Having posted off my final written exam paper for my Open University German language course, and feeling pretty confident about the quality, I drove to work this morning feeling fairly relaxed.

As I drove, I realised that there is a huge gap between the quality of my driving skills and my German language skills.   My driving skills are "over learned skills".   It is "second nature".   I can do it in my sleep.   (Not really, but you get the picture.)

My German language skills, however, are taxing to exercise.   I have to think through each sentence, translating as I go, worrying my way through genders, conjugation, and word order.   They are light years away from becoming over learned skills.

At work, I recently encountered a situation where I was struggling to remember a simple keystroke sequence in "vi".   The sequence was one I had over learned to the point of no longer actually knowing what the sequence was...   My fingers just did it.   Unfortunately, I was on a different (German) style keyboard where the finger movement required was different.   I was at a loss...

Georg and I sometimes get caught out by over learned skills when we swap cars.   Our running joke is to "roll down" the window to check for rain after the wipers are noisily scraped across the dry windscreen when really it was the turn indicator that was needed.

Over learned skills in the use of desktop software are a joy for helping maintain efficient work levels.   So, there is a risk that application changes can cause a slowdown.   The challenge for application designers is to maximise the usefulness of the application while minimising the time it takes to get the users back to where they can do their job in their sleep....

...You know what I mean.