[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Do you have a process or a framework to lear...
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Ask HN: Do you have a process or a framework to learn specific
skills quickly?
Any suggestions/ frameworks on how to learn specific skill, retain
the knowledge and be able to share it(in for ex. written form) I
usually jump in straight away and start learning "on the job" but I
realised that I forget too much and i do not have any notes to
refer to later on. Examples of specific skill: - How to write a
good cold email - how to learn some snowboarding trick - how to
store your bitcoin safely etc.
Author : hypnotist
Score : 138 points
Date : 2021-07-31 11:52 UTC (11 hours ago)
| ceva wrote:
| Well am not sure how helpful this will be, but you would need to
| develop a framework for yourself. Normally a simple note taking
| while studying specific topic can help for later to refresh the
| knowledge.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| check out the Feynman Technique. it works. to strengthen your new
| found knowledge, teach it to someone else. I personally like to
| watch a handful of videos on YouTube about a subject I'm trying
| to learn to get a feel for the vocabulary, then dig in to
| articles/documentation if applicable
| mannykannot wrote:
| Your list of specific skills is quite diverse, and I doubt that
| there is much in common with regard to learning them that goes
| beyond the basic "you have to put in the effort", "find a mentor"
| and so forth.
| [deleted]
| codechoir wrote:
| This is not a framework, but I see tremendous value in going to
| people who already know the skill first. At least in my
| experience, there's a tendency for people to start learning on
| their own before they feel comfortable asking questions.
|
| Often I try to skip this (rather tedious) process and go to
| someone who has knowledge in the area. Often I don't need an
| actual 'expert' but someone who's already intermediate. Asking
| the right questions can speed up the learning process
| tremendously! In addition, many people are willing to relatively
| cheaply (think: a meal; cup of coffee; etc.) let you pick their
| brain.
| [deleted]
| z3le wrote:
| I write a lot. Taking notes, doing exercises and also making mind
| maps. Reading does nothing for me. I get distracted really easy
| and I end up with 4 pages and nothing in my head.
| 8note wrote:
| I do:
|
| 3 times watching somebody do the thing
|
| 3 times doing it supervised
|
| 3 times doing it unsupervised but with results checked
| exdsq wrote:
| Pretend you're teaching it to someone else - try and explain it
| to a rubber duck every now and then, and if there's a hole go
| back and plug it. Just be careful it's not a _rabbit_ hole else
| this wastes time.
| Archelaos wrote:
| The problem is not so much how to learn something quickly, but
| how to remember it for a long time.
|
| From personal experience I would say that in most cases both
| goals are mutually exclusive. Learning slowly and repeating
| something often, which takes time, helps to form a lasting
| memory.
|
| What also helps is an intense emotional context. It does not
| matter so much whether the emotion is positive or negative. For
| example, if I had to solve a sever IT problem under time
| pressure, I might remember the details quite well. But when I
| worked calmly for weeks on an implementation, may it be simple or
| complex, I start to forget the details almost immediately after
| shifting to something else. However, I discovered that I might
| often quickly immerse myself back into it again at a later time.
|
| There is also this phenomenon that I can reproduce in detail
| knowledge that I learned decades ago at school or university, but
| that I am not so good in reproducing what I implemented in the
| last couple of years. On the other side, I am nowadays a lot
| faster in adapting new things that are somehow related to my old
| knowledge, such as looking at a piece of code in an unfamiliar
| programming language and understand the algorithm.
|
| What also helped a lot in creating a lasting memory was writing
| explanatory essays or tutorials. I mean not quick notes, but
| really intense thinking and optimization of the writing up to the
| point where it would even please your enemy.
| sonabinu wrote:
| There's a class on Coursera by Dr Barbara Oakley
| https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn? It gives
| you a basic model for skill retention. You should modify the
| style to what works for you. I've successfully retained what I've
| revised and practiced
| sokoloff wrote:
| Search. Use the first few searches to refine my search terms.
| Skim a couple results. Pick 1-3 (max). Read (or watch) them. Do
| it.
|
| The last step is the most critical, of course.
| manmal wrote:
| I try to put everything into the context of other concepts that I
| have already understood. Find parallels, identify the differences
| and what they mean within my context.
|
| When encountering completely novel paradigms, like FRP, I
| experiment and play around with them until I develop an
| intuition. Not having an intuition for a concept feels quite bad,
| like an itch that needs scratching. The downside of this approach
| is that many concepts are very hard to learn because intuition
| requires deep understanding; the upside is that I rarely
| completely unlearn a skill.
