Being a Silent Learner

I created my Twitter account back in 2012. Around the same time I started my first full time job as a developer. The intention was to check out what the fuzz was all about. I started by following some famous people around the world and trying to get a grip on how things worked. From then I’ve used Twitter back and forth. Changing direction of what kind of people I follow and what inspires me. I’ve told myself countless times that I should be more active and write something, anything. It just hasn’t happened yet. I open Twitter every day, I read and learn a lot every day. Mostly my focus right now is on the tech industry. Following people who have interesting thoughts and who writes a lot. I get the latest updates related to my interests and work from Twitter. I then share the information with friends and colleagues. Who I believe appreciates the effort I make. If used correctly Twitter can be a golden source of information.

Getting involved is hard

Twitter has taught me many things. But Twitter isn’t all good. It can be a scary place. You benefit from being confident in who you are and what you want to do. It’s easy to think that the people you follow are the kind of person you should be yourself. That you compare yourself with others. Other peoples follow count, success that they share, travels, new job titles, new salaries etc. This of course goes for all social networks and is the most negative aspect of. But if you find your place and learn to share what you would like to read yourself, it can be a rewarding place. I say this without doing it myself and not living by the practice what you preach saying. Although my goal is to get there in a near future and this is my starting point. I need to understand where my place lies in the jungle of tech. Getting started with writing on this blog is like getting started with a skipping rope when two other people is swinging it like a big circle. You could stand there and watch the rope go up and down and wait for the perfect moment to present itself. But it will probably never happen. You just need to jump in and get started. If you fail and the rope hits you. Try again. If you stand and do nothing you will never be able to jump.

I’ve also been struggling with the context to share knowledge. It’s been multiple times that I have started to create a personal website and a blog. Usually I get stuck on creating the site. I can spend hours putting up a design, implementing it and then to regret everything about it. It seems I just cant get satisfied with my own choices.

Why do I want to start sharing?

If you take a look around you will see that sharing what you know will often be beneficial. Lots of people have gotten job offers thanks to having an active blog or account on Twitter. At least it has been a starting point. You also get valuable connections and get to know other people that you might now have been talking to otherwise. Although I’d say the most important part is to learn yourself. I really believe that the best way to learn is to teach. I teach a lot at my day job where I have the role as a mentor/coach and have been both team and tech lead at different points in my career. This has taught me many things about myself and how to share what I know. And also things that I want to learn myself. By being able to explain to someone how something works requires you to have a good understanding of how it works. Weird and obvious sentence but very relevant. By reading, watching and listening you can learn and then implement that learning in your daily life. But adding teaching to the mix will get you that extra level of understanding. You force yourself to tackle the problem from a different angle. Even though you think you understand a concept it will always pop up some aspects that you didn’t know fully.

Going forward

So by saying this I’m hoping I’ll find the motivation and structure to start sharing my journey and thoughts on topics others can find interesting. I will write about specific tech topics, coaching & mentoring, team development, agile processes etc. You can follow me on Twitter for updates.