[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How Do You Learn?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: How Do You Learn?
Do you use techniques like spaced repetition? Do you prefer to
learn from books, articles or videos? What's your process?
Author : ggktk
Score : 197 points
Date : 2021-09-10 15:15 UTC (7 hours ago)
| travisgriggs wrote:
| I learn any way I can. Having a purpose to learn helps (I need
| this knowledge, I want this knowledge because I think it's cool,
| etc). I will try books, videos, whatever works.
|
| Like folded steel and alloys, I find that I learn things from
| lots of different angles, and appreciate the amalgamation.
|
| Veritasium did a whole video
| [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA] recently pointing
| out that it's really hard for us to self ascribe our best
| learning methods.
|
| I'll take whatever works and try as many as I can to keep the
| experience as rich as possible. If there's any unifying theme for
| me, it's "I learn by embracing Humility, and avoiding Lazy".
| exmadscientist wrote:
| Read something and apply it _as quickly as possible_. Whether
| that 's doing a problem set, working on a project, solving a
| real-world problem, making a decision, teaching someone else, or
| just advancing to the next section in your reference. Keep the
| feedback loop _as short as possible_.
|
| Surveying the whole landscape by asking yourself: why _this_ ,
| not _that_? This is the single most powerful technique I know to
| reach deep understanding, but is very demanding to apply.
| FeistyOtter wrote:
| Can you expand on your second paragraph? I am at the stage
| where I start to ask the same questions and it would be
| educational for me to learn how others do it.
| amotinga wrote:
| web dev languages / frameworks: 1. read the instruction, docs. 2.
| watch all the 'how to' videos I can get my hands on. 3. try to
| build something with it.
|
| more generic.
|
| 1. read as much as I can find on 'how to', 'tips and tricks',
| 'things I wish I new when I started x' etc 1.b watching videos on
| 2x speed. 2. practice
|
| tests are helpful if I can find them, but there aren't that many,
| good ones
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| I'm currently using the Foam extension on VSCode. It allows me to
| take all my notes in markdown and can see a kind of starmap of my
| notes which shows the link between related concepts. I tried Zim
| (a personal wiki software) and org-roam (same thing as foam but
| with org files instead of markdown and much more terrible
| "starmaps"). I still have to use it much to retrieve my
| knowledge, but I really like how it allows me to take quick notes
| so far and forces me to think of connections between things.
|
| The problem I had as a programmer working on legacy systems
| intermingled with new stuff is I had trouble finding my notes
| about stuff. Confluence's search is basically unusable and
| there's quite some overhead in using it to take notes in the
| first place. Using Zim/Foam lets me easily find the information I
| need when I need it.
|
| Basically, I'm just not gonna remember everything that might
| become useful months/years from now so I dump everything in my
| own personal wiki and make sure it's easy to navigate/find stuff
| I need when I do remember I saw something similar before.
| s1291 wrote:
| You may try instant-search zim plugin [1].
|
| [1]: https://github.com/e3rd/zim-plugin-instantsearch
| pricees wrote:
| Last year I started to handwrite notes, in cursive when possible,
| after 25 years of typing notes. My memory is quite poor.
| Handwriting notes has improved memory/recall/remembering by
| multiple orders of magnitude. At least it feels this way.
|
| I am currently learning Spanish. - Use Babbel to bootstrap
| conversational Spanish [learning enough to express myself, but
| also those quick wins that keep it fun] - I handwrite the
| conjugations to learn verb tenses and moods [diving into the
| specific details] - I use anki (spaced rep) for learning verbs
| and nouns [expanding knowledge] - And I talk to native speakers,
| who have been more than happy to chat. [feedback loop]
|
| I am not the brightest bulb in the shed and doing this with
| deliberate practice has gotten me pretty far in 6 weeks.
| bttf wrote:
| For me it's been mostly a holistic approach:
|
| Making time for deep focus
|
| Prioritizing important work (whether its learning or executing on
| tasks) for the morning right after waking up
|
| Healthy sleeping and eating habits
|
| There are a plethora of tools out there to optimize your
| workflow, but I think that is more a matter of preference.
|
| Videos can be hit or miss. The right videos can jam pack a ton of
| information and get you learning complex topics very quickly.
| Books and articles have their place too, though I tend to read
| later in the day into the evening when I'm more keen to winding
| down.
|
| One common thing I tend to do: I may end my day working on
| something that leads me to a new pillar of information or
| complicated topic that I need to grok. In those situations, I
| stop the day there, and plan to wake up the next morning to
| research the topic (over coffee), and absorb any videos,
| articles, material I can get my hands on. Your brain can do
| amazing things with a little bit of caffeine and deep focus after
| a good night's sleep.
| _dain_ wrote:
| Not very well ;_;
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The hard way.
|
| Actually a few processes that are combined depending on the
| domain.
|
| (1) Reading. At this I am relentless. I used to read technical
| documentation (say the manual for the Spring framework or maven)
| on a tablet while doing cardio at the gym.
|
| If at all possible I like to know the official documentation for
| whatever toolset I am using like the back of my hand. I learn how
| to find answers quickly in, say, the Python manual, and avoid
| wasting time with Google, Stack Overflow, Spam Blogs and other
| places you find wrong answers.
|
| In some cases there is no official documentation, it is not good,
| or it is a book you buy. (Buy Hickey's book on Clojure!)
|
| Lately I hurt my leg and had more time to read, I so read enough
| books about love that I had to take a break and read trashy SF
| instead. This project has had the structure "Read book A", "Scan
| the references in Book A, get references (from 5-80%) from the
| library, look at the areas in the stack close to the references,
| read those, repeat." This project is unusual because it has a
| high fraction of fiction mixed in with the non-fiction.
|
| (2) Doing. Here it is a matter of having a gradient of tasks. I
| hate to break it to you but spaced repetition, flashcards, etc.
| are useless when it comes to math. Instead you solve problems.
|
| About a year ago I challenged myself to print something on an
| inkjet printer every day to keep it from drying out. I had no
| idea how that this would turn out, the kind of problems that I
| would run into (I felt I hit a "crisis" of some kind every two
| months), that I was developing for the metaverse before people
| started talking about the metaverse, or that with 15 cents of
| materials I could make somebody spend $1500 (not by causing
| property damage!)
|
| For a while I made prints of anime characters and then art
| reproductions, now my main activity is developing a repeatable
| workflow for photos I take myself. Personally I find it a "hard
| problem" that there is "something missing" in the prints I make
| from my camera but I realized I couldn't fix this problem one
| print at a time but it was something I'd get after doing a long
| series of them.
| iammjm wrote:
| My current learning process:
|
| 1. Consume input 2. Extract key points 3. Map key points into a
| model of what I am learning -> repeat
|
| I read books & articles on ReMarkable and I make hand written
| notices OR I watch videos/learn online and put my notes into
| Scapple. I keep my data in OneDrive to access it from all
| devices. I brainstorm and rearange in Scapple.
|
| Then I put it into Notion to build a knowledge database there. If
| I want to publish or share, I pipe it into .doc or .pdfs
|
| Edit: The points are: a) I have a flow that turns input (learning
| material) into unstructured data (notes, scribbles), which is
| then turned into more structured data. b) this keeps me
| constantly engaged with what I'm learning as I keep rearanging
| and expanding my map/model
| werber wrote:
| By trying and failing, depending on what I'm learning I prefer to
| take in knowledge differently though. For something physical, say
| piano, yoga, fixing a drain: video, something technical: text,
| language : audio. But for any of these things I seek out someone
| better than me, Since the pandemic started I've done video guitar
| lessons in addition to YouTube, yoga with Adrienne on YouTube,
| French lessons with a native tutor to brush up and At work, i
| reach out to people that are better than me at any concept or
| skill to set up one on one sessions and always offer to do the
| same with things I'm strong in. With that being said, I spend
| more time doing things through articles but feel the time other
| developers share with me I learn more faster.
|
| Sorry I'm rambling, but, when possible I think it's great to get
| a person better than you to help learn. For me personally, that
| level of accountability keeps me from falling off (which I still
| do, but, less)
| rg111 wrote:
| This is basically how it works:
|
| 1. I submerge myself into that topic. I read blogs, I watch
| YouTube videos, I watch recorded conference videos, I talk to
| people working on that topic. I basically familiarize myself with
| that topic like I familiarize myself with a new place or the food
| of a new restaurant.
|
| I just let all the information flow in. Slowly but surely.
|
| I don't bother about _getting_ it. I just learn _about_ it.
