Ask HN: What can I do to be become better at thinking like a hacker?

My experience, at least, has been hacker mentality and that "quickness" that comes in being able to absorb new ideas, paradigms and become productive is a facet of many things. In particular, I find people around me exposed to programming at young ages and who have built things (little computers, emulators, Haskell programming etc) seem to be better at adapting and doing. For those that didn't do that growing up, apart from writing lots of code and learning, are there any other ways of getting better? I, for example, have found DNB very useful. What other ways are you guys hacking your brain?