How to Make Yourself into a Learning Machine (2020) | Hacker News Reader

How to Make Yourself into a Learning Machine (2020)

every.to

34 pointsgozzoo14 comments

I’ve spent the better part of my adult life trying to become more productive, more efficient, to retain everything I read, to gain one up on life. I’ve used flash cards, different note taking techniques, meditation, lucid dreaming, bullet journaling, inbox zero. I’ve woken up early, listen to podcasts at 1.5x speed while working out, I’ve used the best notebooks, the best pens. I have practiced speed reading, in various forms. Different keyboard layouts to maximise typing speed. You name it.

I’m not sure that any of it improved me nor my life. Maybe it did and I just don’t realise it. But, honestly, if anything, it probably made everything less enjoyable. More of a chore.

Nowadays, I read what I find interesting, maybe I’ll remember it, maybe I won’t. I’ll work on what I find interesting, maybe it will be helpful for my career, maybe it won’t.

Altogether life has just become much more enjoyable when I am not trying to squeeze as much as possible out of it.

Yeah, most of the things you mentioned are borderline useless. I think it is useful to learn faster, but this is more a matter of being organized and concentrate on your work. Pretty much the rest is made up to sell you products and courses.

Of all the "life hacks" tricks I've tried, there is only one that I can think of that has really made a huge difference for me -- a faster way to tie shoes. I'm a product of the 1970's school of thought (overhand knot, make a loop, wrap and tuck). But it would just long enough that if my shoe became untied, I'd have to ask the group I was with to stop for a moment while I fixed it. Or run to catch up.

There was a technique I found on a web site somewhere a couple decades or more ago -- can't remember which one, but it gave a method of doing the initial half knot (which is still typically present when laces become undone), you essentially pick up the laces in a specific method (certain way you twisty-grab with your fingers), and it does the drawstring knots (the two rabbit ears) instantly. Now I only fall maybe 2 - 3 steps behind a group when I need to fix a shoe lace.

I think you're describing the Ian Knot[1] or the Secure Ian Knot[2]

I use the first for apron strings and draw strings, and the second for tying my shoes, and both knots are pretty much guaranteed to never come undone by themselves. The first one can be tied in like two seconds once you're used to it. And in fact, it may be just as "secure" as the more complex secure knot, so maybe I don't even need that one...

[1]https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm

[2]https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm

Yes, that's the one. I knew it was _somename_knot, just couldn't remember the "somename". Definitely changed my life for the better (and I'm not really exaggerating that much).

> You’re an 18 year old with just a high school degree. You immigrate to a new country that speaks a different language, and start work with some of the brightest engineers in the world. Soon after, you’re thrust into management. Now, you’re leading teams of people who are 10 or 20 years older than you, working on one of the fastest growing internet companies of the last decade.

I stopped reading after this. This is so unrelatable that I could be reading about an alien life form.

Actually I skimmed through the rest of the article. There are a couple of good points there, but being the very atypical experience of a single person, I can't help but feel it has a good dose of survivorship bias. Someone became successful and attribute it to "this one weird trick".

This was my gut reaction as well. I'm sure it's a nicely written blog, but I really doubt I'll get any value from it.

Perhaps I'm just sour grapes that I wasn't lucky enough to work at Shopify at age 18 when they were smaller, but blogs in this genre generally all have the same effect on me.

> > You immigrate to a new country that speaks a different language,

This sounded like a Peruvian moving to Czechia situation when really it’s a Dane moving to Anglo-Canada.

I don't get why the article even mentions things like this, it alienates your readership and it's not necessary for what the post is actually about.

The guy in the article has a fun little newsletter by the way, it's called "napkin math".

"Read a lot, highlight the things you find interesting, take notes, and if you really want to remember something then use a spaced repetition system like Anki."

There, now you don't have to read the article.

I think this blog falls into a common issue of conflating natural talent/skills with what the person does to cultivate that talent.

In other words, Simon is an anomaly and it's not clear that what he does makes him exceptional so much as he is exceptional AND he does all that stuff. You don't end up principal infrastructure engineer at Shopify at 26 years old after immigrating at 18 years old without being something special. He's probably fun to be around, but take the average human and put him through what he described and I'm pretty sure you just get an exhausted person without the amazing part.

I'm tired just by reading what those super productive people do. I can't imagine having the energy and motivation to just sit down and do all those stuff.

Must be a nice brain to live in, though. I'd give an arm and a kidney for that.

I agree. But, I think your comment about energy might be the key - that he might like doing it, and so it requires less energy. I have a lot of energy for some strange tasks that could easily be considered tiediuos by others (gardening for example). I think maybe the key is to figure out what you have so much energy for that it doesn't feel like work, instead of chasing somebody else's happy.

I called this "survivorship bias" in my comment but I think you are right, and it's probably more of a fundamental attribution error [1]. Just like how media fetishizes the weird habits of billionaires, ignoring that a) each billionaire will have their own weird habits, and b) tons of people have weird habits without being substantially wealthy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

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