Let’s begin by asking you a question. Would you write code without a design? Build hardware without a schematic? Configure a server without a plan? Of course not. Yet how many of us learn technology without any planning, choosing resources at random in the hope that one of them will be worthwhile? This is inefficient, and worse, it can leave critical holes in your knowledge and skills. 

In this post, you'll learn how to design a plan for learning any technology effectively and efficiently based on your own needs and goals. You'll learn how to think about learning, how the arrival of the information age fundamentally changed what it means to learn a technology. Next, we'll break learning down into core elements such as fundamentals, skills, duration, and more, and you'll see how each one of them needs to be evaluated as you create your learning strategy. For, as you'll see, time, not money, is the true cost of learning.

Change is inevitable

Many of you will discover that the way you are currently learning technology is shockingly inefficient and that many of your assumptions about how best to learn technology are completely wrong. Now, take a moment and think back at the last technology you learned. Why did you bother? Did you think strategically and evaluate whether the benefits to learning that technology justified the effort? When you started, did you take the time to plan out your course of study or did you just grab whatever resources you happened to find? How far along did you get, beginner, intermediate, expert? And did you choose the level you wanted to reach ahead of time or just kept studying out of habit? These are questions that we must answer correctly to be able to learn technology at this age. And the real problem is that common knowledge itself is obsolete. In this post, we're going to explore what it means to learn technology in the Information Age.

The Information Revolution

When we make statements like; We live in the information age. The world has changed. It's the information revolution or, as some call it, the fourth industrial revolution. what does it bring to mind? Flat-screen TVs, smartphones, and endless gadgets. These are not what makes this the information age or makes this era the information revolution. Because you see, the term information revolution is not a cliche, it is a reality. Hundred Years from now, they will refer to this period in the same way that we look back on the agricultural revolution, the Renaissance, and the industrial revolution.

The information age has brought about three significant changes. First, for the first time in human history, it is possible for any individual to communicate directly with any number of other individuals and to engage in commerce with any number of other individuals at effectively 0 costs and with 0 delays. Second, for the first time in human history, every individual can have access to virtually all human knowledge at effectively 0 costs. Third, for the first time in human history, every individual has access to almost unlimited computational power along with AI‑based software that not only assists with accomplishing tasks but can even anticipate needs and fulfil them before they are expressed. These changes are having a huge impact on every aspect of society. Many of the consequences are obvious, though we don't always see them in the context of these facts, the growth of eCommerce and online retailers, job disruption due to automation and the increasing mismatch between available jobs and people with the skills needed to fill them. The widespread adoption of social networks and the ability for many to learn and work remotely are all results of these revolutionary developments. Despite its best efforts to resist change, education has been impacted as well.

Learning Paths

We will look at learning as four distinct paths or tracks. I'll call them fundamentals, information, skills, and innovation. Each one of these represents a distinct journey. Dividing learning into four tracks in this way gives us a mental model to better understand both the learning process and the characteristics of different types of knowledge.

1. The Fundamentals Track

The fundamentals track is where you learn fundamental concepts relating to the technology you are interested in. It's where you learn to speak the language. Call it the basic literacy of technology. They represent the foundation that allows you to understand additional information and knowledge that is more specific to particular technologies. Fundamental concepts can be complex and difficult to learn. It would take time and effort but its value never dies.

2. The Information Track

To work in technology, you must inevitably acquire knowledge and information that is specific to that particular product or technology. A solid understanding of the fundamental concepts of technology gives you a huge advantage when it comes to learning and understanding specific implementations and applications of technology. People who go directly to the information track can be effective, but there are almost always holes in their knowledge. One of the main characteristics of knowledge on the information track is that it becomes obsolete very quickly, which is because platforms evolve rapidly. Information is also acquired quickly, especially if you have a good knowledge of the fundamentals of technology. many developers today do learn technology as it is needed rather than studying broadly with the hope that something will prove useful.

3. The Skills Track

Have you ever met someone who seems to know everything, but can't do anything? Learning to do things is what the skills track is all about. Our school are doing a great job teaching fundamentals and even some information, but real skills are gained on the job. It was common knowledge that new grads didn't know anything useful, that it was up to companies to give them the skills they needed to get the job done. In a world where knowledge and information are both inexpensive and widely accessible, the value of skills has grown. Skills represent the ability to implement solutions using your knowledge. As you increase your level of expertise on the skills track, you can come up with better solutions and implement them more quickly with less chance of mistakes along the way. In most cases, it is the skills that generate income. People pay you to do things, not to know things.

4. The Innovation Track

The innovation track comes after competence, it can also be called the expertise stage.  Experts can solve virtually any solvable problem. That also means part of being an expert is identifying problems that cannot be solved and understand why they cannot be solved. They have access to the fundamental knowledge, information, and skills needed to accomplish that. The innovation track is a part of each of the other tracks representing the journey beyond competence.

