From Nicholas Zakas’ newsletter, on how he avoids JavaScript fatigue:
I don’t try to learn about every new thing that comes out. There’s a limited number of hours in the day and a limited amount of energy you can devote to any topic, so I choose not to learn about anything that I don’t think will be immediately useful to me. That doesn’t mean I completely ignore new things as they are released, but rather, I try to fit them into an existing mental model so I can talk about them intelligently. For instance, I haven’t built an application in Deno, but I know that Deno is a JavaScript runtime for building server-side applications, just like Node.js. So I put Deno in the same bucket as Node.js and know that when I need to learn more, there’s a point of comparison.
I too have used the “buckets” analogy. Please allow me to continue and overuse this metaphor.
I rarely try to learn anything just for the sake of it. I learn what I need to learn as whatever I’m working on demands it. But I try to know enough so that when I read tech news, I can place what I’m reading into mental buckets. Then I can, metaphorically, reach into those buckets when those topics come up. Plus, I can keep an eye on how full those buckets are. If I find myself putting a lot of stuff into one bucket, I might plunge in there and see what’s going on as there is clearly something in the water.
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