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I am wrapping up the manuscript for this book (deadline on 10/17) and just wrote the first pass at a "Perpetual Learning" pattern named "Expand Your Bandwidth".  I ended the pattern with my 3 experiences using it. I thought it would make sense to post my stories here:

When I was given the opportunity to learn my first programming language by my employer in late 2000, I began Expanding my Bandwidth immediately. I felt like I had a lot of catching up to do, so after I read a couple Perl books, I looked for any possible opportunity to learn more. I was determined to reach the next level as a Perl developer as quickly as possible and knew that just taking one book at a time wasn't going to be fast enough (I'm competitive, OK?). So I joined perlmonks.org, asked and answered questions on comp.lang.perl.misc, attended a couple Perl Mongers meetings, and started playing Perl Golf (yes, competitively). After about a year of this, I had to scale down my intake for the sake of my sanity and marriage. But I had made progress, and had many more resources at my disposal when I found myself stumped.

Then, in the spring of 2002 I read Kent Beck's Extreme Programming Explained and saw an opportunity to grow beyond Perl into the world of test-driven development, pair programming, object-oriented design, and design patterns. Once again I Expanded my Bandwidth and read a pile of excellent books, started attending a local agile software development user group, paid my way to XP/Agile Universe conference (thankfully held near my home that year), participated on the extreme programming mailing list, started reading relevant blogs, and subsequently started blogging. The outcome of this season of Expanding my Bandwidth won me a job at ThoughtWorks, a transnational agile consulting company. My career and apprenticeship were forever changed by the learning opportunities that ThoughtWorks presented me.

As I transitioned from apprentice to journeyman toward the end of 2005, I saw another opportunity on the horizon: Ruby on Rails was on the rise. I strategically Expanded my Bandwidth in order to take advantage of the market opportunity that this presented. This allowed me to join Obtiva, a local consulting company that better fit my lifestyle, where I founded Obtiva's Software Studio and kick-started Obtiva's apprenticeship program. Expand Your Bandwidth is an extremely powerful pattern when used strategically. Just remember to turn it off periodically. :)

When I started Obtiva's Software Studio at the beginning of 2007, I had a lot to learn. A lot. I had focused a lot of my learning prior to 2005 on Extreme Programming, Java, Design Patterns, and Object-Oriented Design. In 2005 I made a decision to put my writing about my apprenticeship experiences on hold and take advantage of the opportunities that Ajax and Rails presented. This led me to leave ThoughtWorks and join Obtiva in 2006, and start our Studio the following year. Starting the Studio meant I had to step outside my cozy world of objects, patterns, and process and into the messier, and unfamiliar world of SQL, web servers, CSS, performance tuning, and system administration. I also had to step outside my cozy world of corporate consulting where missed estimates meant little more than some slight disappointment to a middle manager and into a world where missed estimates meant serious problems for a small business owner. There is no better testing ground for your devleopment ideals than having to justify them to a small business owner whose livlihood is depending on your delivery expertise.

I've written a bit about this before, but I had lunch on Friday with Jay Fields and he was talking about learning the financial domain for his first post-ThoughtWorks gig. He said he was enjoying it but pointed out that it wasn't something that would be directly beneficial to him since he wasn't ever planning on being a trader. Thinking about this on the way back to the Studio, it drove home the power that a generalist possesses. Since I have Software Craftsmanship on the brain, it reminded me of a quote from McBreen's book:

"The step from apprentice to journeyman is very significant and represents the coming of age of the developer. It is a public recognition that the developer is a skilled generalist, able to undertake application development projects without assistance."

Without assistance. While there are countless things that I appreciate about Obtiva's Software Studio, one of the most valuable assets I have developed there is my ability to undertake application development projects without assistance. Not that I have actually developed anything in the Studio without assistance. We are a team, and the Studio was started with apprenticeship in mind, so we strive to pair program and collaborate every day. But when I have a few days or nights to myself, perhaps a long plane ride, or a long weekend, I have the opportunity to quickly turn ideas into a reality. While there is nothing sexy about deployment scripts or web server configuration, the power of the knowledge to develop and deploy software without assistance is literally priceless.

I've officially declared myself "blocked" as a writer. Declaring this will hopefully help pull me out of writer's-block-denial-land and help me get back on the path to developing these patterns into a publishable form.  I should say that my editor, Mary O'Brien, has been patient, understanding, and supportive through this process, particularly when I've been slow to respond (or unresponsive) to her inquiries.

I just spent a week offline and on holiday with my wife and children. It was an important and well-timed retreat and an opportunity to reflect on why I'm out of flow. Just before I left, Kevin Taylor, my business partner, handed me The Art of Learning (by Josh Waitzkin) just after he finished reading it. It's full of deep insights on learning and performance. It's also full of compelling auto-biographical stories from the chess champion who was the subject of the book and subsequent movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer", who went on to become a Tai Chi Push Hands world champion. The book is all about mastery, but digs deeper into the mechanics of elite performance and what separates the good from the great from the elite.