Choosing Your Domain

Learning always has a cost, and that cost is one of the key factors to consider when choosing the domain you want to learn. I want you to keep one thing in mind. The real costs of learning are not measured in course tuition and expenses for books and tools. The real cost of learning is in time, and learning always takes time. Because you don't have time to learn everything. It is important to think strategically about what you are learning. Think about it. Learning a new technology is like making a purchase where the cost is your time. It's worth comparing technologies and choosing the ones you learn based on the value you will get in return. In many cases, the value is monetary. Will learning the technology help you to make more money or least preserve your current income, and will the financial benefits justify the cost? But in some cases, the value has nothing to do with money. Because the real cost in learning is always time, choosing one technology always implies limiting or sacrificing others.

How do you determine the potential value of learning technology? The easiest way is to look at job opportunities. Hot technologies are in high demand. If you see lots of openings in a field, that's a good sign. Look at salary ranges offered to see if skills in a particular technology are commanding unusually high salaries. Don't just look at languages. Remember, languages are easy. Look at platforms.

5 important questions you must answer before learning technology in the information age

1. Where Do You Go for Curation?

In a world where information is available in vast quantities and at a low cost, curation has become increasingly valuable. Where do you start? What information is truly important to learn? In what order should you learn it? If you can't answer those questions, learning technology becomes infinitely harder than it should be. You waste time learning things that aren't important. Worse, you are exposed to content in no logical order. 

Books are a source of curation. They provide content in a logical order where the concepts build on each other. The content of the book is curated by the author, who determines which content is and is not important.  Websites, blogs, and articles are almost universally awful in this regard. Search is completely useless.

Degree or certification programs are the very definition of curation, defining a sequence of courses and required knowledge to obtain a degree or certificate.  Schools publish the lists of classes required for degrees, the books required for those classes, and you can sometimes even find detailed lesson plans. Academic degrees focus on fundamental concepts, so following their plan can give you a strong foundation on a subject.

2. Where Do You Go for Knowledge?

Whether you are learning fundamental knowledge or information that is specific to a technology, the sources and approaches you will use are similar. Both involve seeking out and trying to comprehend content.

Books are curated. Buying a book saves you the time and cost of filtering through the vast amounts of available information. They are an excellent way to start learning new technology. 

Online courses and videos are other good sources of knowledge. They are ideal for those who learn better through video and audio as compared to reading. There are countless sites, blogs and forums, that contain useful information..

Schools and classes have significant value, as far as providing knowledge and information. If you need to learn a very new technology for which there are not yet any books and the documentation is inadequate, hiring an expert to teach you can be effective and well worth the high cost.

3. Where Do You Go for Skills?

Where do you go for skills? Knowledge and information are both very nice. But skills are what bring in the paycheck. People will rarely pay you for what you know. They pay you for what you can do, for your ability to use knowledge and information to solve problems. To gain skills in technology, you have to use it. You have to solve problems with it. You have to build things with it.  There is no substitute for hands‑on experience and no excuse for not getting it. One of the ways to get skills is through challenging yourself and through play.  You learn to solve problems by solving problems, and if you don't have any problems of your own to solve, go solve someone else's

Another great way for software developers to learn skills is to get involved and contribute to an open‑source project.

4. Where Do You Go for Support and Discipline?

One of the biggest challenges to learning on your own is finding the necessary motivation and self-discipline. There are so many distractions in our lives that can get in the way.

How does one stay focused and on track?

Learning with others provides discipline as well. If you are part of a study group, you may feel an obligation to the rest of the group to carry your load. If you have a teacher, you may feel a desire to meet their expectations. There are other advantages to being part of a group. You can support and encourage each other. You can answer each other's questions. You can challenge each other

Having teachers and learning with a group can dramatically improve your learning efficiency in every learning track, whether it is fundamentals, information, skills, and even expertise, and the most common way and often the easiest way to find a teacher and a group is to take a class.

5. Where Do You Go to Gain Expertise?

The best way to gain skills is to seek out questions and problems and try to solve them. As you do this, you will become more and more comfortable with the technology. You will gain more and more experience as you implement the solutions. In time, you may find yourself answering other people's questions.  If you want to gain expertise, just keep seeking out and solving problems. Expertise will come in its own good time. One day you'll wake up and realize that you're answering a lot more questions than you're asking and that you can answer most questions without any real effort. Enjoy the feeling, it only lasts until the next version release.

In conclusion, remember, the skills track is the one that pays the bills. It's the one that is the most fun, so it should be the one that drives the agenda. Try something, do something. If you fail, look for the relevant information you need to succeed. Then, if there's anything about what you did that you do not thoroughly understand, take the time to learn the fundamental concepts behind what you did, and don't stop until you've found them.

Now I’d like to hear from you;

Do you think time is the true cost of learning or money?

Let me know by leaving a comment right now.