60

Three quaters of the year have already passed. I am not the person for new years resolutions, the best day to start a change is yesterday, the second best now. Just, where to focus? I am all for putting time into skills which can carry me over the next decades. For that I did a little exercise and listed my current tools and technologies and ordered them roughly by year.

The Lindy effect would suggest to double down on the earlier points on that list. But: you lose what you don't use, and that would be a terrible waste, should therefore the focus be on immediate applicability at the cost of longevity? Another approach would be to assess the depth of the knowledge in the different areas and focus to get the proficiency in the different technologies more evenly distributed. Next strategy could be to let the market drive the decision and be influenced by popular demand, but that is not quite my style. I'll already have to do some vendor specific certification, something I would not usually touch, on a rather short notice, but at least on my employers time and dime.

Anyway, I know that I should pick and focus. You can only do a finite number of things. At the risk of sounding like a very old person, but a month feels like almost nothing anymore, how many things can I realistically allocate enough time for? One a month (that's only a dozen a year), one every six weeks (down to eigth topics with some wiggle room), maybe one every ? So many things to learn, so little time. But: one at a time, one step after the other. It's a long road for those who choose to walk it.