I track things I am learning now & want to learn in a Trello board (https://trello.com/b/cu32qF3q).
And I try to learn things by building projects I care about ideally. (https://trello.com/b/alB1ryRP).
Ask HN: What are your best learning methods/hacks/tips?
21–30 of 100 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your best learning methods/hacks/tips?
#22Best way to learn is to read the necessary information once or twice, then just do it. If you're taking an exam, learn it by taking practice exams and looking up what you get wrong. If you're building an application, build it, mess up, then rebuild it. If you're learning a language, memorize the basic nouns and verbs, then jump in and start writing and speaking in that language. Look up what you don't know, then jump…
> If you're taking an exam, learn it by taking practice exams and looking up what you get wrong.
Nothing exposes the fact that you don’t know a damned thing like attempting past or specimen exam papers, or answering the questions in a textbook.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best learning methods/hacks/tips?
#23You need to put the concepts you are learning into practice. If you just read and study something, no matter how long you do it, you will never truly digest the information.
Try things, fail, learn why you failed, do it the right way, succeed, repeat.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best learning methods/hacks/tips?
#24Learn by doing.
I taught myself morse code by actually using morse code on ham radio, not by drilling myself silly with code practice tools (which is imperative to learn the alphabet, but after that it's less practical).
There's no number of videos or essays or books etc that will make you magically get better. You must take what you discover from those sources and put muscle (and/or brainpower) into the activity yourself.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best learning methods/hacks/tips?
#25What I would like to know is how to retain what I learn in the long-term. It's not too difficult to memorise things, either by rote memorisation or using some of the techniques described here. But, how can I remember something banal that I learn today in 10 or 20 years - without using spaced repetition, as I find that is not always maintainable in the long term.
Why is my brain so efficient at erasing things I went through so much trouble at one point, and for a specific purpose, to memorise. It seems to decide for itself that this piece of information is irrelevant at some point and just wipes it away. Like a overly pro-active personal assistant.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best learning methods/hacks/tips?
#26Anything I am good at, the common theme for why I am good is the interest (or force) to keep at it for years, reading, and tons of practice. There really is no way around practice. Practice is what separates most people who are good at things from those who aren't. Music, math, programming, writing, learning languages, painting, drawing, physics, finance, etc. Find good books and good teachers/videos/other instructio…
Practice is what separates most people who are good things from those who aren't. Yes, but mindless practice doesn't help, isn't it? Is there a deliberate method to your practice? How do you keep track of your weak areas, and how do you specifically practice those weak areas?
Indeed. That is why I included "Find good books and good teachers/videos/other instruction". They point out to you what and how you should practice, but practicing is still the key component.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best learning methods/hacks/tips?
#27I often make an explicit effort to convert frequent actions from "System 2" to "System 1" (in the language of Daniel Kahneman) as soon as I can. For example, if I'm learning a foreign language, I commit common expressions (not words) to memory as soon as possible. If I'm learning a new software (say Adobe Illustrator or emacs), I commit the common shortcuts to memory as well. It's often one of the first things I do.
Then, when I actually learn the more complicated stuff, I don't ever think about the basic stuff (and I get that out of the way very early in the learning process). I think it frees up my brain to focus on the complexities of any domain a bit sooner than I would otherwise.
I'm not sure this method generalizes to other people, but it seems to work for me across various domains. I think the use of rote memorization is a bit underappreciated (given how useless it seems in high school or university), but I've continually found it useful in my professional life.
[Edit] It's also useful to identify what the "common action" are, and in general that's only from "learning by doing" and realizing what's important/what's not - then saving the important stuff to the "hot path" of processing.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best learning methods/hacks/tips?
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Practice is what separates most people who are good things from those who aren't. Yes, but mindless practice doesn't help, isn't it? Is there a deliberate method to your practice? How do you keep track of your weak areas, and how do you specifically practice those weak areas?
Mindless practice will get you substantially further than not doing anything. Even when you have only the vaguest idea what you’re doing doing something beats doing nothing almost universally. Deliberate practice is great but with a tight feedback loop just doing things works wonders. If you spend 1000 hours doing mindless practice you won’t get as far as someone who spends 500 hours practicing deliberately but you a…
Spot on, and a particularly good point for people overwhelmed with the volume of resources out there to learn things.
Picking a method/book/instructor that seems to be getting good reviews and getting at it is far more important than wasting tons of time jumping from method to method but never actually putting in the time practicing.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best learning methods/hacks/tips?
#29Learn how to learn and deliberate practice.
Re: Ask HN: What are your best learning methods/hacks/tips?
#30I just commented this in another thread, but I highly, highly recommend the free Coursera course Learning How To Learn . In particular, I found that the following worked especially well for me: * Emphasis on balance between focus and diffuse mode: taking a walk or exercising after a focused study session. * Spaced repetition: Anki works wonders. Reviewing notes multiple times is also tremendous. * Sleep: ignored the…
For spaced repetition, if you haven't tried it here is a fun interactive that is well presented to try it out [1].
For spaced repetition tools, besides Anki [2] there is also TinyCards [3].
Ultimately learning new things means building projects in them, but for rote memorization and when getting started spaced repetition is great. It works well because it is similar to how people learn naturally, the more you see something, the more you lock it into memory.