I have kept up with technology for almost a decade and most remote developers I worked with ask me how am I doing this.

Let's assume that we have to learn something and that something is number 1 to 10.

Every number is an entire section so they are complicated.

Now ideally learning 1 and then 2 then 3 and so on is how we learn. This linear fashion of learning is not how I have been doing it for the last decade.

You don't have to master anything right away or understand anything at all at the very start. Just expose your brain to the new concepts and ideas. If you don't understand 1 move to 2, 3, 4 and so on. Come back to it with different approach later when you reach 8 or 9.

For example, recently I have been involved with hardware development using C++ and ESP-IDF (Espressif IoT Development Framework) Software Development Kit (SDK). And rather than wasting my time learning wiring, electronics, PCBs, KiCad for Schematics individually I decided to fully immerse into production ready development of a fairly practical embedded system development (firmware + full-stack development + IoTs).

So I created a Flutter app with Golang backend and a new folder called firmware for the C++ and ESP-IDF SDK code for the hardware programming. I researched on the industry standard tools used and downloaded KiCad for Schematics & PCB design and Autodesk Fusion 360 for 3D designing.

As you can see things are already piling up.

I also bought the IoTs devices (hardwares to be controlled by the C++ firmware). And finally, I also did a small workspace set up for wiring.

Now mastering each would have taken me months but I chose the "my way approach". I did the full lifecycle in one go and in just one week I completed about 80% of the entire lifecycle of the hardware development fully connected to Flutter and Golang projects using WebSocket. The remaining 20% I can skip for now. Because I will use this valuable time to brush up on other areas like "The Reading" 😄.

Yes, I did not mention but you also have to read and research on the new concepts too. Everything except coding felt rough and unpolished but I continued anyway and now that I have reached 8 and 9, I have questions and concepts that are automatically maturing. I am bombarding questions to the AI and learning as I go.

Few more iterations of this for few different projects will make me a complete Embedded Systems Engineer. This will open up a whole new opportunities in my career.

So the next time you decide to learn what steps are you going to take?
The linear or more practical?! 😉