131–140 of 229 posts
If you can't read a book then this means that you can't stand yourself. Try to make peace within yourself and persist until you read all the proofs and understand them. Do not turn pages, it is contagious.
And yes, I have PhD in Math.
Fly through some exposition, follow the plot, keep those gold notes carefully curated. Tackle an exercise in the exercise journal, hope it isn't a curb, or a brick wall...
Maybe at this point, have shower, puzzle a bit, try and forget your first attempt.
It's bad, you've gotta review a chapter of a completely different book: oof. Oh well, pull it out, and burn rubber, it's just a review. Make sure to keep these notes out of the gold notes / outline...
It's quite a long review though, might as well take a break it's almost lunch time, maybe some motivational videos regarding the subject at hand, maybe you'll get some inspiration, something light, Vox, Historical, TED, related, but not looking for the answer...
Finishing up, review's over, try again. Try the exercise again. Oh? That's interesting! Still not quite right. Ought to reread the exposition. Few more tries...
Still nothing, take mind off it, sleep, same thing tomorrow...
That is the only way to actually learn. Theoretical knowledge gets you nowhere in the real world. Practical knowledge is where it is all at.
I've been in a similar boat - wanted to share what I found worked for me, perhaps it helps. I constantly found myself in the following loop: 1) Motivated to study, study productively 2) Several days / weeks later productivity stops (for any number of reasons) 3) Quickly forget everything I learnt over the next month or so 4) Back at stage 1, feeling I have 'wasted' the last few months. My big problem was the _forgett…
Maybe if you can figure out how to stuff a wall sized whiteboard into my phone like room-scale AR microfiche.
People will just assume I'm playing beat saber
My friend and I follow a plan where in both of us have to study 5 days a week at least 30 minutes a day. We write what we did for each day in a mutually shared document. If someone fails to do 5 days in a week they pay the other person a fine of $2*(5-no of days task done). This has helped us to stay on track and is helping drastically to get the work done. Neither of us has paid even a single penny to other person because none of us missed even a single day and we have got a lot of work done.
I'm hoping my reply is more helpful than it sounds at first glance... This is one of those questions where I read and then exclaim (rhetorically), "what's wrong with people?!" Don't take this the wrong way, I often exclaim this. You are quite possibly in the majority and I'm the odd one. To me it has always seemed inherently clear that the way to approach life is to do something if you enjoy it. If you stop enjoying…
Personally I go for smaller coding exercises, things like exercism.io, simply because I don't have the free time to embark on huge projects. I find that these are a good way to learn new languages. And they also remind me why I love programming in the first place, because I get to work in a pure problem-solving space, without the bearocracy, deadlines, etc, that I get in my day job.
Check these books: - Ultralearning by Scott Young - Deep Work by Cal Newport - Atomic Habits by James Clear - How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler - Mindfulness Meditation (many books by Jon Kabat-Zinn „Ultralearning“ has lots of valuable ideas. For instance: Directly attacking the skill you want to learn. If you want to learn Git versioning, practice doing it. „Deep Work“ convinced me that I need to spend focused an…
IMO, it's the wrong question. Study whatever you want, it doesn't really matter. Get a lot of breadth, that's fine.
But go deep somewhere. How? Do a project! Something interesting, something you can't do today, and something you want to do. And don't stop. You'll hit walls, just ask people for help, find communities where they'll help you through it, read docs.
Even if you fail, so long as you really push yourself, you'll learn a ton. And soon you'll know which projects are "tough but possible" a lot better.
It's a meme at this point that developers have 1000 different projects they never finished. Don't worry about that. In my experience it's because about 75% through a project you hit a point where it stops being fun, you stop learning things, and now it's just doing the work to wrap it up, which can be a lot less valuable.
I can recommend Richard Hamming's book Art of Doing Science and Engineering [0], that is what helped me put things in perspective. To quote a famous passage from it:
"It is well known the drunken sailor who staggers to the left or right with n independent random steps will, on the average, end up about sqrt(n) steps from the origin. But if there is a pretty girl in one direction, then his steps will tend to go in that direction and he will go a distance proportional to n. In a lifetime of many, many independent choices, small and large, a career with a vision will get you a distance proportional to n, while no vision will get you only the distance sqrt(n). In a sense, the main difference between those who go far and those who do not is some people have a vision and the others do not and therefore can only react to the current events as they happen.
...
You will probably object that if you try to get a vision now it is likely to be wrong—and my reply is from observation I have seen the accuracy of the vision matters less than you might suppose, getting anywhere is better than drifting, there are potentially many paths to greatness for you, and just which path you go on, so long as it takes you to greatness, is none of my business. You must, as in the case of forging your personal style, find your vision of your future career, and then follow it as best you can.
No vision, not much of a future."
0 - http://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming-TheArtOfDoingScienceAndEn...
If I'd just ran through the Ubuntu installer I wouldn't have known this. Doing things the hard way is the best for learning. And more rewarding because you get exactly what you want.
I find I pick things up super quickly (at least in the IT realm) so usually I don't do a deep dive until I run into issues. I do try to get a handle on the overall architecture though. So I set things up the right way, and then I figure out the nuts & bolts along the way. I'm not someone for crunching through textbooks.
One thing I personally hate is tutorial videos, especially Youtube. I find them paced way too slow, whereas with text you can be super fast. So I never use video learning until I have to. I absolutely hate the stupid automated courses we have to do in work. Like office safety etc we have to repeat every year. They're really made for the lowest common denominator, which is apparently someone who can't understand more than 10 words per minute :(
And when you're working on something, try to not use youtube, facebook etc. Don't go looking for distraction. Unless you're really banging your head on the wall on a problem, then it may help to do something else for a bit. And try not to ask others if you can't figure something out. If you figure it out yourself it's more rewarding and much more educational and memorable. It also avoids being "that guy" :)
Tracking progress, I can't help with that. I often change my priorities as I go along, leaving stuff half-finished because I found something better or more interesting to do. So be it... I like not having a destination, and having a wide range of knowledge has helped me a lot in my job. What helps is that I live alone and technology is my job and my passion so I'm not struggling for time.
I don't really care if I don't finish something if it turned out it wasn't really what I was looking for, or I found something else that was more interesting. I hate using "methodologies", I always think something that someone else invented can't be perfect for me. I like to make my own way. I do sometimes look at them and pick out bits I like. For this reason I also avoid doing certification trajectories. And also because I think they are too much "the world according to" Microsoft/Cisco/etc. I care about technology, not about one particular company's take on it.
But anyway, don't take my advice for granted. Find out and then do what works for you. That's my #1 bit of advice. Everyone is different. I'm not very typical actually. I have very low discipline but yet I'm actually very effective (including in my job) because I have very deep interest and motivation. What helps me is just not worrying about the things I didn't finish. What's important to me is the journey, not the end result. Even a failed or unfinished project provided lessons along the way.
I really agree with the comment of adamcharnock below who said it should be fun. Absolutely agree. If something is super boring then don't do it unless you absolutely need it for some reason like a better job (but really how much better is it if you're going to be doing something you don't like?)