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It's hard to notice progress in the moment
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In this episode, I reflect on the journey of learning and progress, drawing parallels between my experiences in bouldering, chess, and front-end development.
- My Discord Community: https://css.community
- The New CSS Toolkit Workshop: https://smashingconf.com/online-workshops/workshops/css-toolkit-kevin-powell/
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Transcript
Introduction and Return to Solo Episodes
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, my friend and friend, and welcome to my podcast, General Musings. My name is Kevin, and here at my podcast, I talk about whatever is front of mind for me in any given week, or maybe I should say that's what I used to do here.
00:00:11
Speaker
And this week, we will be returning to that. It is a solo episode, but I have been on a bit of a conversation binge, interview binge. I don't know what you want to call it, but we had Adam Argyle on last week and that was um if you haven't listened to that episode even if you're not looking for a job but it was a really good insightful conversation uh and as usual with adam it was a lot of fun even though we didn't talk about css really uh though we talked about i guess some of the disrespect towards css uh in the job market today maybe ah But then we also ruby also I also had a conversation recently with Ari Helvetica, Sarah Joy, Kyle from the admin bar.
00:00:51
Speaker
And i think there might have been one before that. I had Sarah Swedein a little bit before that as well. So like there's been a lot. ah Part of what I want to do do with this podcast ah was to.
00:01:03
Speaker
have more conversations with people this year. And so I've definitely checked that off through the last like two months. um' I'm going to be spreading them out a little bit. I probably won't have any other ah ones between now and the new
Shift to Personal Rambling Style
00:01:16
Speaker
year. I say that there might be one or two, but there won't be very many, i think be a lot more solo episodes like we're doing today.
00:01:23
Speaker
And, uh, yeah, and as I said in the intro, if you've only joined this since I've been doing the interviews, traditionally, this podcast is a bit more of a ramble on my part, uh, rather than it being structured content in the same way that might be interviews and the conversations.
Learning and Progress in Development
00:01:40
Speaker
tend to go and for this one i want to talk a little bit about the idea of progress and how it's really hard to see progress that you're making in the moment and there's two reasons i'm bringing this up or three reasons and this advice again is this is gonna be very generic but i do think it applies to front-end development as well and just learning things in general. And I'm assuming people that are following me are learning stuff. That's, that's why we're doing it.
00:02:07
Speaker
Maybe you're just like, catching up on CSS tips and tricks, but then you probably wouldn't be on this channel. I guess you just like hearing my voice. I don't know. I don't know why you're here. is the These, I will warn you if you've only been following these for the the interviews I've been doing lately. Sometimes this is worse content. when it's me solo, but it's it's fun just to to talk a little bit. And I think in general, they they tend to be well received. so So bear with me, see if you like it or not. And then if you don't, you can unsubscribe, I guess. um But anyway, I guess I shouldn't be telling people to unsubscribe, but it's a one of those types of episodes, I guess, where we're definitely rambling a little bit more. And actually,
00:02:47
Speaker
talking about rambling and going off topic every time near the end i tend to ramble more this one's just starting off like we're already off the rails but usually it's more toward the end when i've gotten through the rough outline i have that i start just rambling and i always apologize for it and in the comments people usually tell me that's like their favorite part of it so uh hopefully this is your you know a good introduction of to my general ramblings if you haven't heard them before or if you do like them well then you're happy with where things are going right now.
00:03:18
Speaker
um But I guess the reason I'm even going a little bit off topic is because I wanted to sort of tie it in with development in some way that is always a little bit of my goal. And ah maybe a little bit loosely put together on this one. But yeah, we're going to be doing a more of a general advice one, I guess, which is just to always be aware of the Progress that you're making, because ah whenever you're learning something new, it's really hard to notice the progress that you're making.
00:03:48
Speaker
And there's two ways this can come up, actually. As i'm saying this, I just thought of a friend of mine who hurt himself. ah So I've talked about this quite a while ago on the channel. This channel, not my main one of I've been into bouldering for a bit now.
00:04:03
Speaker
And ah one of my friends has hurt his elbows. He's tendonitis of some sort or something. and he's had to stop climbing for a bit. And he's really bummed out about it. um And you come he comes his son climbs with my son and stuff. So I see him at the gym all the time. But he's just like watching.
00:04:19
Speaker
And, you know, and i I injured my wrist last year at one point and I couldn't climb for a bit. So I could relate to like the annoyance of it just feeling like it's never getting any better. But then if you look back three weeks later, you're like, oh, OK, there has been an improvement. But in the moment, you don't see that. So it definitely applies for injuries when you're in the moment, but for learning as well.
Chess Obsession and Learning Process
00:04:40
Speaker
ah So, I mean, bouldering is one of those things where i I can tie it back into that because when you start or not even when you start at every point along the way, it feels like you're not progressing because you just feel like you're stuck at like the current problem that you're on or the current level that you're at.
