Do you routinely attempt projects out of your comfort zone?
That depelds on 'how far outsiode' they are...
I would certainly consider just about anything related to electronics,
engineeriong, mechancial/eletctrical/electronic repair, that sort of
thing. Even if I had no direct experience in that area. But I probably
wouldn;'t try, say, climbing a mountain.
While I think it is the right thing to do
intellectually to expand my
knowledge, I often think that I waste a lot of time trying to do fairly
simple tasks in areas where I have limited knowledge or experience.
OK, it takes you longer than it would take somebody who's been doing it
for years. But then you learn how to do it, and next time it takes you a
lot less time.
I don;t think you can put a 'price' on learning like that. To me it will
always be worth learnign how to do it myself.
I think challenges can be rewarding, and I enjoy them.
"Anything worth
doing is hard." I think is the phrase.
However, Ido feel that the difficulties should be real and not
artificial. For example (to keep thios on-topic), diagnosing and repairing
a TTL-based minicomputer may well be hard. Boing it without certain test
gear when you have that test gear sitting on the bench is plain stupid. I
use whatever tools and facilities I have to help me. And I still find it
hard...
I try to do the necessary research, background
reading, start from the
ground up before attempting to do anything. I still find that getting
your hands in it, ie learning by doing, seems to help the process along.
Many times I've read the manuals, read up on the theroy, and so on and
have thought 'Am I ever going to get this right?' And then when I
actually have a go, it all makes perfect sense and it's a lot easier than
I expected.
I have noticed one curious thing. The part I worry about -- the bit I
think is going to cause problems -- is often trivial when I come to do
it. And I have problems in some totally different area. I guess it's
becuase I've thught a lot more about the bit I think is going to be hard.
Do others have this experioence?
With all this being said, it sure is frustrating and the rewards come
slowly. While I DO like instant gratification, I don't expect it. I do
expect that the payoff, it terms of reward vs time spent is reasonable.
Often, for me, it's solving hte problems, and fixing the device that's
more interesting than the device when I've fixed it. I mentioned last
week that I'd just repaired an HP2631B printer. Now, while I will
problably use that printer on one of my HP9000/200 machines I don't
really _need_ another text-only dot matrix printer. But I got a lot of
fun out of understnading how the electronics should work and findign the
faults.
As my available personal free time has been less and
less lately,
making sure that I'm not just wasting my time is important to me.
Do you find that you spend most of your time on projects that are well
within your knowledge and experience, or most of your time learning
about new technology/skills/programming language/hardware/etc to
facilitate accomplishing a new project?
I don't want to try to figure out how I allocate my time, but I spend
some time doing both. I don't not do womething becuase I am sure I know
how to do it and won't learn anything by doing it (for example, the
pinouts nad functions of common TTL chips are in permanent storage in my
brain, I don't actively avoid TTL as a result), but I have no objection
to spending time learnign new (to me) stuff. Perhaps I take this to
extremes sometimes, I learnt (and am still learning, of course) how to
use a lathe so as to make new parts for classic computers. I read up on
how to wind small motors to repair an HP9125A plotter (snd still got it
wrong the first time).
-tony