|
| When I am thus superficially familiar with the topic, interest
| and motivation is generated.
|
| 2. I then study good resources, the ones considered the best and
| most helpful- as I find them on relevant forums from real people.
| I read, I understand. 1 goes on in tandem. I don't intellectually
| cheap out on learning resources. I take notes on paper and
| occasionally study them.
|
| 3. I _do_. This is the single most important phase in my learning
| process. You can only learn properly if you _do_. I get hands-on
| practical knowledge and learn things that books or courses cannot
| teach efficiently. Makes 2 make much more sense, and makes 1 make
| total sense. Why I am doing something is extremely important. In
| this phase, I start noticing people who just talk superficially
| about that topic, like people generally do that about hot tech or
| quantum mechanics or macroecnomics but they themselves don 't
| understand them well- the influencers, advocate s, popularizers,
| and the people trying hard to appear smart.
|
| 4. I talk about it and/or write about it. With the knowledge
| gained from amalgamation of 2 and 3, I talk in small groups, I
| write blogs. Really cement the knowledge and help me bridge gaps.
|
| 5. Doing, talking etc. goes on. I sometimes forget too
| theoretical knowledge that were on top of my head when doing 2,
| but not needed in the real world. I just have to go back. I am
| thinking of spaced-repetition or some other technique to remedy
| this. I am not sure if I should even remedy it.
|
| This is how I do it.
|
| Familiarize -> Learn -> Do
|
| Oh, and I be patient. If I don't immediately gain satisfactory
| understanding of something (my standards are very high), I just
| be patient. As I know that the topics I know well, I have spent
| 2, 4, or even 10 years with some of them. Some things come slow.
|
| And I always remeber when it comes to understanding something-
|
| _You must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to
| fool_
|
| ~ Richard Feynman
| abakker wrote:
| I tend to overcommit. E.g. take on a project or make a purchase
| that _requires_ me to learn the skill to be able to complete
| whatever that project is or use the thing I bought. I find having
| external "skin in the game" helps me focus on the parts of a
| thing I need to know. Then, once I can get into the conceptual
| level of whatever the topic is, I expand from there.
| Pelic4n wrote:
| Ritalin extended release, an empty stomach, lots of caffeine
| npwr wrote:
| Move fast and break things. Mostly your stomach and your
| dopamine levels.
| loftyal wrote:
| ^ This is the real answer that actually reliability works
| jcun4128 wrote:
| It is amazing how much you can absorb
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| I feel like I learn best from the bottom up. Take a motivating
| example, work through it, then incorporate theory on why it is. I
| prefer to watch videos for the example, but reading for the
| theory. After that I have to do it a couple of times myself to
| nail it down.
|
| I don't find spaced repetition helpful unless it is rote
| memorization of small facts.
| mrtnmcc wrote:
| I find the most important step in learning is to figure out the
| best learning material for the subject (which book, author,
| research paper or tutorial to go through). If you are going to
| invest days or months of your life, it's worth first spending a
| fraction of that time choosing the material.
|
| Obviously it takes at least a skim to judge whether you feel the
| material is worthwhile. But being picky on this will likely pay
| off. Certain textbooks are so far superior that it's almost
| criminal the others are being sold. In some cases they were
| clearly knocked off by a prof to sell to their students,
| rephrasing the same material in a more confusing way and trying
| to take credit for the ideas without contributing much of
| anything.
| itronitron wrote:
| I agree and am hoping that you will list some of the learning
| materials that you feel stand out as far superior :)
| hatware wrote:
| Step 1. Live in fear of failure Step 2. Discover failure isn't
| _that_ bad Step 3. Fail upwards
| chipuni wrote:
| Here's my system, when I want to know something forever:
|
| 1. Get a good article or book about the topic. Not a video.
|
| 2. Read it multiple times. Each time, highlight and leave notes
| in the margins. By the third read-through, there's usually
| nothing more to comment on. (I can't do this with videos.)
|
| 3. Turn those notes into new Anki (spaced repetition software)
| cards that go into the unseen pile.
|
| 4. Every day, Anki adds ten cards from the unseen pile to the
| cards I'm reviewing.
|
| I've been doing this for twelve years, and it works very well for
| me.
| railton wrote:
| Not "how I learn" per-se, but how I make time for learning
| (biggest problem for me, by far) is to do 30mins of $whatever
| before I turn on my work laptop, no excuses.
|
| The book "Atomic Habits" mostly inspired this - the idea of
| setting both a clearly defined time and place for doing something
| + making it easier to do the right thing / harder to do the wrong
| thing. The "before laptop is turned on" is important for not
| drifting onto Slack and blasting through various notifications.
|
| I've gone from spending literally years thinking "I really need
| to read more papers and these textbooks" to actually making solid
| progress on stuff I care about.
| pfkurtz wrote:
| This isn't my whole approach or anything (it builds on a really
| good education) but I find my continuous, lifelong learning of
| things I want in my soul to know about has reached a stable,
| always-improving habit by having a few stacks of the right books
| in reach in the right places.
|
| On my toilet is a stack of dual-language books; German and Old
| English, Latin, French and Spanish, Ancient Greek, Japanese, as
| well as Shapiro's Introduction to Number Theory. Lots of Dover
| editions. Wittgenstein.
|
| Next to my desk (on the second desk) there's always an open math
| book or two (Knuth Vol. 1 and From Frege to Godel right now), as
| well as a few open notebooks.
|
| By my bedside, a few works of great literature and philosophy
| (right now Rawls, Joyce, Homer).
|
| In reach of the couch a variety of books on art history.
|
| By the reading chair, well... lots of books.
|
| I read, skip about, get stuck, forget things, but every day I dip
| into these little piles for a few minutes here, maybe an hour
| there if I'm lucky.
|
| One thing I never care about anymore is finishing. My mind can
| grow a bit more, most of the time.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Projects and excessive notes. Books suck imo because they fall in
| two camps: not project oriented and just give away the answers or
| only look at things from an educational perspective, or written
| by some random schmuck who thinks their workflow is great and you
| should adopt it too.
|
| Every book would be better if they wrote how to do stuff as if I
| was a moron and didn't know where step 1 was. While it's kind of
| annoying for people who've done it for a while, it's great
| because it covers EVERYTHING. Even that one little tid bit you
| are so used to that you forgot it exists.
|
| Videos suck often because they are like 30 minute videos when
| they can just edit out the whole process of them typing and
| stuff. I want to see you get from point A to point B, but explain
| what is happening in between. Not see you type out the stuff.
| Just a waste of time. Not to mention reading off power points.
| codingdave wrote:
| I don't have formal methods, but I do prefer to read. Videos are
| OK for hearing about a topic in general, but especially when
| trying to follow a tutorial, having to stop/rewind/play when my
| pace doesn't match the video, I find it to be a painful
| experience.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| I often attempt to resynthesize unfamiliar concepts in analogous
| terms from other fields that are familiar to me. This helps in
| making sense of and categorizing information, but also often
| leads to situations where my analogy breaks, and _those_ are very
| often key insights to the matter at hand.
| trey-jones wrote:
| 1. Read about it.
|
| 2. Try it.
|
| 3... Repeat.
| raviparikh wrote:
| I'm currently learning a language (Japanese) and I use a
| combination of spaced repetition and immersion. Specifically, I
| spent time reading books and watching TV shows that are a little
| bit above my level of comprehension, and when I see or hear words
| I don't recognize, I add those words to my Anki (spaced
| repetition) deck. I don't do this for each and every unrecognized
| word; that would be overwhelming-I aim for 10 new words per day.
|
| I've been doing this for about a year and have made steady
| progress. The main limiter has been having enough time to immerse
| (read/listen) properly. I can manage 30 min to 1 hour per day but
| it's not enough.
|
| Spaced repetition works really, really well though. I've thought
| about using it for other non-language things I want to memorize,
| but haven't yet done so.
| rnoorda wrote:
| Lately I've been finding more and more that the exact techniques
| I use are less important than my motivation. When I begin
| learning something new, I try to start some sort of project right
| away. It can just be something simple for myself, maybe just
| reading a kid's book in a new language, but it helps to ground me
| when I encounter tons of new information. Once I get excited
| about learning something, then the tools/tips so many of the
| other comments have mentioned help me learn better. But if I
| can't get that initial interest going, those techniques don't do
| much.
|
| I'm not saying to only learn things you're passionate about-
| almost all of us will have to learn skills that we aren't
| particularly interested in. But finding some goal to push for
| beyond just "learn x" can give me that motivation.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| No techniques, I just read. A lot.
