In the world of sports keeping your athletic skills sharp comes with lots and lots of practice. Practice time outweighs an athletes' performance time on average 5 to 1. With such a large percentage of time spent practising athletes often forget how much time they spend on personal improvement.
For most athletes practice is not the only time they spend improving their skills or abilities. Most professional or collegiate athletes spend hours in film, meetings and workouts that add to the time that they spend on personal improvement. When I look back on the amount of time I spent as an athlete improving myself, I'm amazed that I have not carried this over into my business life.
It was always an important philosophy of my coaches to "sharpen the saw". It was always a strong teaching point for each of my coaches to harp on this subject. They cited example after example where effort and self improvement was the only thing that separated us (our team) from them (our opponent). If we were more prepared and practised then there were no factors within our control that could turn the tide of the game against us.
In the business world this same principle applies. Some of the best developers I know are the developers who make the time to attempt out of the box ideas, new patterns and technologies. Imagine if the business world implemented such efforts to improve there products or services.
Their willingness to implement and test these technologies and ideas is just one attempt to work more practice into 'game time'. Yet this is not enough equivalent to 'sharpening the saw', many of these developers also talk about what they are trying on their own time, what they are working on in the open source world or how they are giving back to a more local community.
It are these attempts to 'sharpen the saw' by these developers have inspired me to sharpen my own saw.
Within the last month I have started a public project to enhance my knowledge of a new language. I have started this blog to improve my writing abilities and skills in conveying my thoughts to others. I have also enrolled in free college classes offered purely on-line.
Even with all of these personal attempts to improve, I still feel like I am behind the curve. In a lot of ways its just like college athletics, without constance improvement you will quickly fall behind you opponent.
Check out my project at: Git Hub
Check out the college course here.
For most athletes practice is not the only time they spend improving their skills or abilities. Most professional or collegiate athletes spend hours in film, meetings and workouts that add to the time that they spend on personal improvement. When I look back on the amount of time I spent as an athlete improving myself, I'm amazed that I have not carried this over into my business life.
It was always an important philosophy of my coaches to "sharpen the saw". It was always a strong teaching point for each of my coaches to harp on this subject. They cited example after example where effort and self improvement was the only thing that separated us (our team) from them (our opponent). If we were more prepared and practised then there were no factors within our control that could turn the tide of the game against us.
In the business world this same principle applies. Some of the best developers I know are the developers who make the time to attempt out of the box ideas, new patterns and technologies. Imagine if the business world implemented such efforts to improve there products or services.
Their willingness to implement and test these technologies and ideas is just one attempt to work more practice into 'game time'. Yet this is not enough equivalent to 'sharpening the saw', many of these developers also talk about what they are trying on their own time, what they are working on in the open source world or how they are giving back to a more local community.
It are these attempts to 'sharpen the saw' by these developers have inspired me to sharpen my own saw.
Within the last month I have started a public project to enhance my knowledge of a new language. I have started this blog to improve my writing abilities and skills in conveying my thoughts to others. I have also enrolled in free college classes offered purely on-line.
Even with all of these personal attempts to improve, I still feel like I am behind the curve. In a lot of ways its just like college athletics, without constance improvement you will quickly fall behind you opponent.
Check out my project at: Git Hub
Check out the college course here.
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