Why Experience Matters : Learn to Unlearn - To Learn Something New

Experience is - learning from the success and failures of the past, not only ours but people around us. When i was a kid, i used to wonder - what i was taught in 7th class (Hypothesis) is not correct and learning something else in 8th and same from 8th to 9th. We do not learn everything at once. You keep learning and learn to unlearn them for learning something new.

We all learn theory. Theory typically is the best practices of the industry summarized. However, it is almost impossible to practice the theory correct first time. With experience you get insights to reflect on the theory and understand the essence. If we do not reflect, we may end up doing the same practices and miss the best practices, which typically is what the theory consists of.

Engineering practices (From a software engineering perspective) are no different from that. We learnt important aspects (or basics) of how to build software like single responsibility (for java class), design patterns and so much more. It is nearly impossible to develop with these practices when we start coding. We do not get to understand them from practical perspective. However, as we get more experience, we understand what they meant, if only we reflect on what we learned. This provides the ability to maintain the code easily and refactor when it is necessary without great difficulty. So, we have to unlearn what we learned through experience and understand the best practices to build better.

It is difficult for most of the people to unlearn as it is an uncomfortable zone. However it is necessary. When the environment we work is skill based, it is extremely important to unlearn and learn what is necessary to make yourself competitive. If we do not learn to unlearn to learn something new to build better, there is no difference between a 10 years experience and 3 years experience, and you become obsolete in the market. The value addition one needs to bring with experience will be missing and you will be let go by the company, if not today, tomorrow.