Ask HN: What is your self teaching process? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is your self teaching process?

23 pointshsikka15 comments

I'm an avid autodidact, I've just recently learned Vue and node, and was thinking about building a crowdsourced, curated learning application where users can up vote learning guides, so you can see what learning resources are worth putting the time into.

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I have a process I've developed over a few years:

A. Find out whether it's worth learning.

1. Find out the big picture as fast as possible, about 15-30 mins.

2. Skim through all the major parts.

3. Figure out how I can use this. If the intention of it is to be practical (i.e. not philosophical, scientific, historical knowledge) it needs to be immediately applicable. Something that I may use years later, like how to make mantraps or phrases in Russian, is usually not worth learning right now.

B. Find a way to apply it

1. I figure out the bare smallest thing I can build with this. Building things is possibly the fastest way to have an intuitive understanding.

2. Copy what someone else is doing. Don't bother trying to be creative in the earliest phase. People usually adopt some habits for good reason.

3. After it's in muscle memory, then I start experimenting.

4. Allow lots of "dead time" while learning. Meaning unconscious/subconscious periods like sleep, meditation, or just daydreaming. This is needed for it to go into long term. You'll know when if you get stuck on something.

Most of it is self-explanatory but still, could you give some examples of things you recently learning while applying these points.

I've came to realize how important it is to teach what you learn, in order to better internalize that knowledge.

It does not mean, you must have students - writing a blog post or even just imagining you are preparing for a talk about the subject is good enough.

I've recently written a blog post about the way I learn, which I improved gradually over years: http://nywkap.com/learning/effective-learning.html

Build a prototype. Aim low. Get some basic functionality sorta-working with shitty, hacky code. Throw it away. Rinse and repeat, learning on each cycle.

Me too. maybe less rinse and repeat, but I've found tht after I got something to work it's easier for me to go deeper

Yep, I like that. I think its also the way to work on a side project, so doubly relevant in my case!

I'm old fashioned. Pen and paper. Take notes, recall from memory and review with decreasing regularity until it becomes base knowledge. If my brain feels like it's hurting that's good :)

My process:

1. First figure out what are the foundational concepts/terminology in the area.

Skim articles, books, papers, blog posts in the area. Take note when you are confused.

2. Understand the foundations properly. Build mental models.

3. Identify the skills you need to have. Tools, processes, mindset/thinking. this i key and is often missed. How do you think in this field? I. thinking computationally for programming

4. Practice key skills, process, tools, thinking

Rinse and repeat. The process is not linear

If something is a complete new subject to me, then I'm trying to develop an anxiety about failing to learn it. I try to tackle the upcoming problems at any time and thinking about it especially before sleeping, at the morning and while meditating. This forces me to make process but often results in days where I'm very frustrated and depressed, but sometimes ends up in learning new things which I didn't ever expect to be able to understand. Probably not the healthiest way but it works for me.

I really resonates with this, I've never thought of my own approach in words, but this would be it. Stressful but rewarding. Just don't crack amirite

How interesting. I never have any anxiety regarding learning something.

It's a source of excitement and interest.

Not much of a process, more like:

1. Learn about thing

2. Read about thing

3. Play with thing

4. Create something else using thing

5. Steps 2-4 in any order, any amount of times.

The hardest thing for me is to apply my knowledge. Sure I can read all I want about a database tech, but if I don't have any data to put in it, it's hard to feel like that is real knowledge, or to even keep that knowledge around.

I like to look for the big picture of the subject, first understanding the boundaries of the new knowledge that I'm trying to grasp.

I'm a visual learner, so I like to see things visually - but also do my own research by reading about abstract concepts.

There also needs to be a level of discussion with other learners to keep motivation. Can't wait until AR does all the stuff I want.

Learning by doing! https://www.crowdcast.io/e/learning

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