Tidly Bits of Knowledge, Shared by You

All right people, I’m going to share a little secret with you. Go ahead come a little closer so you can hear me, this is important. This may be somewhat of a shock to some of you but you’re smart. Yeah I said it, now deal with it. Oh, don’t give me the rolley eye. I know that you’re significant other along with your mother has been telling this to you for years. Go ahead and call them up now to thank them, they were right. (It’s ok, I can wait)

You back? Good.

To start off I’d like to reference a previous article from a while back. Don’t worry, I’m getting to the point. The beginning of this article may have seemed a little hand hold-ey… I’d like to think of it more like a virtual high five. That was all just to pump you up for this tidbit of information.

Like I was saying, you’re smart. If you’re like me you’re probably thinking that you’re not as smart as your peers or have as much to offer. This is not a bad thing… at least not for me. It’s what constantly drives me to become better. It turns out that you’ve already got the skills to offer your peers something.

I feel one of the best things you can do for yourself and your peers/community is to write down the tidbits of knowledge that are most likely trapped in your meat locker. This has been something that I try to keep up with and helps me CONSTANTLY. Also it’s an awesome tool for when you’re mind escapes for a shake break (SHAKE BREAK!). Just go ahead and search for that problem you’re having… Google and your past self probably got your back. Any blog you have will do just fine. I prefer Tumblr just due to me finding it easier to quickly get short form articles out there.

I’ve seen many benefits to this. You know what’s better than searching for a problem solution and finding that you’ve already wrote said solution? Your peers doing that same search and finding your solution. You just helped someone and that feels good. It’s even better when someone tells you they found your solution. Hey and sometimes there is a cherry on top… sometimes it’s someone that you look up to. Which brings us back to my rambling above about confidence.

There is something you know right now that the person doesn’t and quite possibly is having trouble with… RIGHT NOW.

• RIGHT NOW… you’re a smart dude/tte
• RIGHT NOW… someone is in need of knowledge
• RIGHT NOW… that person is next to you
• RIGHT NOW… that person is in another country
• RIGHT NOW… is harder than it looks
• RIGHT NOW… you have the solution

Whoops, how’d Van Halen get in here… I don’t apologize for that.

I do, however, apologize for my rambling thought process. Hopefully I will have motivated you in some way to get tidbits of YOUR knowledge out there. Remember this does not need to be anything long form. I found that as a turn off initially but found that quick problem/solution articles worked for me. As an example, one of my more popular articles is a solution for ruby-debug19/linecache19.

Don’t get mad, get glad

As a software developer there are many different realms of knowledge that are necessary to be perceived as successful. There is so much information, even in one particular aspect, to be processed that even super brained comic book characters couldn’t keep up. So why do some feel it necessary to know everything? Not only that but get upset at themselves for not knowing. I understand having a competitive drive to be the best but knowing everything is just out the realm of possibility.

There is a good majority of days that I feel like a complete idiot for not knowing something till i realized that it is ok not to know. That is the beauty of working in a team or in a pair programming environment. Someone is bound to be in the know enough to help. When I don’t know something, I try to figure it out quickly and if it’s just not happening I will ask someone else. Come on guys, even with your gps powered techno devices… It’s ok to stop and ask for directions sometimes.

Actually not knowing something tends to be more satisfying for me because I love learning. Plus, more often than not I will figure it out on my own with a little extra time, when I do it’s like kicking the Hulk in the testicles. I feel like “F, right I just did that. Did you all see that? That was me.”

It’s the small wins that really count for me. I’d like to consider myself a “Jack of a moderate amount of trades, master of some (every once in a while)” and I hope you all do too. Not sure if this article amounts to much more than an incoherent rant but I hope that some of you take away that it’s cool to not be in the know on every subject.