If you spend any time coding, you’ll quickly discover that you don’t know, can’t remember, or never learned something you need to make your project work.
Enter Google (or whatever search engine you prefer*).
All you have to do is type in a few words related to the problem you’re trying to solve and voila! You’ve got your solution.
Seth Godin says in his great talk, “Stop Stealing Dreams,” that there’s no longer any need to memorize stuff. And this is exactly why—if you need something, you can just look it up.
I would agree with him, but I’d also take that idea a step farther.
As you look things up and implement them in your projects (and not just coding projects either), they will eventually become muscle memory.
The important thing is implementation—put what you look up to use immediately so that it slowly becomes a part of your vocabulary.
I think there are two points to this post:
- Learn how to get good at looking up the answers to your problems rather than staying stuck
- Memorizing things for the sake of memorizing is pointless—but memorization will come naturally as you IMPLEMENT what you look up
*Instead of using Google, I’d highly recommend you check out Ecosia as your new search engine. Here’s why:
- Your search results are THE SAME as what you’d get on Google
- Your information isn’t constantly sold to the highest bidder
- You aren’t inundated with useless ads from the highest bidder instead of quality search results
- Using Ecosia makes your searches CARBON NEGATIVE
- For every 45 searches you make, Ecosia plants a new tree in a place where it’s needed (that’s every 11 days for the average person)
While you’re developing your “Googling” skills, consider switching to Ecosia today.
Nathan's Blog 