|
| Taking notes might speed up the process for me, but I'd never go
| back to them since I prefer to instead skim over another blog
| post and gain more insight.
| sinac wrote:
| There is a great book that goes over how to learn information,
| retain skills, and be able to share it. What Smart Students Know
| by Adam Robinson. I read it as an adult and it has been a
| tremendous force multiplier. Wish I actually had it when I was in
| school.
|
| It's was written a decade or two ago written by the guy who
| started Princeton Review. If you can overlook the bits about
| school, the methods are rock solid.
| asciimov wrote:
| "One learns by doing." -First line of a Geometry book that I have
| long since forgotten.
|
| There is no secret sauce nor magical technique to learning,
| memorizing, regurgitating information. Only repeatedly doing the
| thing is how you learn. And as always, "Use it or loose it"
| applies.
| kiba wrote:
| There's ineffective and effective learning, and some techniques
| are indeed better than other.
|
| However, they always require works.
|
| 100 pushup a day is going to always be better than a single
| pushup a day, all things being equal.
| tmaly wrote:
| I start with a very simple, small project to get the basics down.
| Then I build upon that. I think doing something helps to make it
| concrete and thus helps you learn it fast. I also try to document
| key parts I got stuck on as a cheat sheet of sorts.
| mickaelP38 wrote:
| You will find lots of information on this topic on this blog:
| https://commoncog.com/blog/tag/learning-techniques/
|
| Also if you want to level up your skills, and learn about
| learning in general, these are some books you should check:
|
| - Practice perfect
|
| - Peak
|
| - A mind for numbers
|
| - The inner game of tennis
|
| - Guitar zero
|
| - The art of learning
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| Try again.
|
| Fail again.
|
| Fail better.
| pknerd wrote:
| As a developer I do the following(mostly):
|
| - Pick a technology/tool/language of my interest.
|
| - Check Youtube videos about it.
|
| - If I find I am able to grasp the gist of it quickly in 15-30
| mins then I further explore it.
|
| - Visit official docs
|
| - Check examples.
|
| - Come up with a use case and write a blog post that makes me to
| dig deeper because I am now serving as a teacher.
| BJBBB wrote:
| So many ways to learn. The the specific learning 'work-flow'
| varies for the task and the person in training. And note that
| Learning is Training, so regardless of the intellectual content
| of the learning program, there is some level of muscle-memory for
| most stuff.
|
| In the middle of boot camp, all the madness stops for two weeks
| to focus on shooting a rifle (marksmanship is a religion in the
| USMC and some other military organizations); that is you live at
| the rifle range, and spend most of your time with marksmanship
| instructors (the DIs remain at the periphary). While there are
| lectures on interior and exterior ballistics and other related
| stuff, most of the first week at the range is hours of repetitive
| dry firing, where you pay attention to your body's form and
| function required to correctly pull the trigger. Your breathing
| sequence, your sight picture, your trigger pull become muscle
| memory. It becomes a zen thing. The second (live-fire) week on
| the range is very (mentally) stressful, so muscle memory attained
| in the first week is important because you have many other things
| to do and respond to during the indeterminate periods of live
| fire and eventual qualification(and if you do not qualify, you
| get re-cycled into another platoon or you get kicked to the
| curb).
|
| Military technical schools tend to cover basic intro stuff using
| 'programmed' instruction; that is, self-taught, then subsequently
| tested by the instructor cadre. The tutorials must be approached
| methodically and incrementally. Never jump into the next session
| because you are bored. Most of the people that fail military tech
| schools fail the easy stuff because they do not have structure to
| their approach and do not have the discipline to operate
| independently. This also appears to be a common reason for people
| flunking out of the first two or three semesters of university.
|
| Post-school house learning in the military (new systems, new
| techniques, updated systems, etc) is done independently by the
| first learners (NCOs) and is individually-based, with occasional
| help from the respective vendor's technical rep. I approached
| learning new avionics systems by first studying the spec, then
| reading the applied physics theory, then drawing block diagrams
| from the schematics for power and signal and control flows. So
| divide an conquer, then put the pieces back together to form the
| original system.
