time.
1. Select one habit for the Challenge. Only one habit per month. You can choose any habit — whatever you think will have the biggest impact on your life.
2. Write down your plan. You will need to specifically state what your goal will be each day, when you’ll do it, what your “trigger” will be (the event that will immediately precede the habit that’s already a part of your routine — such as exercising right after you brush your teeth), who you will report to (see below).
3. Post your goal publicly. Tell as many people as possible that you are trying to form your new habit. I suggest an online forum, but you could email it to coworkers and family and friends or otherwise get the word out to a large group.
4. Report on your progress daily. Each day, tell the same group of people whether or not you succeeded at your goal.
I see some common themes between this, SMART, and the PIP. I think the key point to focus on here is to be specific with the activity you are trying to accomplish. When you couple that with a plan of action and small milestones, it creates a very effective combination.
Where do I go from here?
While I do like the idea of being public about my habits and goals, I am not yet sure if I want to devote a section of my web site to daily progress. For the time being, I am going to say that would be overkill. In the future, if I feel like I am not making decent enough progress, I may employ that technique. In the meantime, I hope this post can be helpful to the people like me that sometimes have trouble focusing on specific activities for learning and end up expending their energies in many places at once.
Note: Since this post got too long, I didn't want to include my specific example. I will follow up with specific example no later than this weekend.