Learning New Stuff

December 27th, 2010 by hmatt

Learning is my top strength, and since it is such a part of me I wonder why people WOULDN’T want to learn stuff.

I want to learn the best practices, learn the best way of doing things, and the best ways I can improve myself.

In this last week of 2010, I’ve decided that the past ways I learned weren’t as productive as possible. The cheapest way to learn is by reading a book. However, this is only isolated learning. Rarely do people share the enthusiasm I do when telling people what I’ve discovered- unless they were there to uncover it for themselves.

What I’m getting at here is that it is time for me to start taking classes. Yes, I COULD learn things by myself, but then I become a hermit. I try to re-convey the lesson to others- which is fun too, but I don’t get to experience the questions that others have that maybe I didn’t think up. Sometimes too I get so beligerent in my way of thinking that I don’t realize I’ve been pushing around falsely interpreted information. *shudders* If you know me, you’ve probably seen me be completely confident in made up facts. Most of the time I’m right, but it is rare that people call me out. This is because most people hate to do research themselves. My Dad was one of those, ‘I don’t know, look it up’ types- especially when it came to spelling of words.

I however, could research all the time if I wanted to- but I’m a bigger fan of experience and application of knowledge. That is where the real handiness of lessons are learned.

At church yesterday Hank suggested we make 2011 the ‘year of’ something.

For me, 2011 is the year of Focus. Or rather, the year TO focus.

I’ve tried accomplishing so many things myself that I get burnt out or have a trove of half-done projects that are still on my to do list.

I’ve thinned out my 700+ to do list to around 500 now. I still have some trimming to do. There’s no WAY I’d be able to get all those things done in the coming year. Some things I have to postpone indefinitely, some I can assign to a specific month.

I’ve been trying something new thought that I’m quite proud of- that is doing some thinning and re-arranging of the to do list, then doing on every so often. That way, after a day of thinking I have something to show for it instead of a plethra of text files of my thoughts.

[Note: ‘plethora’ is that fancy word meaning “An excess of” whereas ‘plethra’ means “A long measure of 100 Greek, or 101 English, feet; or a square measure of 10,000 Greek feet”. Sometimes I’ll use the later as an inside joke to myself. Then I feel like I’m being a clever exaggerator referring to stacking up a lot of something to equal that of 100 Greek feet. As you could guess, no one ever gets this.]

So anyway, I was looking at some video footage that I need to edit and found that constant problem of the video light flickering on my T2i when I zoom. I searched around and lo and behold– all I needed to do was disconnect the lens sensor. That’s it!

Amazing. Learning stuff is so awesome.

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