|
| Learning new programming languages, after the 3d or 4th one,
| becomes routine. While it is ok to start with quick over-view of
| the language, the first hard study should be the syntax closely
| followed by structure declarations. For some languages, this is a
| good point to stop and look closely at low-level details for
| memory management and/or allocation techniques. After syntax,
| structure, and memory models become muscle memory, just dive
| head-first into solving a series of simple problems. Solving
| problems is the only way you will learn the libraries. The only
| language I did not functionally learn in a week or two was Rust.
| Rust was freaking hard for my aged mind, but it brought back the
| lost joys of my first two languages learned (Fortran and C).
|
| Learning complex machine tools is similar. Get the basic muscle-
| memory stuff learned, then extend into the intellectualized
| stuff. Formal instruction, or pairing up with an experienced and
| skilled person, for welding and lathes should be done before you
| self-learn stuff. The same for computer security stuff - as you
| will probably hurt yourself if you go the independent-learning
| route for stuff such as penetration testing.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| I don't know about quickly, learning takes time.
|
| The process I learned is from video games in the 1970s and 80s.
| Do your reading. Learn from the experts, watch what they do.
| They're not your heroes, you're going to have to top them at some
| point. Practice, but don't even start to practice until you've
| done those other prerequisites. Losing is not failure if you
| learned something from it.
| burnished wrote:
| Start a glossary. I like a spreadsheet. Just write down any and
| all words you can't define completely and reference it
| frequently. This isn't a full framework or anything, it isn't
| sexy but very helpful.
| mettamage wrote:
| I wish I could do this for mathematics. Quite often
| terms/factors/symbols/variables in equations are only defined
| once and then I forget a previous definition, not understanding
| the current equation that I'm looking at.
| burnished wrote:
| You can and should! Post it notes are good for stuff where
| you need to summarize symbol names that are sort of
| haphazardly distributed across a page. I'm a fan of a
| separate note section where I write plain English
| explanations of things, it's helpful in the moment for better
| appreciating and understanding something, and it's helpful
| six months in the future because it serves as bread crumbs on
| the path you first used to understand something, it feels
| very natural. If you wanted a spreadsheet you could have
| columns as name, equation, definitions, note, page reference.
| You might have to invent a name for some things but that's
| fine.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Yes for computer-based skills, I've got an effective method. I
| write executable docs as I go, where I can select sub entries of
| comments and instructions and execute them. That's the meat of
| the technique but the devil was in the details of making the
| system quickly navigable, well formatted, terse, executable on
| all the platforms I use, suitable for all applications I work on.
| And just as important, it was in the details of the learning
| strategies and tactics.
| char8 wrote:
| Anki.
| kiba wrote:
| Anki is a good way to preserve progress made, and even make
| enormous amount of progress(in the medium and long term), but I
| don't think it was going to be a complete solution all by
| itself.
| siva7 wrote:
| this. i think many people don't get that spaced repetition
| isn't for learning new things the first time.
| emmett wrote:
| For any given atomic "skill" you can learn in the body of
| knowledge: Watch one, do one, teach one.
| a9h74j wrote:
| Keep this in mind the next time you are scheduled for surgery.
| :)
| Karsteski wrote:
| I'm the same as you in that I just jump in and learn as I do, but
| I constantly write notes (Mostly in markdown that I save to a git
| repo, or in my notebook if they're throwaway notes).
| laichzeit0 wrote:
| For someone self-studying mathematics: Do the exercises.
| Especially the hard ones. Struggle for hours. Don't worry about
| solution manuals. It should be painful.
| caffeine wrote:
| This is good advice. But for me, the hours' struggle is more
| useful if not contiguous.
|
| I get the best results from struggling with a given problem for
| no more than 1 hour continuously, and then going away and
| coming back sometime after my next sleep.
|
| By struggling I mean "not making visible progress" - if
| progress is happening then just keep rolling.
| mettamage wrote:
| This sounds like how I approach leetcode. Leetcode feels a
| bit like math to me anyways. Coding isn't the hard part,
| understanding the algorithm in conjunction with the data
| structures is.
| d4rkp4ttern wrote:
| Along the same lines: in a math textbook or math-heavy paper,
| try to prove the Lemmas or theorems yourself, when it's
| sensible to attempt it. Probably more suitable in a textbook
| where they build up to a larger theorem starting from smaller
| lemmas -- try to prove them yourself. Even if you don't prove
| them the first time, on a re-read you can try to prove it
| yourself, as a way to test your understanding, and of course
| this also deepens your understanding.
| nomy99 wrote:
| This I think is the same thing as someone saying at the gym,
| don't stop until it hurts. People get injured and then never go
| to the gym again.
