Finding focus and priorities

Connected to the how to keep up with current, ever-changing technology question that we looked at in the previous section, there is a follow-up that we also hear all the time: Which technologies are important to learn today, and which ones should we prioritize?

This question is a recognition that there simply is not enough time to acquire every skill, so what do you choose?

There is a simple answer to that: Choose to learn something that you need to apply right now.

It may sound simple, but it makes sense. If execution is what develops your skills, then if you prioritize learning about something that you need to use immediately, you will go ahead and use it, which will develop your skill. This is the best way to get yourself to do the skill the fastest. This is simple, but it is not very helpful, is it?

Imagine this. You must do something at work, and your boss tells you to learn and apply it. In this case, what we just discussed could be the right answer. However, that leaves you at the mercy of what your company wants you to do, and someone else’s ideas of what is important. Not a good strategy for an awesome career, is it?

For you to take control of your career—the theme of this book—you need to proactively go after the things that make a difference to you. For that, you will need to focus and choose what matters to you.

And immediately when you hear that, you may feel a tiny bit of anxiety pop up in your head. There are so many options to choose from:

• What if I choose the wrong thing?
• What if the thing I choose is not the best thing?
• What if I miss the important things?
• What if things change?

If you feel like this, maybe it is because you think that the focus is the technology or the tool that you will spend time mastering and developing the skills for. You may be thinking that the focus is, for example, on Java instead of Go or Ruby.

But that definition of focus is too narrow, and not very useful for your career. Choosing an area of your focus is not about choosing a technology or a tool, much less a framework or an API. Choosing a focus is choosing the problem you want to solve. In a way, choosing a problem is a much more specific and narrow focus.

For example, you can focus on solving the very pressing problem of achieving high performance for large, scalable, Java-based finance applications in the cloud.

This is a very precise problem to solve. It seems much more specific than focusing on Java or the cloud.

However, the tools, knowledge, and skills needed to achieve high performance are actually many and varied. You will need to know about Java tools, cloud tools, performance tools, financial concepts, scalable architectures, and so much more!

Well, this seems too much to learn! Aren’t we back to the problem of lack of focus? If you keep the problem in mind, then no. It is the problem that will help you keep your focus.

In our example, you don’t need to learn or keep up to date with everything in Java, just the parts that focus on performance. There's no need to follow every single tool that shows up in the cloud. You will focus on the ones that give you an edge on the scalability needed in the financial world.

Finding your focus is finding an interesting problem to solve that you are passionate about. In the next section, we will introduce a concept to help you.