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Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#41

Post by the__alchemist »

Diving into the deep end on projects, with a practical or interesting goal in mind. Along the way, pick up the needed skills, reference papers, tutorials, etc. Take an online class if it seems that would help. Ask for help when required.

I find that when taking classes, reading papers, articles etc, I learn far better if I can #1: Immediately see where the material is useful due to having encountered a problem it solves, and #2: Immediately put relevant information into code/CAD/notes etc.

Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#42

Post by goopthink »

I recently wrote about my learning strategy under a post called “How Learning Works: Components, Loops, Systems”: https://romandesign.co/how-learning-works-components-systems...

> It's like Charlie Munger once said about mental models: “All this stuff is really quite obvious and yet most people don’t really know it in a way where they can use it.”

The long and short of it is that you go through a cycle of Knowing, Doing, Assessing. Each of those has sub sucked and pieces but they fit together really well and work generally across different types of things you’re trying to learn (intellectual, skill,ms, physical).

Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#44

Post by eimrine »

0. My strategy is lots of unsucceses and result is close to nothing but i keep getting fun from reading any works which fits to my interest. 1. I do take notes when doing and do not while listening. But i write down some words to google and some professors jokes if funny. 2. Do not understand the thing. 3. Definite yes, our nature is to be forgetful to anything not repeating. 4. My old approach was just a desire to look for some special, but few days ago i have tried zettelcasten and it is surprisingly neat for that task imo.

Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#45

Post by openknot »

tsumnia wrote: post #37

I like to use the phrase "practice makes permanent" - not "practice make perfect", cause every instructor disagrees, and not "perfect practice makes perfect" because perfection is subjective and a fool's errand. In a nutshell, whatever you do in practice will be what you do in application. This leads to then what I consider "foundational knowledge", or refining your understanding on Bloom's Remember, Understand, and…

>I like to use the phrase "practice makes permanent" - not "practice make perfect", cause every instructor disagrees, and not "perfect practice makes perfect" because perfection is subjective and a fool's errand. In a nutshell, whatever you do in practice will be what you do in application.

This is a great view. To add to this from a learner's perspective, though I'm not a professional educator (thanks for sharing your perspective as one): I've found that the ideas about worrying about "perfect practice" to be intimidating, especially as I've struggled with a 'perfectionist' tendency that causes procrastination and hesitation to attempt any practice at all.

People are wary of learning something wrong, then having to re-learn it, but I think that's a far better problem than delaying or avoiding learning something at all (with quality instruction, it's unlikely one can practice too far from the ideal; and even if that happens, it's not the end of the world. When attempting to learn, I try to remember the following quote from a webpage shared on HN a while back [0]: "Stay calm. Remember, you can’t become worse off than when you started."

[0] https://devjac.dev/posts/2021-05-29-my-personal-creed-of-emp...

Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#46

Post by regularfry »

Rampant unmedicated ADHD.

Sounds like a joke response, but it isn't. My focus will settle on something because I want to do a specific thing in that area, and it just doesn't let go, even when I need it to. As a perfect handy example, my brain is currently full of a) chess, and b) compliant mechanisms, when it should be full of Rails/React interview prep.

I guess the transferrable principle here is to have something concrete you want to do with the knowledge you're gaining so that your brain has a tonne of hooks to hang the theory off.

Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#48

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

How the brain handles memory is pretty complex, but specific recall of random factoids is not something the brain is set up for. If you don't work with the information day after day in different scenarios and there's no strong sensory or emotional tie, you won't have immediate recall. You can instead try tricks like Ken Jennings' links-in-a-chain (https://www.businessinsider.com/ken-jennings-jeopardy-how-to...).

You should probably just keep notes and refer back to them.

> Do you have a methodology for extracting common themes/patterns across topics?

Your brain does this naturally if you get a lot of sleep and don't think about it.

Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#49

Post by mikewarot »

I'm a mapper [1], and as such, I tended to seek out information that matches some edge of what I know, and when I find it, I'm then able to incorporate that knowledge, and check for inconsistencies with the other fact I know. I just keep reading, and browsing until I find the right puzzle piece, and then I understand.

I like instructions that specify how things work, so I can route around problems, and understand what the goals and mechanisms of a system I'm using. I can tolerate a wide variety of discrepancies in those instructions, and work around small changes in procedures that might not be documented.

If I'm being tested on general knowledge, and how things work, it is stuffiest to read and understand the materials provided.

Practical Example - Right now I'm trying to understand the fine grained details of how quantum computers work, I've watched a lot of boring youtube with words like Hamiltonian, Eigenstate, etc... none of which has clicked, but all float around like loose puzzle pieces... eventually I'll find the detail I need, and a connection will be made, I'll then go back and find other pieces until I understand the landscape at the detail I want to know.

If I'm being tested on random facts (dates, buzzwords, etc) then it's time to break out repetition and wrote learning. This is also the mode when learning a new skill, practice, practice, practice.

---

If you're a packer, the opposite is true. You'll likely keep a lot of notes, and be good at memorizing facts.

I've worked with packers in the past, they like clear, precise, easy to follow instructions that very closely fit what they will see as they follow them. If the instructions don't match what they see, they will end up needing help, or get frustrated.

I'm not sure how packers best learn. I suspect it's repetition all the way.

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1 - https://wiki.c2.com/?MappersVsPackers

Re: Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

#50

Post by globular-toast »

the__alchemist wrote: post #41

Diving into the deep end on projects, with a practical or interesting goal in mind. Along the way, pick up the needed skills, reference papers, tutorials, etc. Take an online class if it seems that would help. Ask for help when required. I find that when taking classes, reading papers, articles etc, I learn far better if I can #1: Immediately see where the material is useful due to having encountered a problem it sol…

This is what came to mind for me too. I basically never really know what I'm doing. Always doing something slightly beyond my current skill set. Learning speculatively has never worked well for me.
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