00:04:54
Speaker
And then when you look back six months, you're like, oh, yeah, I'm much better now than I was. hopefully. Anyway, but i for me, I know for a while I really felt stuck at a certain level.
00:05:05
Speaker
And now I'm like, oh, I'm actually doing some that are a little bit harder than what I used to be able to do. And I'm able to do certain moves easier and and other stuff there. And the main reason, I didn't want to talk about bouldering in this one. It just sort of came up. But the main reason I was thinking about this is because I've recently got into chess.
00:05:22
Speaker
I'm still really bad at chess. It's always been this thing that like, I don't, I don't know why I picked it up actually and why I started playing it. Um, but I did and just, uh, for fun and I've become obsessed. My wife is um driving her nuts cause I'm just on my phone all the time playing. And she's like, get off your phone.
00:05:38
Speaker
And I'm like, I can't right now. i'm in the middle of a game drives her bananas. So I have to be a little bit careful. Uh, I'm really bad. So don't challenge me to a game. But ah my if you know anything about chess, it's like they have ranking systems for where you're at. And at the beginning, i was just I was getting really, really frustrated because I was like watching tutorials and reading about it. And whenever I get a new hobby, I go hard on that hobby. So I was like getting all into like openings and trying to learn them and like everything else.
00:06:08
Speaker
I'm like, I'm learning this opening. That's what you're supposed to do is like learn an opening, right? So you understand like the basic but first, it's like the general principles. And then do use an opening and reuse that over and over and you get all the variations that come from it.
00:06:21
Speaker
And I know some people don't like chess because it becomes this memorization of openings. That's like if you're a super grandmaster, sure. And I think any level that's even if you're like a really good amateur, or um is I guess there's professional chess players.
00:06:38
Speaker
I don't think they make tons of money, right? I'm trying to think like outside of the very top. You know, that's not all you do, I'm assuming. But anyway, that's a topic for another day, I guess, but not even another day. and It's a topic I'm not going to go down right now. And I don't know enough about ah the world of professional chess.
00:06:54
Speaker
ah There's the tournaments and everything, obviously. Anyway, I digress. I was getting frustrated because I was doing all of this and learning it and I'd still just be terrible. was just getting destroyed in most games I was playing.
00:07:08
Speaker
I would lose pieces in dumb ways and it was just like, I'm learning these things. I got the moves down for this part of the opening and then everything just falls apart. That's once I got there. I'd make mistakes in the things that I'd been learning. I'd block a piece. I'm like, oh, I should have done that move first and then I do it again like four games in a row and I'm like...
00:07:27
Speaker
really frustrated and then now I'm on a little bit of a winning streak I've won my last 10 games ah that I've played which is like actually i lost one recently but I was on a 10 game winning streak which for me was that was super cool and and fun to see and there's the rating system they have which is called ELO I think ELO is used in lots of things and not just chess. Maybe I'm wrong there though.
00:07:49
Speaker
um But my I got I gained basically 100 ELO during that winning streak. And I'm like, oh, I'm 500 now for anywhere like 520 or something. So ah playing mostly 15 minute games. So if anyone is interested, but I think maybe I'm better ranked than that because I've again, I lost something along the way, but I'm finally seeing moves like, oh, this is like the trap I used to always fall into. And now I didn't fall into it. And then you know, those are patterns that you follow and the pattern recognition is coming. And I'm actually like, I can see like all that work I did previously is actually
Understanding the Learning Plateau
00:08:24
Speaker
paying off. And this is really cool.
00:08:26
Speaker
And for everybody who doesn't play chess right now, this is just like, oh my God, Kevin, get to the point. But this happens with everything. All right. I used to teach in the classroom and when you'd see it there with students. So it's like the the very early learning curve is always like super high, right? So you start learning code and you're just like,
00:08:45
Speaker
all of a sudden you're doing stuff and it's really exciting. And then you hit that beginner thing where you just can't, you you see no progress and it's really frustrating. There's the whole tutorial hell thing that I've talked about before and how you can get through it. But even if you're using the right steps there and you're writing all this code and you're building projects and you're still getting stuck every single time because you don't know, you don't remember the thing and you have to go, I have to look that up again or look at my old code base or Google, whatever.
00:09:14
Speaker
Ask AI, whatever it is, however you're you're doing things. And it can feel really frustrating when you're in that phase of just it feels like nothing is clicking or it still happens to me where like I reference old videos of my own because I forget how to do something.
00:09:31
Speaker
And if we don't use it all the time, it's normal that we don't remember it. But for things that you are actively learning when it's not sinking in, it's definitely a frustrating experience and it can feel like you're really not making any progress.
