Before a journey, many tourists buy a city guide, available in any bookshop or library. These books contain all the “incontournable” places—​shops, museums, restaurants, and so much more. To get the most of your time, travel guides include predefined itineraries to make sure you do not miss anything.

My wife and I are big fans of these itineraries during our first days. I’m also a huge fan of Google Maps and Google Street View (I consider myself a virtual globetrotter, better than couchsurfing since I’m using my own couch). I spent a lot of time preparing our vacations online, but once there, I’m not very reliable and it’s not uncommon for us to end in unexpected places. But that’s a good thing.

Imagine if every traveller were following the same guide at the same time. We would walk along each other on the sidewalk, and wait in line to visit popular attractions at the same time. Clearly not the best travel experience. Instead, travellers are spreaded naturally all around the city, admiring the monuments, and following their own interests to determine the next street to visit. That’s what travelling is and that’s what learning must look like too.

Indeed, we all have different backgrounds. We haven’t studied at the same university. We often haven’t even studied the same courses. Some of us are just joining the professional world, some are starting a new career in a new company, while others are at the same desk for a long time. That is called diversity, and provided that diversity is inclusive, which means we all have enough bagages in common to understand each other, that’s a very nice environment in which to progress and innovate.^[1]

We have a team with a lot of diverse experiences, but too few common grounds to create a jelled team.  

We have a team with diverse experiences, and also common grounds to ease the communication between team members.

Diversity is great. You don’t follow other tourists when visiting a city. You must do the same when learning. You must find your own path. There are clearly overcrowded places that you must visit, but remember innovation always happens when someone decides to travel off the beaten path. Choose what interests you the most at the present time and follow that direction.

Learning a new subject is not easy. Sometimes, it is just too hard. As a developer, having basic knowledge in networks is not simply useful, it’s imperative since the majority of programs don’t run in isolation but communicate with the outside world. But things are not so simple. I flunked at university. I flunked at work. Sometimes, the road is too steep.

What you need is to follow your inner GPS. You are not forced to turn at the next intersection. You may continue straight and find an alternative itinerary that goes to the same point, using a longer road that is considerably less steep than the initial road. Moving towards the destination is the goal. The faster we move, the better. But remember moving at a slow pace is infinitely better than being stuck at the same place. You need to find your own way, which means, once again, you need to learn to appreciate self-guided tours.

Self-guided tours are preferable concerning learning but this strategy is not always applicable.

If you are on the rear of a tandem bicycle, your handlebar is of no use to control the direction. You must be in the driver seat. You must be in control of your learning path, something that is called active learning.

If you are at school, the teacher is often leading the lecture (passive learning) and there is no easy way out. But if you are reading a book, watching a conference or following a MOOC, you can pause, open the map and find a new itinerary. It may be a beginner book on the subject, a new introductory blog post to read, or simply a good night’s sleep.

Unlike the real-world where you always stand at a well-defined location, learning is different. You can follow different paths at the same time. During your studies, you were taking different courses during the same semester, all on different topics. This is possible because we have the gift of ubiquity when it comes to learning. We can be at multiple locations, following multiple learning paths, and that’s very useful.

Indeed, learning on different subjects is preferable as it increases the time between review sessions, so that we can reflect more on the subject and slowly consolidate what we are learning to make it stick. If we had to focus on only one topic instead, we would feel literally submerged with a flood of new information, and as we know it, cramming is a bad strategy to learn and remember what we learn. The ubiquitousness of learning allows us to move slower, to appreciate the landscape, and enjoy the journey. But that’s not the only advantage.

When following several paths, there are inevitably moments when paths are crossing, when we are making connections among subjects, connecting the dots like neurons are interconnected in our memory. There’s an old saying in neuroscience: “neurons that fire together wire together.” The more we create connections during learning, the stronger that learning is, and the easier it becomes to apply knowledge from one domain to a different one, which is called transfer of learning.

Sometimes, we are not in control of our learning. We are suddenly teleported somewhere else on the map, in a remote location that looks unfamiliar. This happens when you enroll in a training session without having the prerequisites, when a colleague shares with you a new tool that he has discovered recently and you haven’t heard before, or when you must complete a challenging task. These situations are perilous and you must work hard to not stay at this place for too long.

The farther you have been teleported from known lands, the more difficult the task will be. The goal is to find your way back and join one of your already explored paths. Also. Don’t panic. Ask for directions.

The history of your GPS positions says a lot about which kind of developer you are.

We’re getting near the end of this first article in the series. We’ve come a long way in our journey, visiting the city using different modes of transportation, at different paces, with different objectives. What I would like you to take away are these two tips:

In the next article of this series, we will escape the city to discover the wonders of the world. We will discuss how to expand our knowledge and our ignorance in new directions at the same time. Fasten your seat belt and get ready for a wild ride.