| LanceH wrote:
| I keep a pad of paper next to me. Though I do nearly everything
| on the computer, I use paper to write down anything I need to
| look up later. The list isn't for things I need to learn, but for
| how to do something I need to know how to do on a regular basis.
| If I were studying math, and I knew how to use a theorem but
| didn't understand how it worked, I might write that down. The
| point of the pad is to keep on task and only take a brief note.
|
| For any programming language there are two other things I do.
| First, I make a repo with a bunch of nested directories that I'll
| add to. So I'll have something like Array -> Iteration, and that
| might contain 5 different programs going through different types
| of iteration. Yes, a book will have that, but actually coding it
| really helps it sink in.
|
| The first place I look for resources (even before something like
| <language>.com) is stackoverflow. Search for the tag of the
| language (like "[go]"), then click "Learn more...". I've found
| these lists of resources to be the best jumping off point, though
| the language may vary.
|
| Again I use the pad for details of the language. There are times
| when I know I'm doing something that works but is maybe slow or
| looks ugly because the language has facilities to do it more
| cleanly.
|
| Then there are the personal differences. I've reached a decent
| level of fluency in 2 other languages. I really struggled early
| on with typical instruction until I tailored study to my style of
| learning. Where most people seem to learn new words through use
| and context, I did so much better by learning them on paper -- to
| the point where it was a substantial departure from the rest of
| the class. So my point here is to figure out what works and don't
| be afraid to do things differently.
| LightG wrote:
| Generally, I smoke a joint, and then I start with a few wiki's or
| news stories on the subject matter to try and find the hook
| that'll hold my sustained interest. At some point, I'll find that
| hook and then I'll go down the rabbit hole. Learning is then
| automatic and incidental.
| unemphysbro wrote:
| I've found I learn best organically. If it doesn't spark joy, I'm
| not going to dedicate the time.
|
| Recently, I've lost interest in tech/coding/math but motorcycle
| repair, racing, and engine internals are cool!
|
| It's always been internal validation.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Long story short, when I was a kid I attended a school that was
| operated by Scientologists. L Ron Hubbard had some strong
| feelings on how to learn, and so the curriculum at my school
| followed suit.
|
| I do think that a lot of what I did as a kid - clearing
| misunderstood words, using clay models or drawings or physical
| blocks to understand concepts - has been instrumental to my
| ability to learn new stuff.
|
| I do not endorse or support Scientology by any means, but a lot
| of this is true: http://www.studytechnology.org/sh1_1.html
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I'm trying to find the original source but I'm lost. Here is a
| good step I recently stumbled into and it makes good sense. So,
| here it goes (not mine) super-condensed into a list;
|
| 1. Learn the Basics.
|
| 2. Read key reading material/analysis. Read papers, analysis,
| articles, etc. in that space.
|
| 3. Seek out key people. Find all the key people in the space,
| follow them. Engage in conversations with them or see what they
| talk about.
|
| 4. If possible, hang out in the community.
|
| 5. Write in Public. Last but probably most important, document
| your journey in public.
| jyriand wrote:
| I have outsourced my memory to zettelkasten/(second brain) type
| of notetaking. I'm focusing on trying to understand the
| fundamentals and core ideas instead of just memorizing stuff.
| Went back to school after 10 years, let's see how it works out.
| robmerki wrote:
| I've tried everything, but the only reliable way I've learned
| hard things is by diving straight in to something way over my
| head. Grinding through something with a dozen StackOverflow (or
| equivalent) tabs open is how I taught myself Javascript/React,
| HTML, Unreal Engine, and even Audacity. Note taking is probably
| "better", and I use spaced repetition if I have to memorize
| things, but the core method is just grinding on something I'm
| deeply interested in.
| nohr wrote:
| I am similar but I cannot for the life of me understand game
| engine workflows. Other libraries and frameworks I get after a
| while of reading docs etc, but the workflow for game engines is
| so different than what I normally do that I get thrown off
| course lol. Any tips for unreal?
| robmerki wrote:
| After spending a ton of time with React/Javascript/Html/CSS
| it worked in my brain like this: - Game logic is your
| Javascript - Animations/Models/Textures are your CSS - Game
| objects (i.e. the character you control, NPCs) are like React
| components - Levels/Maps are your "database"
|
| Now that I've typed that out, it almost doesn't make much
| sense. But that's how it fit together in my brain.
| NortySpock wrote:
| I don't know about a engine workflow, but I was inspired to
| make a few games in JavaScript after reading the book/website
| http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com by Robert Nystrom
|
| That helped me understand frame-tick/physics-tick aspect at
| least, and how you could offload some processing onto
| separate queues of events.
| thom wrote:
| The most important thing is being honest with yourself about what
| you're actually interested in. No fancy techniques are going to
| help you go fast if you're forcing yourself every step of the
| way. Obviously in school you have limited control over this, and
| heck, probably most of the time in work too. But I see lots of
| people trying to pick up skills they think they _should_ but
| which they're not really excited about. Passion and curiosity
| give you a leg up for free.
|
| But assuming that's the case:
|
| 1. Follow the history of a thing, from its simplest early
| incarnations, through warring schools of thought, up to cutting
| edge ideas. Understand the forces (and people!) guiding a thing
| and you'll have a good way to contextualise everything you learn.
|
| 2. Have a project and dive into it straight away. Don't just
| learn to play an existing song on the piano, write a new song.
| Don't write another todo app, write a brand new app. Don't learn
| to ask for a cup of coffee in French, learn to argue about anime
| etc etc. This exposes you to more tensions, pitfalls,
| opportunities for failure, and therefore more chances to learn.
|
| 3. Skim texts a bit, then play around a bit, and stay in this
| loop until you feel you have a very high level map of the
| territory. You're trying to understand firstly what exists at all
| in the subject you're interested in, but also learning how to
| relate specific things to specific places/themes/topics. This
| phase is very much learning how to google in your specific
| domain, and you're welcome to use fancy note-taking tools and
| techniques here if they suit you.
|
| 4. Pick the most interesting or most challenging part of your
| project, and go deep on that area. Find examples of experts
| solving that problem, understand where they're coming from, why
| their solutions might be different. Pick whichever camp you feel
| intuitively at home in (maybe you want to be a gung-ho attacking
| chess player, maybe a slow, positional one), lean towards that
| solution. Let passion guide you even if you eventually decide you
| took the wrong turn - don't try and learn OOP and FP at the same
| time, try out being an insufferable bore about each in turn.
|
| 5. Once you've had a few failures and disappointments and proven
| you aren't going to give up, establish long term feedback loops
| and use them honestly. What are you trying to paint that looks
| worst? What words do you keep forgetting? What neural network
| architecture do you always copy and paste without understanding?
| Keep practising new things and learning all the ways you still
| suck. I personally wouldn't over optimise for this early on
| though, I would wait until you have a lot of momentum built up.
|
| 6. Don't let self improvement take over your life. Stop and smell
| the roses.
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| Repeated exposure by doing it and failing
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I learn best and most from books - of course, some are better
| than others, but my ideal book is one that has examples and
| exercises that are designed for learning.
| chewonbananas wrote:
| Handwriting notes, to condense the book contents, in combination
| with the recall method.
| jdauriemma wrote:
| If we're talking about skill acquisition, I like to learn through
| making up random projects to do. Usually I'll read until I get
| the gist, start going as far as I can go before hitting a wall,
| then read some more. I don't have the patience to sit through
| videos; in-depth technical writing with realistic examples works
| best for me.
| david_allison wrote:
| Familiarity - Follow communities and discussions, or try things
| and see how they go. Spend some time passively reading. Books are
| good. Videos typically have a low time to knowledge ratio as they
| pander to the YouTube algorithm. Projects are fantastic, but
| they're mostly tech-based.
|
| Spaced Repetition - For concepts that don't appear regularly
| enough to be familiar, but are still useful enough to be in short
| term memory.
|
| Knowledge Management - I have a personal knowledge management
| system based on recursive concept definitions. I define my
| knowledge at the highest level that I understand, and let the
| concept definitions fill in the first principles that I forget; I
| intuit that the current crop of note-taking apps aren't working
| on the right level, but haven't had the time to productionise my
| setup, and I'm happy enough that I'm not going to look for
| something better. I suppose this is also an application of the
| Feynman method.
|
| I keep papers in Zotero for reference.
|
| Forgetting & Ignorance - A lot of knowledge isn't valuable enough
| to me at this stage in my life. It's a shame that I'm not going
| to have an appreciation for the Roman emperors, but that's OK.