Two thoughts keep coming back to me as I read the book.

First, Josh has a lot of time on his hands. To be fair, he has exactly the same amount of time that I do.  He has 24 hours per day, in fact he has less time than I do since I'm older than he is. But when I read about him spending several hours a day refining his forms and literally taking hours to move his arms six inches, I realize that his days have very different structure than mine. I am a husband and father of three who tries to spend quality time with his wife and children every day. I am a software developer, team leader, mentor, and business owner who has projects, customers, teammates, and apprentices who need my time and attention. When I was describing Josh to my wife, I told her to imagine my focus on excellence and multiply it by 10. Despite the demands on my time, I have always carved out time to learn about and improve upon what I am currently focused on. For a long time that was American football, and then it was family systems and narrative therapy, and now it is software craftsmanship. I've also taken diversions into the martial art of Kenpo and explored Texas Hold'em poker. Like Josh, I love to learn, and I agree that it's an art. I appreciate that Josh has been able to structure his life in such a way that he can throw himself so fully into the art of learning and then benefit his readers with what he has discovered. But we all must strike a balance in our lives, and when we sacrifice our responsibilities for the sake of learning and mastery, we have slid into obsession.  That said, if I was neither a husband nor father nor business owner, it would be unlikely that I would be as disciplined as Josh to focus so much of my time on learning.  It's too easy to say, "well, he's a genius" or "he only has to worry about himself", but in reality, there are thousands of Josh's out there who lack the discipline to do what he does.

A second thought keeps coming back to me as Josh touches on the importance of allowing your personality to express itself in your craft. For Josh, this meant he played best when he could create chaos on the chessboard and then thrive in that chaos, just as he did in his normal life. When I read this, it was immediately obvious that over the last few years there has been an aspect of my life that is not congruent with who I am.  This incongruence between the various aspects of my life has caused various problems for me. I'm obviously not going into detail about what the incongruence is, but I feel comfortable writing about the effects of it in my professional life. The effects are simple but powerful: I'm off my game and out of flow. When you wear a lot of hats (father, team leader, consultant, husband, etc.) being out of flow feels exponential, as mistakes in one arena spill over into another, and another, and cascade into a mountain of disappointment. These mistakes can be technical, such as rushing through a software feature and choosing not to write tests for your code, or these mistakes can be relational, such as ignoring a customer's needs and missing out on an opportunity to innovate. Recognizing this incongruence was the first step toward correcting it. It is too easy to focus on the symptoms and problems caused by the incongruence, rather than dig down to the root cause and solve the fundamental problem. For example, if an alcoholic wants to overcome their addiction, they generally can't just focus on drinking less alcohol, they need to address the underlying issues that drove them toward alcohol abuse. Likewise I am in the process of digging deep to address my incongruence and turn things around.

This blog will get back on topic shortly! Please forgive my digression into self-improvement and introspection but it's an important step for me to overcome this blockage.

One of the authors that inspires me most is C.S. Lewis. He is probably best known for writing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which was read to me when I was young. Since then I've read most of his books and a good chunk of them over the course of 2005, when I was in the thick of starting the apprenticeship patterns. The essay/sermon that I found to be most relevant to what I'm focused on is titled "Learning in War Time" which contains this excellent quote:

If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come.

This quote resonates with me. The times in my life where conditions were most favorable, when the singular goal of my situation was to go to school and learn, were my most wasted years from an academic standpoint. I did learn during those years, but what I learned had little to do with books or classes. Yet, once I was out of school and had other things like getting a job and getting married to Staci at the front of my mind, I suddenly started becoming interested in learning. Since that time, the conditions for learning have steadily grown worse (3 kids), and yet despite this, I have had an insatiable appetite for learning that would surprise my college professors.

I can't explain why my interest in learning hibernated until I had left school. I'd like to think I can attribute it to my favorite quote from page 100 of A Pattern Language:

In a society which emphasizes teaching, children and students -- and adults -- become passive and unable to think or act for themselves. Creative, active individuals can only grow up in a society that emphasizes learning instead of teaching.

I'd like to blame the society of mainstream education, or simply being in an environment where someone is getting paid to teach, as opposed to being a member of a group of self-motivated, self-directed learners. Unfortunately, I don't think I can lay the blame for my wasted years of education entirely on my environment, but I do think there is truth in Alexander's emphasis on learning over teaching. And I think this is a critical point for apprentices.

For the vast majority of apprentices, your apprenticeship will not be formal. You will have to create it for yourself, in the unfavorable conditions of corporate IT. While it would make economic sense for your employer to allow you to read relevant books or blogs for an hour a day, this is discouraged because it doesn't look like you're "working". While it would make economic sense for your employer to allow you to sit near (or even pair program with) a more experienced colleague, the seating chart must be adhered to. There will forever be obstacles that hinder your attempts to learn and excel, but the successful apprentice is undeterred. Learning is your responsibility, it's not up to your employer to give it to you. You have to take it.

I'd like to hear from you how you've found ways to learn despite unfavorable conditions.