First, as aside to the teachers, trainers, and writers in the audience: Keep it relevant. When I've trained, I've found it very useful to devise courseware that focuses on things people can use.

For example, I once worked for a consultancy that taught classes in a certain database product (no, not that one). As expected, the vendor-supplied courseware stank...in part of because it had all sorts of information but didn't pull it together enough to give students the sense of how to use it. It did have examples, but they weren't relevant to everyone.

I wrote a new courseware that focused on smaller things. A to-do list, a phone message log, an employee roster, and so on. Silly? Yes. But, every company gets phone calls, needs to know where people are. Not everyone runs a video store, a coffee stand, or an order entry system. I was repeatedly told that students enjoyed the custom courseware because students felt like they learned things they could use.

Now, back to our regularly sceduled reply.

You asked two questions; one regarding learning beyond the curriculum and the important of non-technical (artistic) activities.

For myself, I've always learned best when I'm engaged in the material. I found that I frequently had to engage myself. For example, I had troubles "getting" Intro to Logic (which I took without the proper grounding in geometry). It just didn't make sense a first. So, I poked around on the computer, played with the rules in a word processor and wrote a simple little parser that would tell me if I'd done it right. It was *really* lame; however, it did help me start making the connections and I ended up second in the class at the end of the semester.

The point being you can, if you want to enough, find a way to make anything engaging...even something a simple as washing the dishes, changing the cat box, or debugging nasty code. (Okay, changing a really messy diaper is a bit tough to look forward to; I'll grant you that.) If you can engage your imagination and find ways to be interested in "scut" work, it'll help. You may never look forward to it, but...imagine (for example) how nice the place will smell after you've changed that diaper.

As far as the non-technical outside interest goes, I'm a firm believer that any non-technical pursuit can be a very good thing...especially ones involving personal creativity. For example, several years back, I worked for a commercial software vendor, one complete with hard, fast (and unreasonable) ship dates, Death Marches, and so on. At the time, I was also heavily involved in the local community theatre...often doing more than one show at a time. While it took some real dedicated scheduling, I found I was more productive in the office because I only had a limited amount of time to get everything done. I didn't have the luxury of staying late, so I had to get it finished before I left.

I also found I solved many difficult problems when I wasn't working. I recall one case where a technical solution hit me in the middle of a performance. In turn, I used that realization in my performance, playing it as an epiphany my character was having mid-speech. I managed to carry it without breaking character and people commented favorably on the choice. (Naturally, I didn't tell I'd been coding in my head again.)

In short, yes. You need a life and you need something outside of your job. This will give you perspective, time, and distance to just let things gel. Programming (and related tasks) involved creativity; if you can spark your creativity in one way, it may lead to interesting and very useful side-effects.

--f

I learnt a long time ago that the only way to remain sane doing a job is to find one that is what you would be doing if you had enough money that you didn't need to work.

For me, that has meant moving with the flow of technology, from Expert Systems (1988), MS Windows (1989), GUIs for UNIX (1990), XWindows (1991), The 'Net' (1991), E-Commerce (1995) and big fibre networks (1997).
Each time, looking to leap onto the wave just as it is gathering momentum, so that I can "be there" when it peaks.
So far it has worked...

As for the 'Art' bit, I consider playing with Perl programs to be "art".
--
Brovnik

As for art, I’m interested in photography and ray tracing. I decided to pursue photography in more depth because it got me out of the computer room and into dealing with people.

—John