| Time is limited and it's important that you don't spend too much
| time on theory at the expense of practice.
|
| Reading the answers here, I should aim to join more discussions
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Good q. Personally, a while back I started a "learning ladder"
| document to answer this question. It kind of went sideways as
| compared to how I thought it would end up.
|
| At first I listed and ranked a bunch of methods of learning (see
| below) but I found that a general ranking isn't as helpful after
| a while.
|
| The biggest takeaway for me was developing my own logging
| process. I always start a log on a given learning topic, to keep
| myself accountable and to allow myself to detach and reattach to
| the process.
|
| The log template I use has headings like this (Markdown):
|
| - Title
|
| - Contents
|
| - To-Do & Questions
|
| - Tips
|
| - Chronological Log of Lessons Learned
|
| - Log (Meta) -- When log was last reorganized, etc.
|
| - Resources (Web links, and so on)
|
| Then I use my own task system, Task BATL, to help me select logs
| to work on and mark up the to-do lists (like that above) with
| symbols that establish clarity. I also use a basic tagging system
| throughout, with shortcuts like +lll for "Log of Lessons Learned"
| and +crp for "Current Position" (current philosophy / position /
| strategy in the topic--like how I trade assets, or write system
| scripts) so on.
|
| In terms of specific methods--books, articles, and videos, I also
| tend to ask my intuition what it thinks the best one will be for
| each given topic. Usually one specific method comes to mind. Over
| time, I rank them for each given topic/log.
|
| I'd also add these:
|
| - Image search
|
| - PDF search
|
| - Reddit posts & other forums
|
| - Slideshare
|
| - Podcasts (useful in topic review or topic updates)
|
| - Writing and publishing my own guides or tutorials on blogs,
| etc.
|
| - Creating HTML start pages for the topic
| (friendlyskies.net/radio was one of my first)
|
| - Online courses
|
| - In-person courses
|
| - Get-togethers (for ham radio this has been a really good one;
| I'd add nets to that as well)
|
| - Volunteering
|
| - Certifications
|
| - Teaching courses
|
| - Shopping/buying things related to the topic in a well-informed
| way
|
| - Starting profit-projects / businesses
|
| Anyway, good question, I think it goes super deep too.
| brokencode wrote:
| I've found more and more that I learn best when I talk to other
| people. It's one thing to read or hear information, but it's so
| much more enriching to be able to have a conversation and ask
| questions in real time.
| quequeque wrote:
| In previous iterations of this thread I think various people
| recommended the "Learning How to Learn" course on Coursera. I
| think the consensus for learning tech related concepts in the
| aforementioned thread was that many people learn well by building
| things. I like to read books for most forms of learning, although
| for things like complicated algorithms I prefer to watch videos.
| I also like to use spaced repetition for more specific uses like
| vocabulary - anki/supermemo seem to highly recommended here for
| automating spaced repetition.
|
| coursera course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-
| learn
|
| a previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23211184
| mightybyte wrote:
| I really like this talk on the topic called "Stop Treading Water:
| Learning to Learn":
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8KcCU-p8QA
| drewcoo wrote:
| Mostly, I read anecdotes.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Does that actually work?
| sophacles wrote:
| Not OP but i find the story part is very useful when I'm in
| an unfamiliar space. The stories provide insight into how the
| teller thinks about the problem - this is helpful to make a
| mental map of the topic. It helps that humans seem wired to
| understand narative (or maybe just my culture) in a deep way.
|
| Similarly, when joining a new team I like to gather war-
| stories because when people tell you those, they are also
| telling you how they work (and allow you to infer a good
| strategy for working with those folks while also learning
| about the warts of the system).
| crinulix wrote:
| This is an interesting topic, but simply put one learns better
| when enthusiasm and joy is there... small children learn by
| playing and that is the natural way of learning, so i would say
| if you can play with your topic you can learn it and the
| knowledge will stick because there is an emotional attachment to
| it. Research on this topic has been done by Dr. Gerald Huther
| professor and neurobiologist. Also you can look up how unschooled
| kids learn (since there is no school they play all day long) and
| even succeed very easily when they decide to pursue college
| degrees... that brings lot of insight on how we as humans learn
| about the world around us (and the topics we like too)
| droobles wrote:
| youtube
| steanne wrote:
| reinforce through different forms. reading something means you
| remember reading it. writing it means you remember writing it AND
| remember reading it, because you read it as you write. same goes
| for hearing someone else speak versus saying it out loud
| yourself. with multiple sources of input, once is enough for me
| generally, rather than repeating the same input type multiple
| times.
| indiantinker wrote:
| I am a design technologist [1], so I end up doing things when
| specialists are too busy or unavailable or they don't exist. I do
| research, build prototypes, design interfaces, and even write
| growth strategies.
|
| Over the years, I have to learn things ASAP to get things in
| place before world breaks loose. I follow an approach that I call
| : SPOTS. It stands for Survey, Prioritise, Organise, Test, Show.
| Lets go through it one by one :
|
| 1. Survey : Collect all possible things you need to know about a
| new topic or thing. Make a mind-map. Do not forget to check out
| academic sources for possible models. Reddit and HN are cool
| places to look. This should be done in a time boxed manner.
|
| 2. Prioritise : Now we bring the goal and see our mind map in
| context. So, you want to build an app and you know, say, Nuxtjs.
| How can you do it so you have to acquire as little skills as
| possible. Or you want to write a research protocol for conducting
| a simple user test for a product. This step will help you find
| possible ways to reach goal. Now, you have a prioritised way to
| achieve the goal and maybe have a sense of how things could be.
|
| 3. Organise: This step is very important. The prioritised
| 'knowledge elements' have to be revisited again and again. Using
| a small notes app or Athens[2] you can make a list of key steps
| or if its a tutorial, the major steps. In short, take notes. This
| will help you bring more clarity in terms of various approaches
| you can use the knowledge elements. Say, you need to use low
| power mode on ESP32, you have the documentation + sample code and
| you know how it works.
|
| 4. Test ( or Try) : Now you need to keep trying and testing the
| various arrangements of knowledge elements and what works and
| what not. Dont get attached to any particular way. Keep figuring
| out. With code etc it is easier, with research (and human
| things), test things with friends or cousins. The idea is to be
| iterative and see if we are able to get to the goal. Iteration is
| the key. Sometimes you might need new 'knowledge elements' that
| you might have missed out.
|
| 5. Show : This is the most important and something all good
| humans should do, as philosophers would say, further the
| epistemological understanding of humans-- write a f#$king blog,
| post a documentation, or answer a stack overflow, heck at least
| make a tik-tok. This will make sure, if someone gets stuck
| solving the same problem in the future, your knowledge element
| will help them. Also, it cements the concepts for you as well.
| _sings_ "You may say, I am dreamer...But, I am not the only one"
|
| [1] http://rohitg.in/portfolio/ or http://rohitg.in
|
| [2] https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
| stickfigure wrote:
| I'm 48 and have gone through this process countless times, it
| feels like familiar rote:
|
| 1. Explore the subject almost randomly. Neither depth-first nor
| breadth-first; just follow threads that seem most useful or most
| interesting. Books, articles, videos, classes, whatever - it
| doesn't matter as long as you don't get bored. Dabble in all of
| them. If there are any practical skills involved (motion, writing
| code, etc) start doing those immediately.
|
| 2. At some point you get the _ah-hah!_ moment. It is like the fog
| lifts and you can suddenly see the landscape. You don 't know
| everything but now it seems like further knowledge is just a
| process of filling holes. You wield your knowledge to accomplish
| what you need by filling specific holes on-demand. Everything
| fits together like jigsaw puzzle pieces.
|
| The time between #1 and #2 can be short or long depending on the
| complexity of the subject. But the experience of #2 is a massive
| dopamine rush. The main thing you need is patience; don't get
| frustrated and give up, you know that if you just keep poking
| around, eventually that dopamine rush will come.
| rafaelgarrido wrote:
| This resonates to my own experience! I'd only add that the step
| #2 (ah-hah! moments) are not singular, but milestones in a
| cycle. Being patient and pushing through #1 is definitely
| rewarding and expands to new fronts.
| atlacatl_sv wrote:
| Thank you for your response.
