Stuck on one subject

A bit of a silly question(s), but I was wondering if the community ever gets stuck on one thing, continuing to focus on that one particular element.

For me it's SQL I just eat it up, I am legit intermediate (approaching advance) and still continue to take courses etc. It cuts into other items that I would like to focus on, but "organically" I am drawn back to coding.

I love dashboards designs, stats, research, even reading how to get ahead books, but when it's all said it done I come back to SQL.

It's been like this for several years, and while I have been able to squeak in a few Lynda courses and a collegiate statistics book (Previous course I took back in 2001). It's been SQL.

Have any of you ran into this, with Powershell, scripting, a specific framework?

I always see post about having a hard time focusing, I am the opposite, once I lock in it's (VERY) difficult for me to let up.

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PocketLumberjack

It's Linux for me, I've been working on networking stuff for a year but I find myself looking at a terminal screen more often than not just exploring the file system and breaking things.

DatabaseHead

Have you thought about getting a Linux certification, sounds like the perfect reason to get one?

Anyway back to the original point, I sometimes wonder if it's worth the fight, since learning your one specific subject is so much easier because you want to do it and it's viewed as entertainment.

It's nothing for me to rip through 2 hours of training on a daily basis if I am interested. If it's career advancing but (not fun) I don't seem to stick with it as long and the chunks I can decompose are A LOT smaller.

PocketLumberjack

I will probably eventually get Linux+ and LPIC-2 but I am focused on getting into the WGU MSCIA program right now.

I view learning as a hobby, this allows me to focus on the fact that I am learning and not what I am learning. Its weird I know but it works for me. With this mentality I look at less interesting subjects as a challenge and the more I do the faster I get at getting through it and moving on to the next thing. I have a very structured study system 1 hour a night Monday through Friday and 4 Hours a day Saturday and Sunday. I really don't like wasting my study time so I get very focused on what I want to learn and I get out as fast as I can. I am naturally too disorganized to let myself organically learn things. I also spent a year and half at a dead end job that I hated, so when I got my first real IT job I was hyper focused on climbing the ladder so I would never have to apply for a low paying garbage job again.

If you are happy where you are at I would say study what you love and become a SME, but if you think you want to climb the ladder make a plan and learn to love learning.

FWIW the best book I ever read was Deep Work, my studying skills went up ten fold after following Cal's advise.

I hope this helps and isn't just my crazy ramblings.

UnixGuy

It's a good thing. Master the hell out of one topic, but also don't ignore other areas. Pick up scripting to help with your SQL. Learn HA design and AWS stuff, but be an expert on everything SQL.

DatabaseHead

UnixGuy wrote: »

It's a good thing. Master the hell out of one topic, but also don't ignore other areas. Pick up scripting to help with your SQL. Learn HA design and AWS stuff, but be an expert on everything SQL.

Well....

I just began to run through AWS cloud data solutions through lynda.com. So far so good. Thanks for the heads up.

PocketLumberjack

I came across this article on medium and it has some interesting ideas. https://medium.com/the-mission/if-you-do-these-things-every-day-youll-become-smarter-a19ae21bdfcb#.6zhq9ohll I kept thinking about this thread as a I read it.

DatabaseHead

Read most of the article thanks for sharing...