00:09:43
Speaker
guarantee you, you are. It just takes that repetition. The same way I was falling into the same trap, like four games in a row. I literally like there's there's a sequence where You just don't want to in general, you don't want to block one of your pieces. Like if you move a pawn up in chess, you can block the path of other pieces.
00:10:02
Speaker
So there's the opening I've been using. You want to move one of your pieces before you move the next pawn into place. And I literally did like four or five games in a row where I did the same thing and I blocked it.
00:10:13
Speaker
And every time I did it, as I said before, I was just like, and I know I shouldn't have done that. Why did I do it again? You sort of get like the tunnel vision. And but I really see the same thing whenever I'm learning new things with everything else where you make the same mistake, you mix up the same thing over and over again.
00:10:29
Speaker
I still to this day, after however long I've been doing this, I still write a display absolute, maybe 50% of the time that ah maybe not 50, but 20, at least 20% of the time, I'll do a display absolute instead of position absolute.
00:10:44
Speaker
And we get stuck in these like stupid, silly things. The only advantage now when I do that is I find it much faster than I used to. But it's, you know, it's just this thing where learning isn't linear.
00:10:55
Speaker
And I think that's the most important thing where whenever we're learning anything, it tends to be this path where Again, that really quick start just because you knew nothing and now you're bombarded with information and you, yes, I'm getting all this. I can now watch these videos or follow a blog post and i understand all the things that they're talking about. So it feels like I'm getting it. And then you just get, you feel like you get stuck.
00:11:21
Speaker
But what I feel like tends to happen is in that stuck phase, whatever it is that we're doing, there's a lot of learning that's going on that you just don't realize. And it's like, sort of, you're leveling up under the scenes. It's a bit like in a video game, even right when you're, you're grinding to an RPG or something, you're grinding along to get through some levels, but like,
00:11:42
Speaker
At one point that grind gets kind of long to get to the next level, but you're still like learning, you know, you're leveling up a lot. And then you finally hit that next point where then you can unlock some new skills on your, your, the tree, your skill tree and all those other things. It's a little bit the same idea where you have to like, do all of this work.
00:12:00
Speaker
To like, behind the scenes, you're not seeing any payoff. And then all of a sudden, a bunch of stuff falls into place. And it's not always a bunch of stuff all at once. Sometimes it's a lot more slow. And that's often why we don't see it as well.
00:12:12
Speaker
But you have all of this going on, all of this going on. And you don't realize because it's this slow progress that's happening that like, oh, now I'm not having to look that thing up that I had been looking up every time.
00:12:24
Speaker
And but you don't notice it because it's just become part of the normal. And then you still feel stuck on this other thing. But there's all these other things that you're not paying attention to that are becoming unstuck while you're doing it.
00:12:35
Speaker
And i think we're we're always so focused on where we want to be. but it's a moving goalpost where we want to be is always beyond where we currently are. And so, yeah, this, I'm going to just keep on talking about this and from peening myself at this point.
00:12:51
Speaker
ah So I think that is going to be it for this episode, a return to the the rambles and all of that. I hope you enjoyed, I hope you enjoyed this one. I will say that if you are new here as well, ah that the, when I say we're going to wrap up, don't like skip to the next episode. I tend to talk for a few more minutes about random other things,
00:13:08
Speaker
ah because that's how these rambles go. But yeah, I think on that topic, we sort of got what I wanted to say. And hopefully that makes sense. And for anybody who is feeling stuck, I really hope it motivates you a little bit, like sometimes just take a pause and look back and see where you were, whether it was a week ago, a month ago, six months ago, depending on how far along you are in your journey.
Upcoming Workshops and Conclusion
00:13:30
Speaker
And I guarantee you that you will see that you've you've gotten further than you thought you were. ah But yeah, that is basically it for this week. If a little bit of things that I'm up to just in case you're you're wanting to follow along with other journeys of mine.
00:13:46
Speaker
um I have a workshop coming up with SmashingConf. It's an online workshop called the new CSS toolkit where we'll be exploring things. modern css and the new ways we can write css so it's really for people my my pitch for it is if your css today looks the same as it did five years ago then this is the workshop for you i'm really looking at the things that have come along in the last five years that have decent browser support very good browser support sometimes some things that are coming because i'm too excited about it ah but all the things that have sort of changed over the last five years that enable us to write
00:14:21
Speaker
CSS in new better ways than than we used to have to write it. So if that interests you at all, the link for that will be down in the description below. ah did a free workshop on grid on my discord channel, and those are going to come back as well. I'm planning a flex box one, I have the basics of it down, I was hoping to have that last month, I'm going to try for it in like two weeks from now.
00:14:43
Speaker
ish no promises on the date yet uh but if you'd like to hang out for that one again it'd be a flex box free workshop at the discord channel server so you can check the link out for that down in the description as well and i think that's it so thank you so much for listening i hope you enjoyed this episode and of course until next time don't forget to make your corner of the internet just a little bit more awesome