|
| How about look at the solution, understand the parts. Solve the
| problem. Revisit, revisit, revisit.
|
| This helped me breeze through engineering and also helped me
| professionally.
| [deleted]
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Usually Study & Practice in parallel
|
| Different skills will require a different blend. Learning a new
| snowboarding trick is going to be far more practice than study,
| where as learning how to store your bitcoin safely will be almost
| entirely study.
|
| Study
|
| 1. Find the experts (this isn't always the most popular person in
| the field, but that's where I start)
|
| 2. Find books, blog posts, and courses
|
| 3. Read, and study them, and take notes while you do of all the
| important points
|
| 4. Transform notes in Anki cards
|
| 5. Study anki cards
|
| Practice
|
| 1. Figure how the best way to get quick feedback on your skill.
| (this would be running a cold email campaign, practice the
| snowboarding trick)
|
| 2. Set a schedule to practice, then practice
| User23 wrote:
| I've been teaching myself org-mode and filling other gaps in my
| elisp knowledge lately and I organically arrived at this.
| Except I'm doing zettelkasten with org-roam instead of Anki
| cards.
| hkopp wrote:
| I started writing notes, so when I need some knowledge again, it
| is all there. However, now I have the problem of searching and
| finding in my notes.
| loftyal wrote:
| 20% of passively reading/watching materials, to understand the
| why, how, and avoid any bad patterns, and 80% actually
| creating/doing something I've wanted to do with that skill.
|
| This 20/80 mix works for me well and keeps me motiviated.
|
| I'll also notedown in a .txt file in dot points things that seem
| important, especially things that I feel are important and would
| be easy to forgot.
| aeoleonn wrote:
| - videos: udemy.com, youtube, etc
|
| - ebooks: libgen ... other sites
|
| - chatrooms: IRC, discord
|
| - forums
|
| - documentation
| itisit wrote:
| May I ask what is the urgency for? Spend consistent, quality time
| doing the thing and learning about the thing. The quickness will
| sort itself out.
| glenngillen wrote:
| I've a few different approaches I take depending on the task (and
| if I'm honest, my mood or levels of motivation):
|
| - a new programming language, especially something closer to a
| systems language, I have a standard set of things I'll try to
| implement. Read/write a file. Turn a structured object into JSON,
| parse JSON to an object. Basic script that can be run from CLI,
| parses flags/args, reads stdin. Send a HTTP request. Implement
| the most basic web server. An embarrassing amount of my career
| has been just building on those fundamentals in various ways. So
| if I can get those under my belt with a new language it becomes
| feasible to make an informed decision on whether I might
| incorporate it into my day-to-day vs just leave it languish as a
| hobby on the side. - read read read until I find something that
| just doesn't make sense. I mean in not just a "I'm a bit
| confused" but a more "I don't understand how this even works. It
| violates my very understanding of how the world is meant to
| work". That happens surprisingly quickly in fields I've
| absolutely no idea about. And then I just focus on understanding
| how that one particular thing could be true. I'll often find it
| forces me to correct some previously held incorrect assumptions,
| which may have blocked my ability to learn more productively
| because of the subconscious second guessing and the baby steps
| not matching my world view. - I write notes, and then rewrite
| them in what is kinda like a blog post to myself. If this is
| interesting info that I'd like to retain, but am unlikely to be
| applying regularly or immediately, I'm likely to forget. So I
| write the post I wish I'd originally found. As brief as possible.
| In a style that makes sense to me. To try and short cut the time
| it takes to relearn this topic in the future.
| carbine wrote:
| This is a wonderful response. Love the notion of reading until
| something violates your understanding of the world, I'm
| definitely going to try this. Is there any more satisfying
| feeling than ingesting a new, worldview-changing idea? I can
| almost feel my neural pathways being required when it happens.
| joshgree88 wrote:
| It's Paiget - cognitive disequilibrium - it's how all
| learning is achieved - nice article
| https://teacherlearnstocode.com/2015/03/31/what-to-do-
| with-d...
| mettamage wrote:
| I like the programming exercises :) I'll take a page from your
| book when I start programming in a new language!
