When to learn: “Just in case” versus “just in time”
When should you make the effort to learn something? It’s a question of investment strategy regarding time, energy and, not infrequently, money. One approach is to assess if the learning can be put off until just prior to its anticipated time of need, and if so, do that. This follows the wisdom that you should wait to invest until waiting any longer will reduce your anticipated return on all investments or lose you the opportunity to invest. An application of this parsimonious principle seen in business as well as software design is an approach called “just in time.” The author of this post asks, how do we apply this principle to learning, and when is it appropriate?
What do you learn just in case you’ll need it in the future, and what do you learn just in time when you do need it?
In general, you learn things in school just in case you’ll need them later. Then once you get a job, you learn more things just in time when you need them.
When you learn just in time, you’re highly motivated. There’s no need to imagine whether you might apply what you’re learning since the application came first. But you can’t learn everything just in time. You have to learn some things before you can imagine using them. You need to have certain patterns in your head before you can recognize them in the wild.
Originally published at BeyondLogical.net/blog. Please leave any comments there.