Like last week, this is going to be more of an observation than an advice post, but it does come down to one thing that I think can be a lesson. Namely, this post is going to be about how much easier life gets once you dive deep and really learn the tools you need for your trade.
As I mentioned about a month ago, one of the tools that I use at work and at home is JIRA. To explain it again, JIRA is a work management tool designed for programming teams to keep track of their bugs and features. After using it work for a while, I wondered if it would be a good tool for keeping track of my own backlog and tasks that I’d like to get done in my personal time. I gave it a trial period, liked how it turned out, so I have made it a part of my daily life. But one of the things that I learned while going through this process is that very few people at work actually know how to use it, and that is probably why, for the most part, they don’t like it. It does have its bugs and server issues, but most of their complaints are easily solved by proper configuration and knowing the workflow.
What really fascinates me about this whole thing is that only a handful of people at work actually take the time to learn the tool. We all have to use it, so it makes sense that you would put in some effort to figuring out its features and quirks. At the very least, there are some really handy keyboard shortcuts that make changing things much easier and faster. I enjoy these immensely and have no issues with organizing things.
Tools Are a Skill Set
Just like how a carpenter can’t do much without having the right tools, and knowing how to use them, people who sit behind a desk all day need to know their own share of tools as well. And perhaps even more importantly, you need to be able to continue expanding your toolbox. In pretty much any field, having skills that are rare is a huge boon to your future career, and staying on the cutting edge of what’s new is a good way to make sure you are a rarity. This applies to tools as well. The person who knows how to use more recent accounting software is going to be more useful than someone who is still using the programs from the 90s.
This doubly applies with enterprise software, since they tend to be the most obtuse, yet powerful, tools available to a professional. Getting into enterprise software is difficult for someone who doesn’t have a reason to use them (mostly because of cost), but if you are in a situation where you have to use a tool, it is a great benefit to yourself and others that you learn how to maximize the usefulness of it. You become the expert, the person that people come to with problems. That leads to better reviews, better raises, and better prospects in the future.
Obviously you will have to pick and choose what you want to master. For me, it is easy to get better at using JIRA because I use it outside of work. But when it comes to using Eclipse at work, I decline from learning much about it because it’s (in my opinion) a crummy IDE and most of my work is not dependent on it. It’s just the default IDE of choice, and it does the job well enough. I prefer to spend my time getting better at using things that most people don’t, like Vim and Ruby/Rails.
To sum up, if you want to be unique in a particular field, you need to know what the best tools are and how to use them. Become someone that others depend on for advice. And if you are really learning these tools well, then your productivity will also soar.
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These posts are going to be shorter for about a month while I work on getting the next series of lessons ready. So for now, they are going to be mostly observations, rants, and other experiences. Hope that doesn’t disappoint too many of you. You can always go back through the archive and read some of the better stuff! Until next week.