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| For me its always a website with access to a database and
| templating. It is insanely easy in Go to do it by only needing
| to import Gorm as your only external package. I really wish
| Rust would adopt a standard library HTTP server OOTB it just
| makes things so much nicer. People will always use other
| packages as they need to for example dot net has Sinatra, and
| Java has Spring and company despite both having JSP / ASP.
|
| I do like your list and I agree, some bits that deal with CLI,
| web and parsing / making HTTP requests is the gist of what you
| need. I have debated making a project roadmap on GitHub that
| you can work on in any language and having a Swagger spec for
| an API so frontend people can implement multiple frontends and
| backend people can implement multiple backends.
| andrelayer wrote:
| Work very hard, every day for weeks, months and years until you
| get it right; then work even longer until you can't get it wrong.
| I've found that to be the "secret".
| crispyambulance wrote:
| This is it. There are no secrets, no short-cuts. If there were
| we would all be using them.
|
| Techniques like spaced repetition and even the good-old
| "programmed instruction" that was popular into the 80's might
| help a little if the information is amenable to that. Some
| folks do better with certain techniques and not others. Some
| folks are better able to pivot previous skills into learning
| new ones faster. All of these require focus and planning--
| which is just another kind of work.
|
| I do believe however that having a mentor, someone that can
| challenge you in the right way, evaluate your progress, and
| direct your attention is more valuable than any self-help hack.
|
| It's sad that "quickly" is such an important condition, though.
| Why quickly? Some things just aren't quick.
| kaczordon wrote:
| This video by Huberman labs shows the scientific way to learn
| optimally: https://youtu.be/uuP-1ioh4LY
| caffeine wrote:
| Here is a meta-rule: Avoid learning skills if you can get away
| with it. This allows you to focus your time and attention on
| skills you cannot function without.
|
| Maybe someone else has this skill and they can help you. Maybe
| there is software that does the skill for you. Etc.
|
| The skill acquisition process is arduous and high opportunity
| cost.
|
| It's only worth going through the skill acquisition process if
| you are doing it for pure joy, OR you have no other way to get
| the benefit of that skill.
| ultra_nick wrote:
| I bet my method beats most others.
|
| Answer basic questions for every step of a topic: what, why, how,
| who, when, where
|
| Sleep in it
|
| Review with spaced repetition
| xtiansimon wrote:
| I had to read a few answers before I understood what you could
| possibly be referring to. On the one hand, if you realize you
| don't have notes because you don't study, then there is your
| answer.
|
| On the other hand I am happy to share what has been very
| successful method for me learning Python AND researching
| solutions for my scripting projects: Jupyter Notebooks.
|
| Notebooks use Markdown which lets you cleanly collect links.
|
| Code cells let you test code samples.
|
| The success of Notebooks in my process has lead me to adopt
| Markdown in all of my personal notes (text-based).
|
| A quick note on this last point---a friend of mine recently
| commented they are developing on a Mac and using Notes app. I
| have a Apple laptop, so I'm familiar with Notes app.
|
| There are just too many details making Notes app unsuitable to
| detail here. So, hear me now, and believe me later. Don't use it.
| (except for convenience of notes between iPhone and other Mac
| products).
| SuboptimalEng wrote:
| For most of out lives, we are taught to learn subjects in a
| linear manner - pick up a book on Calculus, read it from start to
| finish, and you can do calculus. This breaks down when learning
| something like React. There are a lot of tangential technologies
| that can throw you off in this process.
|
| ---
|
| I have a 3 step process for learning new frameworks and
| technologies in ~1 week with a 10-15 hr time commitment. This
| specifically works well for web development tech but it is easily
| transferable to other mediums.
|
| Prepare: Spend 1hr Mon. - Thurs. watching videos
|
| Plan: Spend 1hr preparing a small project idea on Fri.
|
| Project: Spend 4-6 hrs executing the project on Sat. Repeat
|
| ---
|
| Example workflow with learning React.
|
| Prepare: The best way to start is to watch a ton of videos and
| sleep on them. This will build an internal mind-map of related
| technologies like Hooks, React Native, TypeScript, Class vs
| Functional Components, Redux, etc.
|
| Plan: The worst thing you can do is not setup a project and do
| all the misc. work required to be productive. You want to keep
| that weekend timeframe to JUST code.
|
| Project: This is self-explanatory. Just finish the MVP, google
| the "right" questions by utilizing your mind-map and build
| confidence to learn more the next week.
|
| ---
|
| In-depth Video Explanation:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HYvPQOTBNo
| adv0r wrote:
| read the 4 hours chef
| atum47 wrote:
| 1 gather good learning resource (videos, tutorials, teachers...)