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| To expand on 1, I think it's been important for me to have some
| anchor points along the way. Some things I can "accomplish"
| however small they may be that, if nothing else, help me feel
| like I'm making progress I won't lose, even if full
| understanding takes much longer. Otherwise, backsliding in
| interest can mean the next time I get interested, I'm faced
| with the prospect of starting over from scratch, which can
| sometimes mean I just move on to something else.
| pacman128 wrote:
| Completely agree. I usually start with a trivial step and
| then build from it. Keeping notes on paper, in a markdown doc
| or jupyter notebook as appropriate is also useful. I have
| notes that I still look back at to remind me of details of
| areas I haven't used in a while.
| Trex_Egg wrote:
| Thank you
| fossuser wrote:
| An issue I have is often shortly after 2 the excitement is over
| for me and I like going back to 1 in some other subject.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| This is the best way. I hate that school doesn't let you do it
| this way. School is too linear.
| cvhashim wrote:
| Great advice
| __henil wrote:
| This reply made my day!
| ecnahc515 wrote:
| On point 1), sometimes an approach to this is helping others.
| That might mean answering stackoverflow questions, or helping
| someone on IRC or Slack.
|
| Mentoring/helping others helps solidify your own understanding.
| nwatson wrote:
| I'm home-schooling my daughter in math because Zoom and it not
| agreeing with her. She did great last semester and tests
| several years ahead and has a very intuitive sense of why
| things work the way they do, I'd like to keep her interest.
|
| However, we're now on to pre-algebra and using this book [0],
| "Prealgebra: The Art of Problem Solving". The first chapter is
| all about axioms, proofs of some sort, breaking down "obvious"
| conclusions back to their constituent proof-from-first-
| principles and it's not agreeing with her at all. Since this is
| the first week I'm struggling to find a way to have it all make
| sense, and I've concluded we need to kind of skip much of this
| first chapter (we'll look at the summary) and get to the later
| content which is more intuitive and applies "obvious"
| principles, and come back periodically to revisit the more
| mechanistic content in the first chapter. I think the parent
| post's description of exploring a topic matches how my daughter
| will come to understand the whole "algebra stack." (Wish me
| luck.)
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/Prealgebra-Richard-
| Rusczyk/dp/1934124... , Amazon: "Prealgebra: The Art of Problem
| Solving"
| AQuantized wrote:
| Breaking things down to their basic axioms and rebuilding
| them with proofs is arguably quite an advanced approach. By
| Terry Tao's three stages of of rigour classification [0],
| this perspective isn't typical until undergraduate study.
|
| It doesn't seem like a bad idea to give a taste of it
| significantly earlier, but I don't think it's surprising if
| someone without a more mature relationship with mathematics
| doesn't find much value in 'going back to basics.' If your
| daughter is doing well with a more intuitive approach it
| sounds like a good idea to stick with it for now.
|
| [0] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/theres-more-
| to-...
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| I remember my mom struggling to teach me pre-algebra ahead of
| the school curriculum. My uncle (a math teacher) mailed us a
| bunch of "part-is-to-whole-as-part-is-to-whole" word problems
| of increasing complexity and various forms, and working
| through those made a lot of things click. The concreteness
| helped, and it also made me understand the equivalence
| between proportions, fractions, decimals, percents, and their
| real-world concepts, plus it has some simple solve-for-x
| attached to it. And it's learning-by-doing instead of
| learning-by-reading.
| a11r wrote:
| Art of Problem Solving is great - I think they take credit
| for the US Math olympiad team's performance. I use books from
| the same organization at elementary school level and find
| them very good and fun to teach. I would recommend going a
| level lower among the books published by them [1] to see if
| that is a good starting point for your child. Their website
| also has some placement tests etc. to evaluate the right
| level for a student.
|
| [1]https://artofproblemsolving.com/
| bsenftner wrote:
| There's two hurdles for the pre-algebra student: numbers
| being generically represented as letters and the idea of
| axioms being generic rules for numbers. Check to see which
| issue or both is misunderstood. If it's numbers as letters,
| show them any interactive programming environment and
| demonstrate the idea of letters as generic numbers. From
| there, axioms are just more interactive demonstration.
| [deleted]
| Meandering wrote:
| I tutored algebra students and I reccommend the following
| approach with Khan academy/Openstax resources.
|
| Order of Operations(No Variable)
|
| Order of Operations(One Variable)
|
| Advanced Order of Operations (One Variable)*optional
|
| - Logs, Roots, Exponentials
|
| - Polynomial multiplication/Factorization
|
| Change the variable to random symbols
|
| - Greek characters, shapes, animals
|
| Order of Operations(Multiple Variables)
|
| Introduce functions
|
| - f(x) = mx + b
|
| Connect Order of Operations with Functions
|
| - Simplify an equation and plot as a function
|
| Introduce units (basic physics equations)
|
| - Simplify to formula and Plot
|
| The goal in formal classes is to introduce order of
| operations with variables, the concept of functions, and how
| to manipulate those functions. If you are stem oriented, then
| this is the perfect time to introduce dimensional
| analysis(units) and physics-based functions. Instilling a
| sense of confidence and comfort with algebraic manipulation
| is critical. Prepping her for physics and working with
| functions is just smart.
| ai_ia wrote:
| > But the experience of #2 is a massive dopamine rush. The main
| thing you need is patience; don't get frustrated and give up,
| you know that if you just keep poking around, eventually that
| dopamine rush will come.
|
| I completely agree with you. I remember feeling the dopamine
| rush when I saw the 3b1b's video lectures on linear algebra and
| Andrew Ng's Machine Learning Lecture.
|
| Although I strongly feel that simply reading books and watching
| video lectures are not the best way to learn on your own. You
| have to re-read them, use them, do the exercises and talk with
| peers to really get the underlying ideas. Maybe some better
| explainations exist, but hoping that you randomly stumble upon
| them as you browse through online articles is not a good idea,
| IMHO.
|
| I like this quote from Prof. Michael Jordan:
|
| "the first time you barely understand, the second time you
| start to get it, and the third time it all seems obvious."
|
| You have to work with the material and come back to it again
| and again to really understand.
|
| I have created a conversational learning medium, Primer, that
| is designed for self-learners. Our goal, right now, is to
| create conversational undergraduate-level computer science
| courses for anyone to learn on their.
|
| It's primary focus is to bring resumability in play which books
| and video lectures lack. What I mean by that is that when you
| learn something from a book and video lectures, you start
| forgetting about it the minute you stop. After a month or so,
| your memory of the topics are maybe less than 30%. And if you
| haven't created flashcards or notes, then you have to skim over
| the book or watch the lectures to recollect.
|
| On Primer, flashcards are automatically generated and your
| responses stored in the platform along with inline completions
| help to retrace & recover what you have learned. You can do the
| course for a while and resume again after quitting for a couple
| of months or years. Your responses act as memory breadcrumbs to
| help you retrace what you have learned.
|
| You can test our two free courses over at
| https://primerlabs.io. ( No signup required ).
|
| I have also created two comics-post about conversational
| learning that some of you may find useful.
|
| 1. Introducing Primer:
| https://primerlabs.io/comics/introducing-primer-comics/
|
| 2. Memory Breadcrumbs & Memory Trails:
| https://primerlabs.io/comics/memory-breadcrumbs-comics/
|
| In the end, you have to treat everything as something you will
| eventually come back and update. That's why I like networked-
| thoughts tool like Roam and obsidian, a little too much maybe.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| This looks cool. Your product overlaps somewhat with Oppia
| (an open source tool for creating interactive
| 'explorations'). If you haven't seen it, I recommend you
| check it out.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| The don't get bored part is really important. If it's not
| something you are required to learn, but instead you want to,
| then keep being interested and passionate is the best thing.
| There's no use in trying to optimize your learning at the very
| beginning if you drop it entirely in a month
| robbiep wrote:
| This mirrors my own experience over a 5 distinct fields
| mck- wrote:
| Ever since I adopted a Zettelkasten, I find myself learning and
| retaining much more effectively.
|
| The habit forces you to distill insights in your own words and
| make connections to your current knowledge -- mimicking how your
| brain learns.
|
| Regardless of the source, reinterpreting it in your own words is
| key.
|
| See Sonke's "How to take smart notes" -- or this primer article
| [1]
|
| [1] https://www.bryanlee.net/blog/the-life-changing-magic-of-
| zet...
