Ask HN: What is your system for learning new things?

Sometimes when doc is unclear about best practice to set stuff up, I will consult youtube.

2. Spend a couple hours configuring it

3. Install a bunch of extensions

4. Run into some obscure bug, spend a couple hours debugging it

5. Report the issue

6. Go to bed, satisfied with how productive I've been

- identify the names of the basic concepts that the author uses throughout his/her work. no need to grasp their precise definitions, the goal here is to get a sense of the author's vocabulary of key words. this is easier to achieve for certain authors, especially if they use sensible names that are not too abstract nor too "far" from the concepts they represent. introductory texts, wikipedia pages, youtube videos are very helpful in this regard.

- understand the key words more precisely. once you've identified the key concepts, the next step is to understand their definitions, and how they are used by the author. focus on the context in which they are used. the trick here is to use the key words as pivots for understanding the sentences in which they appear. as you read more, you will see the same words reappearing in contexts that are similar. secondary/complementary texts, primary texts+study guides can come in very handy in this step.

- deep dive. at this point, if youve done your work, you should be able to see the key words and understand them without having to consciously recall what they mean or represent. for most people this is good enough, but if you want to know more (to be able to synthesise new thoughts or relate them to existing ideas in your head), you can go further and start diving into primary texts written by the author.

more general tips:

- study every day if you can, this helps with retention

- take notes, pen and paper if possible (i find that concepts retain better when i write them down, for me personally at least)

- focus, sometimes i find myself scanning through sentences without actually reading them (this is usually a sign of fatigue, you might want to take a break when this happens)

- if you are learning something practical, make sure to practise applying them

So when I want to learn something really well, I prepare to teach a course or give a lecture. Sometimes there is some synergy between what I'm working on and what other junior engineers on the team are working on, and if they're amenable I'll try to teach them what I know. But even if I don't have an audience, I'll tackle a tough concept by prepping to give a lecture on it. That includes practicing in front of the mirror, or doing live coding, and speaking out loud to myself.

I haven't done any blogging but writing (after the fact, not while you're consuming the course or docs or book! forcing yourself to recall is essential to cementing into long term memory) can also be helpful.

Let's say I'm doing a course on async Javascript and the instructor explains how promise.all() works. Instead of a bunch of bullet points just regurgitating the course, my notes will just say "TODO: Implement promise.all()". Then I go and do that a day or two later. This creates a surprisingly long lasting memory, for me at least.