|
| 2 pick a interesting project (if you're learning programming,
| create a software or an app, if you're learning an instrument
| pick a song, woodworking, a chair...)
|
| 3 have fun doing it
|
| That's how I do it, not that I'm an example of anything, but
| people usually say I learn quickly.
| keewee7 wrote:
| When learning a new programming language syntax will be the least
| time consuming thing to learn.
|
| You can skim the syntax on https://learnxinyminutes.com
|
| Instead use a day or two on learning tooling and best practices
| and then try to implement a small toy project.
| LVB wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of learnxinyminutes! Even if I'm planning to go
| through the larger guide/docs, I find x-in-y is the best way to
| get a general feel for the breadth and style of the language.
| cbushko wrote:
| I do the following:
|
| - read, read, read about the topic at hand. I find that finding a
| good book on the topic gives me a baseline of information even if
| I do not understand or retain it all.
|
| - use the information. Play and build what I am learning about.
|
| - as I work through day to day issues and find things I will
| probably need in the future, I save them as a page in a
| zettlekasten using vimwiki. Writing these things down is new for
| me and it has already paid off when answering questions.
| totetsu wrote:
| - prediction. Write down what you already know of the topic.
| sentence of a mind map. Dump it all out. Look at that and w rite
| some predictions or questions that interest you about gaps.
|
| - deepis dive. Watch through videos, go down the wikihole, read
| many abstracts. Whatever, just lightly wash lots of information
| over yourself.
|
| - read the thing: choose a limited number of key points per
| section you will remember as you go. Write a progressive summary,
| or map it out. Write quiz questions for yourself as you go.
|
| - then: apply it. Compare what you learned with your predictions.
| Review your quiz questions and summary periodically.
|
| That was a method I tried a few times.. it was a lot of overhead,
| but had its merits in terms of trying to work with the brain.
| austincheney wrote:
| Yes, but first a quick note. So quick learning is not good
| learning towards mastery. It is a vague entry to a concept so
| that you can hit the ground running.
|
| 1. Remove time barriers. Understand that there are 24 hours in a
| day and that time is all your once removed from sleep, family,
| commute, and so forth. Understanding this may triple or quadruple
| your availability to learn.
|
| 2. Know your goal/mission/end state. This goal can be wrong, but
| at this point that correctness is irrelevant. This goal is where
| you need to be at the end of quick learning and you can pivot as
| necessary later.
|
| 3. Gather assets. Your team (if you need a team) should already
| be formed at this point. Gather your people, all necessary
| training materials, and a training location. The point is to cram
| together. Working with people like this slows your learning speed
| by about 20% but increases your comprehension by more than 40%
| and extends your focus further into fatigue. Remember rule 1
| above.
|
| 4. Rehearse. Read and review all supporting materials. Frequently
| discuss things in the team openly. Practice and mind meld. With
| enough iteration the subject matter should transform from
| knowledge to muscle memory. Practice practice practice.
|
| 5. Eat. Focus on foods high in protein and fats to help with
| concentration. Eat good meals and have healthy snacks available
| while learning. Starchy snacks are a bad choice. Things like
| nuts, meat products, and fatty vegetables are better. Snacks also
| give you something to do while you study to help ward off
| drowsiness.
|
| ----
|
| This is the pattern we use in the military. Having gone through
| numerous military schools and 5 deployments you do this so much
| the process itself becomes muscle memory. The idea is you have no
| idea what the actual technical requirements are until you get
| there but you have a vague idea of the skills needed. Buckle
| down, get pluses up, and keep an open mind.
| weitzj wrote:
| Read a book and/or blog posts in a speedy way so I roughly
| remember the pitfalls and places in the book where I will go back
| to later. I normally don't do the excercises. Then implement the
| thing I want to implement and go back to the book.
|
| Learning from videos is kind of tough for me as I cannot skip the
| content as fast as compared to reading
| rantwasp wrote:
| Not the answer you're looking for but hopefully it will help: the
| best time to learn something is when you don't need it. You
| should set aside time, each day to play with something new and to
| learn. The lack of time pressure will help you take the new thing
| you're learning and anchor it in your existing knowledge.
|
| When the time comes to use this new thing you will have a pretty
| good idea on how to handle it and you'll only have to brush up on
| it a bit.
|
| Last, but important: you never want to learn something just to
| learn it. Build something with it - understand why its's useful
| and apply it, even on a small scale projecy
| foreigner wrote:
| When learning a new programming library or framework I start by
| reading the reference manual from cover to cover (figuratively, I
| actually read it online). I don't retain it all but somehow it
| works for me. Then I start the tutorial or prototyping.
