On the hunt for so called knowledge


I recently heard the word-knowledge portfolio, I liked that word. It feels like it explains a lot. I talked earlier about why I think it is so hard to define your skills in percent, and how I instead would like to try to define what I’m most genuinely interested in. I do believe that represents much better in what fields I have the most potential in becoming better. So it is always exciting sharing inspiration sources among like minded.

My go to place for this (knowledge hunting, or to use some fancy words to extend my “knowledge portfolio”), is reading. Read all sorts of things, you never know where you can find inspiration (but do be aware, sometimes you end up in YouTube limbo). And also just try to read a couple of scientific studies (I know it sucks from time to time, even if you think it is a waste of time they work better than a couple of Xanax before bed time). Scientific studies work well when it comes to trying to motivate design elements, it is always good to have some well grounded motivation for why you decided to have all your text links on a web-site blue and with underline, or why so-called “flat design” actually just speaks to younger people or young adults. It also boosts your self-esteem a little, you feel a little smarter being able to reference some stuff from an article which is not written by a fourteen year old blogger.

book

It is not that hard to find interesting stuff on the internet/books if one finds secure places to go to. But it is a little like trying to find that perfect vintage Max Mara coat second hand. You go through a lot of shit without finding anything, and then you end up buying things you weren’t supposed to buy, the biggest different is that knowledge is not like a garment you bought you didn’t want, it might have been an investment time wise, but even if you hated what you read you might have learnt something, or at least reflected on what a moron the person who wrote it is.

But on the hunt for some genuine interesting stuff you might end up in hundreds of tabs. Because reading things which have references or links to other potential interesting articles means tabs, tabs tabs, and more tabs. But from all of these articles you might already have created a great start on your knowledge portfolio. But I guess knowledge portfolios come in many different ways, for some that means inspiration on Pinterest and for others extending your knowledge portfolio is enhancing your hands on skill

A little sideline, but these are the things you might find on the hunt for knowledge. Did you know, that kind of behaviour some people have where they open hundreds of tabs actually has a “name” (maybe not in the Oxford dictionary, but still). I read an article about that, they are called “Page Parkers” and studies have been made to try to find out how to develop for these kinds of freaks. Why I brought this up, is because I’m one of these people. you never see my browser open with less than three windows and thirty tabs each. People ask themselves why? Because I have so much stuff I need to read, so much stuff that just needs to be learned (and I fuck up my code all the time so I need to consult Google from time to time to help me out), and I keep them there until chrome crashes and than I start it all over again. There is also a really fun name for the behavior people have, where they from the main page open every sub page in a new tab and then jump around between them, the name is…wait for it, “Pogo sticking”, like the toy you know. Fun, right?

//Moa