Tips for rapid learning | Hacker News Reader

Tips for rapid learning

scotthyoung.com

22 pointstwidlit14 comments

I don't buy speedreading. I tried different schools but if I really want to grasp a subject I need to read it carefully, often more than once. Unless, of course, I'm reading just for the sake of reading.

I believe that with speed reading you are naturally ported to skip parts and words that you don't understand, but that way you are learning nothing new.

I'm still able to read 50 books per year (1 book per week), with an average of 5 hours of reading per week (sometimes less), but definitely not by speed reading.

To me it really depends on the type of material. Obviously if I'm reading a math paper, I may re-read the same sentence half a dozen times, so it doesn't apply.

But there are clearly cases where I want to read as fast as possible, without necessarily skipping. E.g. scanning the news, or reading a novel in a shallow fashion.

(But yeah the blog post talks about learning techniques, so I don't know how relevant it is)

As a math grad student and professional DBA most of the reading I do is technical, and there I have to read it slowly, often stop and think, and often reread after stopping to think.

When I do read fiction or the news, I read much faster and I can skim for key words easily. I have never tried formal speed reading techniques, but I suspect I could apply them in a context like that.

So I agree, type of material makes all the difference in the world.

I never tried speedreading, but since a friend of mine surprised me by telling me she read 62 books last year my new year decision was to read more.

I am keeping up with one a week until now and I am no genius yet I have a job, friends and girlfriend, so if studying how to read faster brings this little improvement, I'm baffled.

I would hardly describe these as "excellent", most of them are tricks to improve memorization.

Learning is about more than just rote data storage and retrieval. To use Bloom's taxonomy learning extends beyond that to understanding, application, analysis, evaluation, and creation.

The best tip I can give for learning anything is to get your feet wet. Figure out some tiny project that takes a small amount of time and actually do it. There is a lot of knowledge you can learn from books but most people won't be able to contextualize that information without hands on experience, and hands on experience is where you will get the most of your learning, whether you're learning how to cook, or climb a mountain, or play a guitar, or code in Ruby.

wouldn't the word "rapid" somehow make that different from regular learning?

Given the context the article lays I'd say not. Different people are able to learn, naturally, at different speeds. The article describes some techniques to increase the speed of learning, but in actuality all of them merely increase the ability to memorize quickly, which is hardly learning.

"... most of them are tricks to improve memorization."

And specifically short-term memorization only.

To add to the list, for those who don't know about it, there's spaced repetition software. There are some situations where rote memorization is indeed useful, e.g. learning vocabulary (well _using_ the vocabulary is better, but memorizing is a good first step). I personally use Mnemosyne, but there are lots of such programs (the most well-known being Supermemo), many web apps too.

Here's a database of reviews of flashcard-type software: http://learn.how.to/

On speed reading:

I read faster than anyone I've ever met, and I definitely disagree with 1+2. I don't read linearly- most words are superfluous to understanding the subject at hand, and you really only need to scan the whole paragraph for important nouns and verbs to understand its meaning. Reading while pointing my finger at the line would slow me down a whole lot.

And before people go off on me for not understanding what I'm reading, or not properly enjoying a good book, fine, it's possible. But it doesn't seem to have hurt me. I was always the best English student as a kid, got 99th percentile on both the SATs and GREs on the verbal section, did well on my exams, went to an Ivy League, etc.

it seems everyone is focusing on speed reading and the memorization items on the list. I personally find #2, #3, #4, #6, #7 are stuff i already do and very effective. Stuff like breaking down things to smaller pieces, reinterpreting concepts, comfortable environment, drawing complex relationships on paper, etc. DO speed up learning - learning in the true sense of the word.

The metaphor technique jumped out at me, because when someone is explaining something to me, I like to respond with an analogy to check my understanding. Most people seem to respond by "Yeah, I suppose, but not exactly." Some people respond by saying "No", and then repeating the original explanation (as distinct from "No; here are the differences"). A few people respond by discussing the analogy, which is easily the most productive way of explaining something I've ever encountered. It's certainly much more efficient than the popular "deluge of examples" method.

There's a very strong tendency for smarter people to tend toward discussion, though by no means is it black-and-white.

Correct, good teachers do that or offer a better analogy.

"#6 – The 5-Year Old Method (Try explaining quantum physics to a first grader)"

I do this automatically. I can't help it. It is agonizing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com