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Crash course for a programming language, for hardware or
| something, pictures. I write down notes into my own notetaking
| app. Drawing/writing helps me sadly (rote).
|
| Depends if I'm learning to get something done or leisure. I don't
| know why but I can't stand reading large blocks of text so I
| usually pass it through a TTS like Amazon Polly to listen.
|
| I'm passively working on my own browser extension NLP, nothing
| new, I was looking at this text summarizer on Rapid API that
| seems to be pretty good. Though I have to compare what it comes
| up with versus what I would summarize from an article. The
| NLP/summarizer are not relevant, just related to condensing
| info/peaking without reading through it like a thread.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I learn by do.
|
| I set up a project, and assume that it will require whatever it
| is I want to learn, then, I figure it out as I go.
|
| This is what I plan to do with SwiftUI. I have taken a number of
| courses, and read a bunch of stuff, but these have only a
| transitory home in my noggin.
|
| I won't _really_ know it, until I have done a few projects with
| it.
|
| The project that I'm currently working on, is based on "classic"
| UIKit. I was not confident enough in SwiftUI to do it. It's
| fairly ambitious, and the fact that I don't know that much about
| SwiftUI, was the reason I chose not to use it. I have had
| projects, in the past, where I banked on an unknown, or partly-
| known, technology, only to have it hit a block, further in.
|
| I already know what I'll be doing for the first couple of SwiftUI
| projects, but it will be a while, before I get there.
| DDR0 wrote:
| Same here! I'd have done very well with an apprenticeship vs
| schooling, I feel, but it was never really an option for me.
| Although... I guess all that open-source software I helped with
| kind of was an apprenticeship in the end. Hm.
| itronitron wrote:
| I've gradually learned that it is very important, for me at
| least, to learn with other people. I'm not talking about sitting
| in a class with them, but instead chatting with another person
| about a particular topic once or twice a week, independently
| reading/investigating and then meeting up again to continue the
| discussion.
|
| There is simply too much that can be known about anything for a
| serial learning style to be complete.
|
| Having said that, the 'other' person _can_ be yourself, but
| separated in time, which necessarily results in more gradual
| learning. In that case it 's important to have good recall for
| what was known at time point a, b, c in order to measure
| learning.
| npwr wrote:
| Spaced repetition works great for me. Especially because it binds
| well with a pragmatic approach of professional learning : if I
| encounter a problem multiple times it is worth it to learn the
| solution to have it quickly. If I only encounter it once I don't
| need to.
|
| My process is usually this one :
|
| - Understand learning space ontology. Once I am able to visualize
| the concepts associated with the field and their relationships, I
| stop digging the theory and go to practice.
|
| - Start practice: try to solve a simple problem in this learning
| space. Maximally use all information sources available to solve
| problems as we go (articles, youtube, wikipedia, blogs,
| anything). If I get confused I recognize that I missed some
| theory and go back to square one.
|
| - Solve real use case, go back to step 2 if I get confused or
| blocked.
|
| I usually get where I need in less than 6 steps. I use this in
| Software Engineering, Physics and Mathematics.
|
| When I encounter a problem in an Ontolongy space I already
| encountered, I go directly to step 3.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I have no idea - the fact that I'm here as opposed to being in
| the class for dumb people is because I read a calculus book by
| accident when I was 14.
| susam wrote:
| I have recently got myself back into studying mathematics as a
| hobby. The last time I studied mathematics for a considerable
| length of time was 18 years ago! I picked analytic number theory
| as the topic for this new hobby. I did a _Tell HN_ [1] too about
| it 6 months ago. Thanks to that post and the awesome HN
| community, we now have a book club around it that has been going
| consistently since then. In fact, incidentally I published a new
| blog post about it discussing the learning experience about half
| an hour ago. [2]
|
| I talk about this book club here on HN often, so at the risk of
| repeating myself, I do want to mention on this thread that as a
| result of these ongoing book club meetings, I realized something
| interesting. I realized that studying and learning in a social
| setting like this ensures constant progress. The risk of
| discontinuing the learning activity due to other priorities of
| life becomes lower. No matter what, barring exceptional
| circumstances, I know that I need to sit with our book club for
| 40 minutes everyday and work through a few pages of the book
| together. I think that kind of consistency is very important
| while learning an abstract topic like this that we are learning
| purely for the joy of learning! Further, the insights that the
| book club members share with each other during the group study is
| a nice bonus!
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26366464
|
| [2] https://offbeat.cc/blog/our-trip-to-the-prime-number-
| theorem...
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| I'm doing the same thing with a different approach. I'm rubber
| duck debugging my learning by typing things out and going into
| lots of numerical examples with the help of Python.
|
| It's a very verbose way of learning but i can say i now truly
| understand Euler's theorem and Fermat's little theorem. I'm
| continuing this right now. The end goal will be to go deep on
| everything about RSA including the state of the art
| factorization algorithms.
|
| Current start documented here:
|
| https://rawcdn.githack.com/AReallyGoodName/RDM/5391c5a90fe39...
|
| Edit: All my formatting was messed up. I'll fix it when i
| finish, i'm sure it's not a mystery that the powers are meant
| to be superscripted though.
| FeistyOtter wrote:
| Can you do rubber duck learning with any topic? I always
| wanted to learn Fourier transformations and related topics,
| but I completely forgot all high school and uni math, so I
| have to start from scratch and it seems like a huge
| commitement.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Sure, just type what you need to know, an idea for how to
| look at it and start playing.
|
| The play part is how i get it. eg. Writing python code to
| generate exponents... Oh now i get why exponents loop under
| modulo!
| x14km2d wrote:
| If I seriously want to learn something, then only from books.
| Videos or the Internet distract me too much. I sort my notes into
| a Zettelkasten system and once a month I write an essay of min.
| 15 pages to deepen the knowledge. I turn off Internet, music and
| phone because I don't want to be distracted.
| codingclaws wrote:
| Keep reading material on the subject until intuition starts to
| gel.
|
| Edit: The material, in this case, will often be a niche Internet
| forum.
| [deleted]
| Gertig wrote:
| This question reminded me of one of my favorite pg essays title
| "How You Know" http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html which is
| generally about how you acquire and retain information over time.
| A great short read if you have not done so before.
| moneywoes wrote:
| A process akin to Bogosort
| Shared404 wrote:
| My best success has been when I read a book on a topic so that I
| have a general idea of the workspace, and then jumping into a
| project from there.
|
| If I remember where in the book information I need during the
| project is I'll use that, if not, DDG.
|
| I also enjoy reading/hearing anecdotes from others, though that's
| less to learn details generally, and more to learn what's out
| there to learn about.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I am 46 but it has always been the same for me: books and
| exercizes. Tutorials work for me, video's are horrible
| inefficient for me: I prevent at all cost.
| resiros wrote:
| I am trying currently to develop a learning system. I am by
| nature very curious and love reading and learning. I read daily
| 10s pages, articles, books, watch videos in many subject.
| However, I find myself forgetting most of it. Yesterday, I saw a
| wonderful book which I read last year (The Righteous Mind: Why
| Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion), and I realized
| I don't even remember the main thesis of the book! This was a
| book that had a strong effect on me. Something is broken in the
| way I consume knowledge.
|
| I feel that the main issue lies in the lack of repetition. I read
| a book on a subject, think about it a bit, then move on to
| something else, and in a year or so nothing is retained. The
| spaced repetition theory seems to provide an answer to this.
|
| I have currently stumbled upon the software SuperMemo. In
| addition to the usual card stuff from anki, it allows something
| called "Incremental reading". This feels like the solution to my
| problem. The idea is that you read to learn. You can read about
| it more here http://super-
| memory.com/help/read.htm#Introduction_to_increm... but the main
| concepts are that:
|
| - you add your readings to a priority queue
|
| - the software schedule for you the readings
|
| - you read and distill the main information at the same time
|
| - the software revisits the information that you have distilled
| in intervals, each time you revisit information you improve over
| your distillation and create flashcards from it
|
| I am still learning this new approach. I have to say, the
| software is extremely complicated and badly designed. I would
| love something like this would exist as a plugin to roam. A way
| for you to at the same time:
|
| - determine the priorities of your reading and orchestrate them
|
| - build a wiki-like knowledge graph
|
| - easily create flash cards
|
| - extract knowledge from articles
| whitepaint wrote:
| Do it before going to sleep. It is ridiculously effective.
| epwr wrote:
| I'm very much someone who needs to write things to understand
| them.
|
| Trying to figure out some new API that gives gross error messages
| and has zero useful documentation? I start writing down what I
| _think_ things do. Yhis pretty quickly
| neurotrace wrote:
| This is a huge one for me. I jot down random notes as I go.
| Some are very descriptive and detailed. Others are as simple as
| "things of this shape seem to have this property." Just getting
| it written down seems to help solidify things more quickly. I
| rarely re-read these notes.