| lawwantsin17 wrote:
| I say learn based on whimsy. It will naturally lead to deeper
| questions and you'll understand more. there's is no shortcut,
| only keeping yourself motivated.
| rasengan0 wrote:
| Constraint, emotion and time.
|
| Over the years, this is I have found that worked best for me, but
| it is not fast. :-|
|
| Constraint/limitation/dogfooding: Replace any convenient tool,
| service, etc with what you are trying to learn.
|
| Specific skill: Feel comfortable in a terminal
|
| Example: Use Word or Excel? Replace with unix text coreutils,
| vim/emacs and/or perl/py library. When limitation is imposed,
| things get more concrete, less abstract and easier to process.
| Step by step self-enforced incremental challenges that layer atop
| one another. Chunk, Chunker, Chunking!
|
| Emotion/motivation: What do you really want to learn that is so
| important? Things I really wanted to know add emotional salience.
| I was invested intrinsically, not for external gain. The more
| motivated I am and USE what I learn, made/makes the next learning
| step/challenge easier. I think this is underestimated. Otherwise
| what is the point? If you are compelled externally (such as a
| job) see the Constraint step above. Make notes (learning) yours:
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret...
| Specific skill: Learn Jira Example: FTS! Use other tools that you
| enjoy more, ie VimWiki or another DIY issue tracker that maps to
| Jira fields then transfer to satisfy external demand.
|
| Time: This is the glue that binds the above of
| constrain/limitation and emotion/motivation. The only discovery
| here is that we have more time that we think/waste we have. Small
| caches of time really do add up. I think the Duolingo IPO is onto
| something ;-)
| Exuma wrote:
| I learn the hardest things first, not the easiest thing (ie I
| flip right to the Black-Scholes formula when learning options,
| gradient descent in neural networks, etc etc).
|
| I find that by going after the hardest things first, you learn
| the most information in the quickest way as all supporting things
| must be researched on the way.
|
| If you only go after easy basic things and try to work your way
| up, the pressure (and rate of growth) will never compare.
| toiletaccount wrote:
| This depends on what's being learned and the scope of it. We
| don't start teaching kindergardeners math by diving into linear
| algebra.
|
| The main thing to me is to practice constantly, and to practice
| doing it properly. There's also the psych factor, making a
| little bit of progress every day encourages you to make more
| progress. Keep the ball rolling, etc.
| Exuma wrote:
| The post specifically asks about learning things quickly.
| This is directly proportional to how uncomfortable one can be
| without quitting.
|
| If someone is dissuaded from learning something because they
| need to be encouraged, then that is contrary to learning
| things quickly, at that point its just regular learning.
| aasasd wrote:
| Some years ago I learned to touch-type in a month, at twenty
| minutes a day--though of course actually getting used to it took
| some months more. Ever since, I'm struggling to recreate the same
| approach in different topics.
|
| I used the app TIPP10, a completely no-nonsense program that just
| presents you with progressive exercises, rates your performance,
| and crucially, shows how far you're from the end goal. So I just
| clacked at the keyboard and watched the progress meter steadily
| go forward. Had to change my approach once when I was trying to
| go fast and kept making errors, stalling in the actual learning--
| after I slowed down everything went smoothly again.
|
| Now, I'd so much like to have a progress meter for when I'll be
| able to extract meaningful sounds from the piano or the guitar,
| or reason about electrics, etc. For the mechanical music skills,
| I'm putting some hope into Synthesia and Rocksmith. For
| knowledge, I guess actual courses and exercises are self-
| measuring: either I can remember and apply what I already
| learned, or I can't. However the measuring gets harder with
| topics that don't fit into one course or which require banging at
| them full-time for ages (like chess).
|
| (I've already tried to learn touch-typing about ten years before
| that, and the combination of my youthful impatience with the
| woefully misguided approach of the exercise app I then used,
| turned the experience into a wreck. The app presented me with the
| 'persona' of the author as the sage teacher: his virtual remarks
| cooed and comforted me after the mistakes, encouraged me
| patronizingly, and offered bits of psychological well-being
| wisdom, all of which just made me hate myself, the app and the
| endeavor.)
| mickaelP38 wrote:
| I learned touch typing some 15 years ago with "The Typing of
| The Dead" from the dreamcast era. This game was full of drills
| to make you practice every aspect of typing: accuracy, speed,
| etc. Also it made you practiced your worst keys which was very
| helpful for me.
