Recently I read Kathy Sierra's How to Become an Expert, it warmed my heart.
Generally I am a reasonably capable person. I've never been the worst guy in any fields that I've lay my hands on. However I am rarely the best in anything. Instead, I am half decent in just about everything (guitar, music in general, badminton, web technology, AI, etc..). The value of that is probably less (arguably...) than being excellent in just one or a few things.
This realization bugs me quite a bit. Kathy suggested that to breach the Kicking Ass Threshold, we need to work just a bit harder, to focus on things that stretches us, a sprinkle of tenacity does the job. The annoying fact is that being a generalist, I get bored at something very quickly. I prefer to learn new things than learning old stuff a little deeper. This is the curse of breath-oriented people.
I often crafted plans to push myself out of this so-so land. They are probably a dime a dozen, I forget the old plan as soon as I create a new one. For whatever it's worth, I am trying to write and publish them. This in itself is an effort for me to grow. Furthermore, once they are written, they are more binding to me.
Here is first: WWxD.
Many Christians often wear a WWJD accessories on themselves. For them, the slogan WWJD (short for What Would Jesus Do) becomes a reminder to them when they are at decision points, so that at least for a moment they contemplate about what to do next.
Considering that WWJD might be less relevant for hackers who are working on XPATH or XUL; I'd suggest that we go by WWxD, x being a variable.
The idea is that it is really unlikely that we are the first person working on a particular problem. Chances are someone somewhere probably smarter than us have attacked the same problem with a certain level of success.
WWxD means that we'd promise that whenever we are faced at a new problem, we would identify the experts in the field first, and learn from them. Let us consider a fictional hard problem 'A'. With WWxD approach, the problem solving 'A' is reduced to finding x to complete WWxD, x being an expert in 'A'.
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Identifying x is probably not a trivial undertaking in it self. It takes some experience to know who are the real experts and who are the impostors. And There are many impostors everywhere. (Mea Culpa? Maybe...) However with the help of great search tools like google, del.icio.us, technorati and digg, I argue that it is easier than solving the problem directly.
There are at least two benefits from this indirect approach. The first is that you are protected from looking silly. Without knowing what other experts are doing, it is easy for us to claim expertise on areas that we are not an expert on. We also tend to think that our solutions are the greatest, not knowing that a better solution has been invented by someone else. If we spend the time to look for available solutions, we can build up on them, and have a shot at delivering the best. Someone once said that to be a Ph.D. in one field, one better read up all available publications in it.
Second, this approach pays you well in the long run. Once you find x, you can use it to solve problems similar to 'A'. In these next iterations, you are spending less time finding the expert. Once you have a lot of names in your list of x-es, you can solve a lot of problems. Eventually, you'd become an x in someone else's list. Not too bad eh? :)