Getting technical
Do you ever feel like you’re not ‘technical’ enough? It was something I started thinking about last year. I have a fairly broad educational / professional background (tripartite degree + consulting) and whilst I consider myself to have a good grasp of the health sector and general commercial acumen, I felt I couldn’t yet point to an area of very deep technical expertise. Digging deeper, I realised there were a few reasons this was important to me:
- Because the world is changing rapidly, and I only have a surface-level understanding of some of these huge, disruptive forces
- Because my work is getting increasingly technical, and I want to have a solid base understanding rather than learning on a project-by-project basis
- Because I like a challenge, and this seems like a fun one to do for 2018
The question was how to build these skills and knowledge in in a sustainable and enjoyable way. I’ve tried the occasional online course and I find it doesn’t work with the nature of my job, which involves unpredictable amounts of free time / brain energy. So with a pretty dismal completion rate of online courses (read: 0%), I started thinking about alternatives and experimenting with a few ideas.
The Framework
In the end, I built myself a little framework and I wrote out a series of topics that I wish I knew more about. Machine learning. Mental health. Behavioural Economics. Design thinking. Once I had these topics, I started thinking about ways in which I would actually learn, in a way that works with my lifestyle and motivation. I can’t guarantee they’ll work for you, but so far I’ve definitely found it helpful. Below are the key areas I started thinking about:
Genuine interest (aka books)
The best piece of advice I’ve had to date:
You should only build really deep technical expertise in an area you’re passionate about.
For example, I’m guilty of starting online courses which sound interesting only to find:
a) I don’t have a strong an interest as I thought
b) I’m overwhelmed by the amount of new information (which is a function of not really knowing enough about the topic)
To try things differently, I started to track down books which people recommended as excellent intro material to a topic using Goodreads and other forums. I try and read a book a month, so it felt like a pretty low commitment to discover if I actually have a genuine interest in a topic. And if I do, I’ll be fired up by the fantastic lessons I’ve already learned from the course and start with some momentum. Win-win.
Self-paced, practical intros
Again, this is a personal take, but I also realised part of the reason I don’t like online courses is that I don’t like video lectures. I like to read the written word (sensing a theme here), re-read the sentences I know are really key, write my own notes and dig deeper on sub-topics in my own time.
So under this column I listed some recommended mini courses and introductions which I found online. In general, I tried to keep these as practical as possible and only stick to the essential theory to start building / experimenting as early as possible.
Personal and work-related projects
Finally, what I needed to make the learning really meaningful was to centre it around key personal and work-related projects. Want to learn more about digital health? Great, build an app and learn as you go. Want to understand machine learning? Great, build a data set and refine an algorithm.
This was really important to me — in order for me to maintain motivation and interest, I wanted to ensure that I understand things practically and could apply them within my sector of interest (healthcare). The really illuminating thing about this column was the fact that some projects lined up against more than one topic, suggesting they were valuable in multiple ways.
Conclusions
I’m aiming to write up my learnings and findings as I go. The framework is continually changing, but at the very least I’d like to share what I found helpful in each topic in case others are interested in the same.
Had a similar epiphany, done the learning already, or have a better framework? Let me know!
