You’re a tester, right? In your job, for sure you meat a lot of different technologies, tools and methods of testing. You know some of them but some are like magic to you. Sounds familiar?
You feel that if you’d like to become better and better in testing, you should learn at least some of those magic stuff. If not, one day you’ll notice you were left behind by those who kept learning and developing new skills.
There are lots of ways how you can learn. You can use books, blogs, youtube, cources, trainings, conferences… The list is infinite.
Here are 3 steps which can help you use blogs as your learning machine.
Step 1
Read a blog post which looks interesting to you.
While reading, make notes. Note down ideas that are new, surprising, unexpected to you. Note down practical ideas and tips which you could use in you daily work.
Save you notes in some repository of testing ideas.
Step 2
From time to time go through the new ideas from your repository.
Choose one of them and think about it. Talk about it with some other tester (or maybe with your team?). It could be that you will come to some conclusions, some idea how to improve your testing process?
You can also think about writing a post on social media – it will force you to think about it even deeper.
Step 3
From time to time go through th practical ideas from your repository.
Choose one. If you like it, check if you can apply it in your testing. Is it some new approach to testing, or some coding trick, or a new tool you could try?
Try to use it in your job and let it improve the way you test – bravo, you’ve just learnt a new skill.
If you read blogs following the 3 steps, your understanding of testing will get deeper and deeper, and your testing will get better and better with each new skill you learn.
You don’t have to do it every day. It’s enough to do it from time to time. Just choose when and do it when the time comes. Consistency is the key. What will happen if you read 1 blog post per week for 1 year? You will have abour 50 new ideas and skills in your pocket. Your knowledge and experience will compound with time and you’ll become a testing expert.
1 tip as a conclusion. When you read blog posts, it’s often that you come accross a blog which look interesting for you but you don’t have time to read right now. Put the link to the blog on your TO READ list. If you don’t do it, you’ll forget about the post the very next day.
Happy learning!