May 20, 2022
Most of the time, we are focused on working on our strengths and moving from one project to another. But, sometimes, your weaknesses - if not addressed - can be the limiting factor in your career or life in general. We’ve all got weaknesses. We all have gaps in our knowledge that prevent us from doing things as efficiently as possible. The more gaps we can find—and eliminate—the better off we’ll be in the long run.
This post is about finding those gaps in knowledge that are holding you back from reaching your full potential. We’ll examine why those gaps exist, how to find them, and finally how to fill them in so that you aren’t limited by what you don’t know.
For a long time, I didn’t understand Data Structures properly. Sure, I took a few courses, and tried to understand how they work. But, to be honest, initially, I only learned enough about them to pass the course. Most of the time, I just called what seemed like the appropriate function to get the job done - without understanding how the functions and the data structures function.
I kept seeing data structures in the Java code I was working with, and I could kind of figure out what was going on, but I didn’t really understand it. I knew that if I took the time to understand how they worked and what they really were that I could do my job better, but I just didn’t have the time.
Eventually, it became readily apparent to me that I had a severe gap in my knowledge. Neglecting to take the time to thoroughly learn how data structures worked was costing me hours of wasted time. I eventually decided to take the time to understand DSA. It only took me a few hours of reading and experimenting with them before the concept clicked.
An observer, watching me work, would have immediately identified my weakness and how much productivity it was costing me, but even though it’s apparent now, I couldn’t see it at the time.
That’s the problem with gaps in our knowledge. We tend to gloss over them and we tend to be too busy to stop and take the time to fill them in. We end up not really understanding what we’re doing or do things in an inefficient way to avoid areas where we’re weak or feel uncomfortable.
Even when we do eventually identify these gaps and understand the pain they’re causing us, we still have a tendency to do nothing about it—even though we know we should. It’s like avoiding going to the dentist when you have a toothache, because you don’t want to be bothered with it.
Now, not all gaps in your knowledge are apparent. In fact, I’d say that most of them you’re only vaguely aware of—if at all. It’s often difficult to know what it is you don’t know and it’s easy to ignore.
One of the best ways to identify gaps in your knowledge that could be holding you back is to look at where you’re spending the largest amount of your time and any repeated tasks you’re doing. Often, you’ll find that tasks that are taking you an inordinate amount of time are being slowed down by some gap in your knowledge. You might be fumbling through something because you lack a thorough understanding. That’s exactly what was happening to me with Data Structures. I was spending a large amount of time trying to debug or work with code that had them, instead of taking the few hours it would have taken me to understand them.
The same goes for repetitive tasks. Anything you’re doing repeatedly is worth a thorough examination to see if there’s something you don’t know that, if you did, might increase your efficiency. Consider keyboard shortcuts. Perhaps you’re using an application repeatedly, but you aren’t working as efficiently as possible, because you have to manually drag a mouse around the screen and click. A possible gap in your knowledge could be keyboard shortcuts. Just spending the time to learn the keyboard shortcuts for an app you use for hours each day—hint: your IDE—could save you hours a week.
Another technique for identifying gaps in your knowledge is to always try to be aware of anything you don’t understand or that isn’t clear to you. You can keep a list of things you need to research or aren’t clear about and keep track of how often those same subjects keep coming up. You’d be amazed how quickly that list can grow. Just be honest with yourself: if you encounter something you don’t understand, you don’t have to learn it right away, but add it to your list so you can at least identify gaps in your knowledge.
This technique works great if you’re preparing for a job interview and need to identify what you need to study. Try to find as many job interview questions as you’re likely to be asked at an interview. If you’re looking for a Java job, perhaps you’ll find lists of Java job interview questions. Go through all the questions, and put any concept that you don’t understand or any questions you can’t answer with complete certainty on your list. Once you’re done, you’ll have a nice long list of topics to study. It seems simple and obvious when I say it here, but many software developers preparing for a job interview have no idea what to study or how to figure it out.
It does no good to identify all the gaps in your knowledge if you don’t have a way to fill them in. Fortunately, just like the trip to the dentist, the actual work of filling in a gap, once you identify it, isn’t as dreadful as you might imagine.
Really, the key to filling in a gap is identifying it. Once you know what a gap in your knowledge is and how it’s holding you back, it’s usually easy to figure out how you can fill in that gap. When I was able to figure out that not properly learning data structures was holding me back, all I had to do was take the few hours needed to sit down and make a concerted effort to learn.
This feels like a pretty easy one — we know what we know and we know what we don’t. But take time to identify exactly what you’re missing. For whatever field you work in or are studying for, identify exactly which key elements leave you with question marks floating over your head. If you know what your shortcomings are, you can target those specific areas instead of looking at everything. It saves time and before you know it, you’ll be an expert in the areas you that mystified you before.
Set up searches so that you get all the top news on your particular subject delivered to your inbox, find the top professional books on the subject, and read as often as possible. Experts say that reading for an hour a day in your field will make you the expert in seven years. Go from just filling a knowledge gap after a few months — become an industry expert in the same subject that made you frustrated and confused and questioning your career choice in just a few more years!
Online courses are a hot trend right now. If you want to learn anything, you can probably find a course online. You’ll want to plan accordingly though — consider your own personality and schedule, and look for a course that either has a course calendar with specific due dates, or is learn at your own pace. Schedule it into your agenda so you don’t forget it. Because it’s your own accountability, you’ll have to be more conscientious with these courses. There are plenty out there and a lot of them are outstanding, so the only things standing in your way are your own drive and organizational skills!
Think of this as your own problem-solving and analytical skills. Try to use analogies and examples from your personal life to better understand the topic you are trying to learn. Better - build something personal using the knowledge you've learned. Use your own life experience and problem-solving to draw conclusions about your particular knowledge gap — this won’t make you an expert, and you’ll still need to do a lot of research to level up, but you close small gaps or start to fill in the big ones if you just process new information little by little!
No matter what your knowledge gap is, if you practice it over and over, eventually you’ll get it. The first time you give it a try, you may be completely frustrated, but after a few tries you’ll see the patterns and figure out what you’ve been doing wrong. A few more and you’ll start to memorize the steps. Keep trying and you’ll be able to skip steps. Before long a process you learned as ten steps can be done in three or four and you only need a few moments to complete them.
In the age of technology, it isn’t hard to make connections with the experts. Find them on LinkedIn, follow them on Twitter, comment on their blogs, and like them on Facebook. Ask them questions and read their material. You’ll learn a lot from them and if you’re a networking pro, you’ll build a lasting relationship with a personality that it wouldn’t have been possible to in an earlier time.
You might think that you need to be the expert already to become the teacher, but it isn’t true. The research and preparation you take on while designing and implementing your classes will make you an expert before you know it — but you don’t have to be an expert to sign on for the responsibility! Something about having the responsibility for teaching other minds engages you to learn more and answer anticipated questions. You’ll learn above and beyond the subject matter just in case, and as you do research on even subjects you think you know plenty, you’ll learn more. Nothing actually helps you fill the knowledge gap faster than instilling your knowledge in others.
