When I was just a young buck, I was on the path to obesity. I wasn't fat-yet, but it was where I was headed.
I remember being around 9 and chowing down on some serious garbage when a friend's dad said something along the lines about how unhealthy it was and I literally said, "I don't care, I'm going to get wicked fat now, and then when I'm old I'll just workout and get really strong."
Theres a lot in that statement. First of all, it should be clear I'm from fuckin Boston. Second, I had no qualms with pushing problems and work onto my future self. And third, I didn't understand how difficult it was to achieve my future goals. I remember being supremely surprised that getting stronger wasn't a once and done activity, but needed constant maintenance for the rest of my life to keep strength... But I suppose thats whats so great about it, if it were easy to be in shape, everyone would look like The Rock or Chuck Norris - and nobody would give a shit. (Unless you actually looked like Chuck Norris, and then people would definitely still give very much shit).
About 3 years later I got into building web sites, and 2 years after that - into lifting. Clearly, I was a child psychic - or psychotic (both may be accurate).
So why are these sharing a blog post?
Well, any tech related skills are just like muscles. Its true that If you don't use em, you'll lose em.
And unless you're willing to try new technologies or workout, you'll plateau or become obsolete.
Lets look at the figures:
Here are a few of my workouts (lifting specific) I've tried over the years - all very googleable.
- Hypertrophy Specific Training
- Pyramids
- Reverse Pyramids
- 5x5s
- Rest-pause
- Super rest-pause
- HIIT
- Negatives
- Circuit Training
- Volume Blasts
Now here are some of the technologies I've worked with:
- CGI
- Perl
- PHP
- C++
- Java
- Javascript
- DHTML
- HTML
- CSS
- Drupal
- Wordpress
- Joomla
- Mambo
- KnockoutJS
- AngularJS
- Jquery
- MooTools
- Prototype
- Scriptaculous
The point is this - you need to keep learning new things. In fitness its to shock your body, and constantly keep it guessing - but then you need to continue the use of those things to stay in shape and maintain your results.
In tech - learning new technologies and tools keeps you valuable, and continuing to do work within any of these will keep you sharp.
I'm sure these ideas apply to many other areas of life but the main takeaways are - always practice, and always strive to learn more.