How to learn patterns and frameworks for common problems effectively and be confident about it.
The biggest and most useful quality one can have in the present fast-paced world is learning. The ability to learn effectively can help you succeed in any domain of life.
In the current age of data flowing like anything we find ourselves getting exposed to numerous topics in a day but in the end, we are not able to retain them. We remember bits and pieces but not the holistic understanding leading to the famous “Imposter Syndrome”. We are caught in an infinite loop of learning and forgetting and feel stuck.
As a Software Engineer (surely in other domains as well) learning forms a major part of your work schedule.
So mastering (or at least getting good at it) is kind of an innate job requirement.
Throughout my experience and learning from my mentors I have formed the following framework (evolved over multiple years of trying and failing).
I divide it into 4 stages, although this can be dependent on the individuals trying it out.
This framework was initially developed to learn software-related concepts but I am trying to make it broadly applicable in other domains as well.
Stage 1: We neither know the problem, nor the solution.
In this stage, we are a complete beginner just trying to get things to work as per current requirements. We are not familiar with the pitfalls or edge cases that may occur with our approach in the future.
Stage 2: We somewhat know the problem and solution but we don’t know how to apply it effectively.
In this stage, we become aware of the problems that our approach has and try to search for solutions for them. We find the solutions as well but we are not able to apply them effectively. The reason for this is we do not completely understand the problem pattern, we try to solve it scenario based but to effectively solve it we need to find the underlying pattern for it.
Stage 3: We consciously create the problem and hence know which solution will fix it.
In this stage, we get to the actual pattern of the problem to our approach, and when we are trying to apply this approach in a scenario we consciously identify the problem and hence know how to solve it effectively using a specific solution.
Stage 4: We predict the problem by just the problem statement.
This is the final stage and we should all strive to be here. In this stage, we start to predict the problem which can occur while addressing a particular scenario and we proactively find solutions to that and prevent the problem from even coming into existence.
