Importance of Learning Attitude
Embedded domain becomes very interesting when I find professionals involved in Electronics servicing as well students working in Robot manufacturing plant after MS. Some of my students are from very poor academic background but with excellent learning attitude. I got surprised to see their proactive approach with various learning resources including well known academic books and evaluation board.
Which is most important Learning Attitude, Teacher or Course material ?
I did a simple survey in Linkedin to make students aware of this important factor. Result is as per my expectations and in exact order. So Learning attitude is most important followed by teacher and course material. Teacher can inspire students for learning and course material can help achieving the same.

At any stage of career, you may need helping hands for getting started. But remember , you are the one at driving seat.
How to improve learning attitude ?
Here are few important tips for improving learning attitude :
Keep yourself away from crowd
“A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.” Max Lucado .
This is very important point. If you would like to become Extra-ordinary , you have to go Extra mile. Following a crowd may give you sense of security sometime but it may not be beneficial always. It leads to competition as well.
Set SMART goal for your career growth
SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) is a well known criteria for setting goal. This helps in planning for any objective. For example if you are setting one week time to get expertise in C++, It doesn’t qualify the SMART criteria.
Time Management
You must set a specific time period on regular basis for learning. I generally spend morning hours for any new experiment. We used to get N number of tasks on daily basis but setting priority helps in achieving all. Keeping a task pending will just increase your stress level. It happens even with simple task of online payment of any pending bill or filing annual income tax return or any pending assignment.
Divide the complex job to various simple tasks
Always divide a complex job into simple tasks . For example if you have to developed a complete Embedded System. Divide it into several tasks such as Identifying the right device , Evaluation platform , Development tools , Silicon availability , Development resources etc. If you are planning to learn any new skill, Identify the course material and mentor to provide right path on regular basis.
Don’t forget to credit yourself even small success
You must learn to credit yourself for small achievements as well. For ex If you successfully created a development platform for learning any new technology , you have achieved your first mile.
Make sure to write down both success & failure
You must keep record of your achievement & failure both. Failure has always taught me multiple things. If I get success easily, I generally don’t bother to look into detail of that. However if something fails , I have to do lot of postmortem or reverse engineering to identify root cause of failure.
Thanks for reading till end. To understand the importance of learning attitude, You can find Dan’s story in the article given below. I hope this will help someone to put more efforts in right direction.