For some time I’ve been thinking about this, and in my opinion is a common “problem” among tech people, however it can impact directly your productivity, and your long term goals in life. As a software developer who also enjoys entrepreneurship i have realized the importance of this issue. The problem?

Learning is fun, and addictive.

Wait..Why is that a problem?…

Well, it may not be a problem per se, however with the unlimited flow of information and the ease of access, you could spend your life only receiving information and doing nothing useful with it, and if that’s your goal then its ok. However i see a fundamental problem here, and it has to do with the balance of input vs ouput and the limited time we have in a day. For me it all goes to the following

“You can only be really good in a limited number of things”

Why?, because you only get good in something with experience and hard work, and while you work you must put aside other cool technologies, languages, platforms, etc. etc… I’ve known developers that have a hard time with this, and believe that is the knowledge quantity that matters,  however they are not really good at any of the things they learn because there are other million things in their heads, so no further efforts are made to really know the ins and outs of an specific topic.

Control your input

It has happened to me, someone puts a really cool demo online, i see it, and then i feel the urge to learn that technology/ technique/ tool, even if it is totally unrelated to my main interests and goals. I know that it can give me some “instant gratification” but maybe i can use that time to keep improving the skills i know i will need to develop products for my company or to complete a hobby project.  I’m not saying that learning new things that are not directly related to your job or interests is a bad thing, because it isn’t and it can give you a new perspective and creative ideas, the point I’m trying to make is the importance of balancing the time spent learning and the time spent applying the knowledge building something useful.

I believe that even the learning process should be planned, and with the infinite amount of information available is important to be good at filtering the useful content from the fun-but-useless-and-unrelated information and more important, applying the knowledge creating something that will contribute to achieve your goals.

(Note to the grammar police: If you catch a grammar/redaction error please send an email to hugozap@obassi.com with your suggestions, and help me improve my English