How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?
How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?
(OP)
In my current field, as in previous ones I work pretty long hours. The work sometimes involves weekends, and late nights during the week.
I'd like to keep current by reading in my field, but when I go home, I feel like the family is being neglected already from my long hours.
How do you keep up with journals, etc in your field? I am thinking that I'll need to schedule some time during the work week to focus on it, but that time
is already taking up pretty quickly.
I'd like to keep current by reading in my field, but when I go home, I feel like the family is being neglected already from my long hours.
How do you keep up with journals, etc in your field? I am thinking that I'll need to schedule some time during the work week to focus on it, but that time
is already taking up pretty quickly.





RE: How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?
RE: How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?
Continuously. Intensely. Randomly.
We don't watch TV, so in the evenings my wife reads bloodcurdling tales of mayhem, while I am currently learning about aerodynamics and statistics on MOOC, learning about electronics on an Arduino, and discussing the programming of a laptime simulator for cars on the interwebs.
Cheers
Greg Locock
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RE: How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?
- Steve
RE: How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?
Avoid "flutters" on the internet like Facebook or whatever.
Open book. Open toolbox. 8<)
If children are at home, open game box.
RE: How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?
Your company should pay for at least one conference per year too.
RE: How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?
I also need to prioritize. If I can afford to not work the real (company) work during week end; then its clear my week end is dedicated to design and fine tune a software that I am currently programming. When I do so I have to read books and technical papers and also technical standards like the ISO.
My company does not offer any training or book nor particular tools; so I buy my books over the internet (say one book per one or two month on average) and I am also planing to invest some personal budget to attend dedicated courses which I take on my holidays time - as an inconventional way to build competence since out of reach.
No complains - its just the way it is.
"If you want to acquire a knowledge or skill, read a book and practice the skill".
RE: How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?
RE: How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?
RE: How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?
RE: How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?
Good luck,
Latexman
Technically, the glass is always full - 1/2 air and 1/2 water.
RE: How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?
Sorry for delay to reply; thanks for your concern.
I cannot exactly say the idea because I hope that one dayI can make money out of it and fullfill my dream which is to become an Entrepreneur and create jobs for people. It is something which has to do with machinery and process and I use a mix of fortran and visual basic for the code.
Problem is that my programing skills are poor because I am mechanical. My code is long, redundant, slow. I cant do nothing about it and it takes huge spare time to arrive at something which is workable.
I have still a lot to do in implementing physicals things, I am adding module by module. I think about the modules I want to add day and night; I also visualize what would be my dream Graphical user interface if things were so easy; I also dream about all the features to be sound and reliable and also proven and tested; I am far from this result. I happen to think sometimes of how I will do presentations to potential customers and defend my code its features, I mean I live these moments like if it was to happen one day.
The most terrible thing is that as long as the program gains in size it becomes difficult to keep things under control and modify it properly, I get simply lost in my own code.
The good thing is that while programming; I reinforce my technical understanding of how things work. I mean it helps somehow to understand theory and apply it because it pushes you to think about it.
Sorry to stay vague about what I am programming exactly :)
"If you want to acquire a knowledge or skill, read a book and practice the skill".
RE: How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?
At least one or two hours during normal working day and Sunday morning I dedicate to study issues related to hydraulic turbines because I work as a Mechanical Engineer in developing of Small Hydroelectric Plants (preparing Technical Specifications, Supervising the erection and assembly of mechanical equipment, etc.).
But wait, I forgot to say that the studies on hydraulic turbines are on machines for large plants (> 150 MW) because I hope to someday make the big leap.
El que no puede andar, se sienta.
RE: How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?
Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)
RE: How often do you read or work on side projects to advance your learning outside of work?