| bluewavescrash wrote:
| Play
| drivers99 wrote:
| My best learning situations have been times where you read a
| little bit (or watch a video), and then have exercises to
| complete to implement the information, and good examples to refer
| to. You think you know it just by reading/watching, but once you
| try to use it, you find out you haven't really learned it (yet).
| Some of the examples that come to mind are old (1990s), but still
| stand out to me as a great way to really learn.
|
| 1. Teach Yourself Access in 24 hours (or something like that). It
| was a book that had a chapter/lesson and then exercises to
| utilize what you learned.
|
| 2. Learning Perl (the camel book). Same thing.
|
| 3. Nand2Tetris (I did the first course. Still need to do the
| second one.) I watched the video lessons, then did the exercises
| and submitted them for automatic checking.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| By doing exercises, and careful postmortems on the results.
|
| In my experience, videos are mostly a waste of time, only good
| for getting an overview of the topic.
| cube2222 wrote:
| Probably not what you're asking for, but it's been working for me
| great and I don't see many people doing this.
|
| When I need to learn a lot of material quickly and it's _not_
| interesting, I do 1 hour learning and 1 hour mentally consuming
| entertainment (gaming, Netflix) interchanged, as long as I have
| to. 30 minute intervals if the subject is _really_ boring.
|
| Keeps me concentrated and I can sustain it for extended periods
| of time.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Generally a good tutorial, video with keystrokes, or blog/page
| format as long as they have the steps, videos without editing are
| more likely to not miss a step. I will generally only do
| tutorials that seem to be along the direct task I want to do, and
| I'll alter it to be the task I actually want to accomplish.
|
| I'll also do 2 or 3 of them to see the task from multiple
| conceptual angles, it helps me to see how multiple people think
| about and solve an issue.
|
| I have a lot of trouble learning things that are not related to
| what I want to do. Not sure how I made it through college but I
| think I generally had a good idea how many classes applied to
| what I wanted to do...
| avgDev wrote:
| I unlocked my learning through working on cars and programming.
|
| Learning theory is useless for me, at some point I used to think
| that I may be dumb. It wasn't until I reached college and was top
| of class in all CS classes. Not bragging I honestly used to think
| I was not intelligent.
|
| I learn through books and videos. However, the real learning
| happens to me when I am given a problem and need to come up with
| a solution.
|
| As an example, I didn't know anything electrical about cars, I
| also had just an idea of how a fuel system works. Until, I
| installed an engine in my car and it would not start without any
| error codes. I went and studied the complete fuel system and how
| it works. Everything was just clicking as I had a faint idea of
| it.
|
| Then, I did a bit of troubleshooting after reading, I figured out
| part of the puzzle, the fuel pump on the engine was not powering
| on. Therefore, it was power issue. I started reading about
| everything electrical, how to test if the fuel pump is getting
| power.....and discovered that it was lose ground.
|
| Today, I am complete car nerd, I know how to use professional
| scanners and read data from different sensors. I no longer
| replace things in the dark.
|
| Plus, this boosted my programming skills. Building business
| applications I never encountered a problem I could not solve.
|
| I even studied negotiating techniques before car buying to
| practice. This allowed me to double my salary in 3 years as a
| software dev. I am ice cold during salary negotiations and can
| recognize tactics potential employers or recruiters can use to
| gain an advantage.
| jarenmf wrote:
| I try to make whatever I'm learning fun and relatable. That means
| making it not boring. Usually I don't follow any technique I just
| set a goal and mindlessly try to achieve it by learning things
| along the way. If it's a programming language I start with a
| project. If it's a mathematical or physical concept I implement
| it, use it or explain it to someone else. I usually go to
| Wikipedia or a good textbook then slowly start diving into the
| literature. I usually then read a recent review paper and one of
| the old seminal papers related to the topic.
| supperburg wrote:
| Andrew Huber man had a really interesting podcast about this. He
| cites an academic paper for basically every statement he makes on
| the podcast. What I remember from the learning and memory podcast
| was that repetition matters, especially for older people and it
| has to be the right kind of repetition. And also stakes matter.
| You learn much faster when there are real stakes involved.
| notJim wrote:
| I'm guessing you're talking about this podcast, which I also
| thought was great https://hubermanlab.com/using-failures-
| movement-and-balance-...
| tombert wrote:
| I have no idea if it is good for anyone else, but I've had a lot
| of luck using "build your own wiki" tools, and specifically
| Obsidian.
|
| I feel like when I'm learning about a subject I'm not super
| familiar with, it can feel like "drinking from a fire-hose".
| There's a million different proper nouns that you have to learn,
| and each one can be a rabbit hole in itself. I feel like with
| Obsidian/Roam/Logseq/Athens, it helps me focus on the high-level
| and drill down on tasks as I grow more familiar with the subject.
| It also creates, in my opinion, _extremely_ easy-to-read notes
| later, more or less like I 'm just reading through Wikipedia.
|
| I don't think it's for everyone, I couldn't get my wife using it,
| but I genuinely do believe it has helped my knowledge-gathering a
| lot.
|
| ------
|
| In regards to your second question, if you had asked me three
| years ago, I would have said videos, but honestly as I've gotten
| older, I don't think I have enough patience for them anymore, and
| generally prefer books for conceptual stuff, and articles for
| practical stuff. Videos are often way too slow, and I end up
| having to listen to it at 2x speed anyway.
|
| The exception to that is if I'm trying to learn something
| somewhat interactive (e.g. how to use Blender or something).
| k__ wrote:
| I struggled in my CS studies, especially the basic training was
| hard, because it was so abstract and theoretical.
|
| Later in life I learned that I can grasp theory much better when
| I saw AND worked on a bunch of practical examples myself before
| diving into theory.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| One thing I'll add, regardless of the medium of information, I
| absolutely have to have a big picture real-world view of the
| context or it's incredibly hard to learn. I may memorize things
| easily but it's just data until I understand how all the parts
| fit together and see it working. No matter how it's explained,
| until I see it for myself it won't click or I'll imagine
| something that makes sense but isn't the same as the actual
| reality.
|
| It's a blessing and a curse, I have great big picture creating
| thinking abilities, seeing things that aren't there but could be,
| however I also often have to "learn the hard way" in many areas
| of life because I don't internalize things second-hand very well.
| epwr wrote:
| I'm very much someone who needs to write things to understand
| them.
|
| Trying to figure out some new API that gives gross error messages
| and has zero useful documentation? I start writing down what I
| _think_ things do.
|
| This helps me find patterns, but also helps me say "there's no
| way that is what this does. No one would write a function for
| that, it must do something else."
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Pick a project I want to work on where I can learn the skill,
| after doing background reading.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I do the same. Read enough about the topic that I'm sort of
| aware of what's possible and to get some terminology right.
|
| After that it's project time. If I don't have a project of some
| sort it's impossible for me to get going. Then picks the
| simplest sub-problem, and build from there.
|
| If it is something I absolutely need to know how to do, then I
| do it over and over only muscle memory kicks in. When I need to
| learn how to use LVM I most have create, delete, recreated
| expanded, reconfigured and killed a hundred volumes.
| dweekly wrote:
| 0. Find your search term! The thing or field you are looking to
| learn about almost certainly has a specific phrase that describes
| it that may or may not be intuitive; if you're building an
| internal search engine you want to look up "information
| retrieval". If you want to build an internet airplane, go search
| "high altitude platform systems". If you want to remind people to
| take their pills it's "medication adherence". Removing background
| sound from a recording is "denoising" and "speech enhancement".
| Finding the right terms lets you discover what others have done
| and pose your questions well. Search for papers and posts that
| mention the "plain English" version of your query until you find
| your actual search term.
|
| 1. If there's an introductory textbook on the field, grab it and
| read it. Almost nobody does this in professional life - how often
| do you see people reading books in the workplace? By analogy if
| there are solid "overview" papers recently published that outline
| the state of the art in a field, read through that.
|
| 2. Find experts in the field to help you pose your problem well.
| Papers literally have the email addresses of the author and it's
| not hard to find book authors. Reach out through your network and
| cold. Practitioners love to talk about their work and get people
| excited about their field.
|
| 3. Find online classes and tutorials; Udemy, Coursera, or even
| speciality ones like Harvard Medical. Be willing to drop a few
| hundred dollars to educate yourself.
|
| 4. Tinker and share. Start with "toy" or modest projects. Don't
| be embarrassed at having extremely limited scope. Small things
| (IT setup issues, misalignments, etc) are going to consume a huge
| amount of time but grind through it and don't be afraid to ask
| for help and ask dumb questions. When you find bugs or typos in
| others' work, speak up. See if you can get some even basic PRs
| landed. Start contributing to the community. Write about what
| you've learned so far: what's surprised you and what it seems is
| maybe missing.
|
| 5. Convene: is there a conference or meetup for folks who do
| this? Show up. If there's not, put this together. The first
| DevHouse we threw was a dozen folks in my living room but we kept
| throwing them until we had 2,000 folks taking over two blocks of
| Palo Alto. Convening isn't hard to do but few do it and it gives
| tremendous value both to the community as well as to yourself as
| host. Get people to give short (5min) interesting talks. Get to
| know folks and connect them with each other. Don't be mercenary,
| just seek to help however you can.
| smoldesu wrote:
| TAKE NOTES!
|
| No, really. It took me a long time to realize that my brain
| sucks, and forgets things all the time. Writing things down gives
| me a frame of reference and physical (or digital) token of my
| knowledge. A lot of people champion the idea of a 'mental
| library,' and I believe a good Zettelkasten system lives in the
| brain much the same way.
