Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

I take notes, as energetically as my interest allows. While I do read them subsequently, I do not really make too much use of them. For me, the act of taking notes strongly helps my mind connect to the information in ways that make me know it better, sooner.

I went through a bad patch as the nineties ended and I thought that computer note taking might be a good idea. It produced pretty good notes (I type well) but was much less conducive to learning. In fact, I felt it was distracting and counter-productive.

Handwritten notes. Definitely my first line of offense against ignorance.

After that, teaching it. If I can find an opportunity to make a presentation. That's great. I will always confirm understanding and level up when I explain what I know in a semi-formal way. Explaining to colleagues and friends is good. I didn't do study groups in college but found analogous social activities very helpful since.

After that, doing it. If it's a practical topic, putting the lessons into practice asap is very helpful. Like, I'm sure, many of you, I am a programmer. If I start using a new tool, technique or idea, I will soon have solid understanding.

Of course, I also keep going. If I do not keep seeking progress in a topic domain, then any knowledge I have will fade.

This is something I've thought about a lot; I ended up compiling tips on learning from a variety of different sources into a master document that I go back to every once in a while to see if there's any new things I can implement [0].

I only integrate one or two practices at a time, and I stopped short of implementing SRS or a Zettelkasten because I began to realize I was spending too much time on productivity to actually get anything done. I'll probably return to them later - I think SRS especially gets a bad rap from people who like to think about things conceptually as "just being rote memorization", but IMO the human brain is not a computer for Platonic objects. It thrives on hard data and real-world examples, and "memorizing" components or instances of a particular concept so they're at hand for effortless retrieval just makes connecting them to existing ideas easier (which is arguably all understanding things is).

[0] https://pastebin.com/sk6iNDpp

Carry a notebook around and frequently take notes for things to look back at. The wet concrete of the brain needs frequent imprinting for success in memory/recall. One notebook for career, one notebook for side business and projects. Have tried multiple notebooks, 2 seems to be the balance for me. Different colors. Keep colors consistent over the months/years of getting second and third ones.

One trick I have for taking lots of notes rapidly is the following:

Say somebody says a long string "The Cap Theorem is Consistency, Availability, and Partitioning," you write down the initial letters with space to come back and complete the words: T__ c_____ t_____ i_ c_______ a______ p_____. Once you have the initial letters down the hardest part is done. For very long sentences you want to remember this helps a great deal because you will still remember the last several words with the hint of the first letter when you do a second pass to fill the (rest of-the-word) in.

I create the shortest possible time loop between consuming something (text, video, etc.) and applying it to a real project or problem. Then shortly after applying it, perhaps at the end of the day I'll write about the process as if I were explaining it to someone who doesn't know about the topic beforehand. If I can't write about it while clearly explaining it while having a complete and total understanding of every word then I go back and research anything on demand to fill in the gaps.

The idea is you consume and apply, then quickly turn a combination of theory + practice into your own words which is proving to yourself that you understand it. The key point there is "you", you don't need to publish the written component to anyone. Its purpose is to force you to come up with unique thoughts to combine this new information into something coherent which I'm sure has some benefit in making your brain remember it (but I have no scientific proof of this). It can also be used as a personalized detailed reference in case you ever forget the details which IMO is much better than scattered notes you tried to quickly write while you listened to or read something.

I don't know if this is a formal way of learning something. It's something I've done for most of my life because it felt intuitive at the time and still does.