|
| I would have liked to see this kind of game used to learn other
| skills but I never saw anything like it.
|
| I also hoped that AI/deep learning could assists us in learning
| new skills but it's not yet a thing apparently...
| lykr0n wrote:
| Yes.
|
| If I need to learn a specific product/tech, I build something
| with it. If I need to learn a library we're going to adopt, I'll
| take one of the ideas I have floating around implement using the
| specific product.
|
| Not using any specific documentation, just try and execute an
| idea and figure it out.
| gitgud wrote:
| Goal-based learning is a fairly generic framework that can help
| to learn to many things.
|
| Want to learn a snowboarding trick, set a goal or series of
| milestones to get there.
|
| Want to learn a programming language, set the goal of creating a
| small application or plugin.
|
| Want to learn how to pass interviews, set the goal of trying 4
| interviews in the next month and get feedback.
|
| It's one of several tools, but tangible goals always help
| learning.
| awb wrote:
| Step 1: Learn It
|
| Step 2: Practice It
|
| Step 3: Do It
|
| Step 4: Teach It
|
| Step 5: Repeat
|
| "If you don't use it you lose it" has been true for me.
|
| With each step you're evaluating yourself and repeating steps as
| necessary until you feel like you're ready to move on to the next
| steps.
|
| So for Cold Emails, maybe:
|
| 1. Learn - Research techniques online
|
| 2. Practice - Send some cold emails to friends or marketing
| colleagues for feedback, or post to a marketing / sales
| subreddit.
|
| 3. Send cold emails to a real contact list
|
| 4. Write about what you learned and how to do it
|
| 5. Keep finding ways to improve and new optimizations
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Quick learning or quick mastery? Seems like you're already good
| at just "quick learning". Mastery takes time, dedication, and
| effort - no way around it. You gotta drudge through it.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| I learn a lot of songs, both lyrics and performance on other
| instruments. I've memorized 500-800, and I have a couple hundred
| tunes I routinely perform in front of people.
|
| Slow, perfect practice of component parts in all things is the
| only easy way to gain skills, IMO.
|
| Long-term periodic repetition is the easy way to keep skills.
|
| So, for instance, I can learn most generic country songs in about
| an hour. As with most skills I break it into smaller chunks...
|
| I memorize and perfect a song's first line, Then I do the same
| with the second line, then I return to the first line and re-work
| it if I haven't got it full memorized.
|
| When I have the first and second lines memorized, I turn to the
| third by itself, and when that's done, I turn back to the first
| two lines.
|
| This process has a second level, in which I do the same for each
| section of the song (chorus, brides, variations): learn a small
| chunk perfectly, move on to another chunk, return to the previous
| chunk.
|
| Learning a song like Willie Nelson's "Mamas Don't Let Your babies
| Grow up to be Cowboys" takes about 30 min or less.
|
| By definition you return to the previous chunks less and less
| frequently. That's a structural part of this method; the second
| part is to play the song 20-30 times in the next couple of days.
|
| However, once you've done that, if you start increasing the
| period of performance, I've found it's pretty reliable to double
| the amount of time you can go in between performances and still
| have the material memorized... if I do this process, then I only
| need to play the tune every couple of days for the next week or
| two, and then once every week for the next month or two, and then
| once a month over the next year.
|
| Using that method, I've been able to call up stuff I haven't
| played in 2-3 years. And if I'm playing things even less
| frequently than that, well, I dunno if I really need to know it.
|
| I've found my other skill sets, at least the ones that don't rely
| on being in a specific physical condition like rock climbing,
| generally benefit from this periodization.
| ohthehugemanate wrote:
| on piano, I do the same but rather than working on components
| in chronological order, I order from most to least difficult.
| So the hardest parts get the most practice.
|
| For singing, where my technique is a lot more advanced and it's
| more about memorization, I learn components in reverse
| chronological order, ie start with the last four bars, then the
| last 8 bars, then the last 12, etc. That way the piece is
| increasingly well memorized as I go along.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Seconding "slow, perfect practice of component parts".
|
| It is a thing that the good teachers I have had in many skills
| have emphasized. Dancing. Martial arts. Drawing. Start slow,
| train your muscles to put _this_ part of your body right
| _there_ , with good form that minimizes the chance of injury.
| Once you can do that reliably, start doing it faster.
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