Steve Jones - SSC Editor (11/14/2013)
peterzeke (11/14/2013)
I read the brief text describing the TED talk video on the video webpage, and paid careful attetion to the statement about 20 hours essentially equates to 45 minutes a day for a month. Rounding it to 1 hour for 30 days gives you 30 hours. If I stuck to something for 30 consecutive days (45mins to 1 hour), I think I'd have a good grasp of the material -- not an expert, but a useful foundation. I think I'd finally conquer how to interpret execution plans skillfully, master Profiler and server side traces, juggle a dozens of variables in SSIS... and so on. I wouldn't be attempting to learn all of these things at once, but choosing a topic and focusing my efforts on that singular subject.Sean McCown (midnightdba.com), who happens to be a Powershell evangelist, wrote a really terrific article called "Nothing Beats Practice" (http://www.midnightdba.com/DBARant/?p=912. In the article he refers to "doing your 20s", which is all about repetition -- e.g., to learn how to perform backup/restore commands, repeat the process 20 times, everyday, for two weeks. By the end of two weeks, you'll likely remember the commands without thinking about them.
A researcher/author named Dr. John Medina studies the brain. One of his key principles is "Repeat to remember". To get something out of short term memory and into long term memory, repeat, repeat, repeat.
So, whether you spend 20 hours or 10,000 hours learning something, one of the key actions to be taken is repetition. Of course, physical performance can have its limitations -- for example, people who are of average height or less (i.e., less than 6ft) will probably never be able to slam-dunk a basketball into a regulation-height basketball rim --not even after 10,000 hours of practice. Barring these types of physical limitations, I still think that many, many subjects can be learned in a fairly short amount of time when the effort is diligent, purposeful, and frequently practiced -- along with enough sleep to have a brain capable of functioning for another day....
That's interesting. I might have to try that with Powershell. Spend some time repeating what I did the day or two before.
Hi Steve:
I'd be surprised if you aren't familiar with Sean McCown (and his SQL-awesomesauce wife, Jen). I highly recommend Sean's article I linked to about "nothing beats practice". His recommendation is just great for anyone who is a beginner or a pro that wants to stay on top of their game.
By the way, Sean has a whole video series on Powershell on his website: http://midnightdba.itbookworm.com/Video/Admin#tabs-Powershell. I first came across MidnightDBA when I was looking for decent videos to explain SSIS --> only after I started watching his SSIS videos did it start to make sense to me. (I'd watched SSIS videos by other people, even professional made videos, and none of them made SSIS tangible to me the way Sean's presentations did.) I haven't watched Sean's powershell videos, however, but I imagine they'd be as useful as all of the rest of the videos provided on their site.
--Pete