Ask HN: How do you learn? Is there a faster/efficient way to Learn?

> " It takes me way too long to absorb information, and requires reading the same topic from multiple sources before things click."

That's usually how it is with new or difficult concepts. There are things I understand really well today that I had to read about many times before I understood them, like recursion.

Reading multiple sources about the same topic is a good thing. It means you care enough to really want to understand it. Not all sources are equally good at explaining things, and different people understand different explanations more readily.

With programming related stuff, playing around with code and trying out different things to see how they work can also be helpful.

Are you also working full time or part time while taking this course? And are you getting enough sleep?

The brain needs to be very well rested to best absorb information. Even the least demanding job can leave one drained at the end of the day.

Make sure you're getting enough sleep every night that on weekends you wake without an alarm after about 8 hours, feeling rested. And try taking a 20 minute nap before and after studying, and a 10-minute break every hour while studying.

My secret is time management. Outside of your daily obligations where are you spending time? Can any of those things be swapped out for more time to learn X?

Yeah this has been the key to me learning things faster, finding more time.

Another secret, find podcasts with people who are experts at X that talk about X.

Surround yourself with as much as X as you can.

I’ve used these techniques to learn, JavaScript, ruby, php, java, swift and more.

Learning about how you learn can be a great first step! I highly recommend the aptly titled Coursera course “Learning How To Learn” [0] with Barbara Oakley. She also has an accompanying book “A Mind For Numbers”, which has much of the same information in it.

I’ve worked through both and found them very enjoyable and useful, and I occasionally review my notes on them (with a short quiz, of course!) to refresh my memory. I’m also pursuing further education (coincidentally also a part time masters in a field I have little academic experience in), and I’ve found that the lessons are very applicable.

[0] https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

I find most people can learn anything, it's just a matter of what order they learn it in. If you try to learn how to read before knowing your ABCs, you'll have a hard time. But a kid who has been watching ABC videos for 2 years will pick up reading almost "naturally".

In CS and engineering, I find that concepts are hard when you don't have the basic building blocks.

It's really important to know the building blocks intuitively, and not simply on the surface. It's not enough to know something enough to pass a test. You should know it well enough to not even worry about the test.

A good rule of thumb is when you can't absorb a concept, find the prerequisite concepts, and learn those well. So something like image processing, you should know your (Fast) Fourier Transforms, your memory management and pointers.

Once you know all the basic concepts intuitively, the more advanced things just seem to emerge naturally.