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| The secret superpower is: explaining stuff to others, preferably
| with a whiteboard session.
| jedimastert wrote:
| Anything that has actually stuck with me thus far in life has
| been learned by repeated experience. That is to say, practical
| practice.
| a11r wrote:
| Pick something controversial on the subject, explore alternate
| viewpoints and dig deep enough to form your own opinion. For
| example, when learning about nutrition, whether Keto works or not
| is a good controversy. One might start with Gary Taub's book,
| read its reviews and criticisms, read the source material that is
| cited by the proponents and detractors, read papers cited by
| those papers, until one is comfortable forming their own opinion.
|
| Controversies are found at the cutting edge of most fields and
| analyzing arguments that take the "settled" knowledge in the
| field and still reach contradictory conclusions provides a lot of
| insight into the body of knowledge in the field and how much of
| it is really settled.
| jasode wrote:
| _> Do you use techniques like spaced repetition?_
|
| I see spaced repetition tools like Anki and clones on the front
| page HN every month but in the tech world, I've never needed to
| _rote memorize items_ that would require it. The challenge is
| _understanding_ a new confusing topic rather than _memorization_.
|
| Yes, if you're learning arbitrary lists of items such foreign
| language vocabulary, or a medical student memorizing the Latin
| naming for all the various bones of a human body then spaced
| repetition is what to use. I've just never had an analogous
| situation in programming.
|
| _> Do you prefer to learn from books, articles or videos?_
|
| All the above because they have different strengths.
|
| - books: good for more foundational information (theory) but will
| be out-of-date on _software tools_ and cutting edge info (e.g.
| latest machine learning developments). When using books to learn
| a subject, I always read 2 or more in parallel to get different
| authors explanations. Many times, one author will explain a topic
| in a better way than the other. A huge problem with books (and
| book publishing in general for all domains) is the avoidance to
| criticize or find faults in ideas. E.g. a Java book will not
| "point out all the problems with Java". To fill in that knowledge
| gap, you have to supplement with blogs/videos.
|
| - articles/blogs: more up-to-date info on tools usage. Also
| because web articles have less "unspoken etiquette" about
| omitting criticism, you have a higher chance of reading about the
| negatives and drawbacks of whatever topic you're learning.
|
| - videos: good for visual explanation of tools usage. E.g.
| Tutorials on IDEs.
|
| So an example application of the above roadmap for me learning
| Javascript:
|
| - book: O'Reilly book "Javascript in a Nutshell"
|
| - video: watch a bunch of videos for learning F12 Google Chrome
| Dev Tools to inspect Javascript
|
| - articles: learn what the new Javascript runtime Deno is about
| because books won't cover that topic.
|
| Like many other tech topics including Javascript, I didn't have a
| need for spaced repetition techniques.
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| > Yes, if you're learning arbitrary lists of items such foreign
| language vocabulary, or a medical student memorizing the Latin
| naming for all the various bones of a human body then spaced
| repetition is what to use. I've just never had an analogous
| situation in programming.
|
| The only case I can really think of is learning the useful
| shortcuts for your IDEs, especially if you're switching between
| multiple IDEs for multiple languages. But even then I would
| rather just note them down and look them up when I need them. I
| tried Anki to learn emacs shortcuts and it's just such a slug.
| I don't want to spend time daily to maintain a mental database
| of senseless shortcuts.
| chipuni wrote:
| I'm going to agree with @dempedempe , and throw out examples of
| questions (not company-specific) that I've added in the last
| week:
|
| > The git command that returns the .git directory that's
| controlling the directory you're in is git rev-parse
| --absolute-git-dir .
|
| > In Scala, you have an array, a. What's the best way to turn a
| into a String? a.mkString(" ")
|
| > In HTML, how do you tell an li tag to start at 3? <li
| value="3">
|
| > In Scala, how do you do exponentiation? Use scala.math.pow().
| Do not use Math.pow().
|
| > In Scala, you have a variable "val l: List[SNid]". How do you
| convert l to a ListBuffer[SNid]? "l.to[ListBuffer]". Note that
| it's not "l.to[ListBuffer[SNid]]" or
| "l.asInstanceOf[ListBuffer[SNid]]"
|
| > In multiple linear regression, is it better to have a large
| or a small RSE? A small RSE is better. RSE is the Reducible
| Standard Error.
|
| These questions came from things I got wrong in the last week.
| kiba wrote:
| _Yes, if you 're learning arbitrary lists of items such foreign
| language vocabulary, or a medical student memorizing the Latin
| naming for all the various bones of a human body then spaced
| repetition is what to use. I've just never had an analogous
| situation in programming._
|
| That's the easiest and most known use case of anki, but hardly
| the only things suitable.
|
| In any case, memorization is always made easier if you
| understand a concept, and yes you can ask conceptual questions
| in anki.
|
| For example of a conceptual question: Q: What is the purpose of
| an aileron? A: To control the roll of an aircraft.
|
| Then you ask the question: Q: The roll of an airplane is on
| what axis? A: longitudinal axis.
|
| Or maybe this prompt? Q: What component controls the roll of an
| aircraft? A: The aileron.
|
| Then you can continue to ask question like what forces limit
| the speed of an airplane, or what makes it fall, or what
| control surface do you need to use if you want to increase
| elevation of an airplane, and so forth.
| dempedempe wrote:
| > Yes, if you're learning arbitrary lists of items such foreign
| language vocabulary, or a medical student memorizing the Latin
| naming for all the various bones of a human body then spaced
| repetition is what to use. I've just never had an analogous
| situation in programming.
|
| I'll give a few examples of cards that I have.
|
| > Why is the time complexity of Java's List#subList constant?
|
| > Why are OOM errors common in Spark?
|
| > What does EXPLAIN do in Postgres?
|
| > How do you run a command on the command line in Vim?
|
| > How are map entries in HBase/BigTable sorted?
|
| > Why are HBase column families difficult to modify?
|
| > When should you use a JtaTransactionManager?
|
| > What makes read-your-writes consistency difficult?
|
| > Why does ElasticSearch not have transactions?
|
| > What is a common implementation for JPA?
|
| > What is the observer pattern?
|
| > What is syslog?
|
| It's definitely helped me as a software engineer.
|
| Here is a guide on making better prompts:
| https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| > How do you learn?
|
| Nice try, Skynet.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| If it's a subject that can be delivered by textbook, then I'll
| build mindmaps using FreePlane:
|
| https://www.freeplane.org/wiki/index.php/Home
|
| The way I author the mindmaps is to form trunks of major subjects
| which then distil down to the details. I'll add questions to
| myself into the subtrees.
|
| When it comes to revision, I'll "contract" the entire map
| (there's a button in FreePlane to do this), then I'll take each
| branch in turn and try and answer (on a piece of paper) the
| questions I've left for myself. As you progress through the
| mindmap, you are expanding all the branches out.
|
| This works for me for 2 reasons: - reinforcement learning through
| the questions I've left myself - remembering places / locations
| is something the human mind is very good at, and fits well with
| the current theory of the mind (reference frames, etc).
| JayeshSidhwani wrote:
| This is a great strategy. Can you post a sample mindmap?
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Sure, this is my attempt to learn CompTIA Network+ :
|
| https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjzG1BVufekQgscNkc27rVB9QMApWQ
|
| (This is a onedrive link - hope it works!)
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(page generated 2021-09-10 23:01 UTC)