If you have to dive into a new technology and even somehow think you can find one or two hours to get the first steps done, its not the best possible way to just pick some code samples or go right to the documentation.
As what you need to learn something new, the insight of what the new stuff will really help you with is way more important than the actual coding. I just realized this when reading an article of Joel on Software (“Distributed Version Control is here to stay, baby”) that gave me the motivation to dive into mercurial (what we’ll be using at work soon), a GIT-like distributed Version Control system, or as Joel now maybe would refer to it, a distributed changes control system. Joel describes that he objected using mercurial out of fear of change. But after having adopted the understanding about how mercurial works (not having versioning, but changes recorded), he describes that he’d rather go back to writing C++ than going back to subversion. This got me the kick, and got me thinking “hey, I’m going to learn something really cool”.
After you get an insight into what people really think about such a “time-investment” and what they get from that, you can find more motivation in learning or investing your own time into that area. And more motivation means more effective learning. Head on, brave reader. In your journey though the Web. Don’t let nothing stop you. In case you want to try distributed version control, read that article first.
