Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How do you manage self-study?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–229 of 229 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage self-study?

#221

Post by TheTrotters »

tejohnso wrote: post #186
cousin_it wrote: post #59

If you have an extremely good textbook with exercises: 1) Every weekday 30min uninterrupted study at a specific time, preferably in the morning. Don't miss, rain or shine. Take weekends off, though. 2) Work in a strict linear fashion: read a chapter, then solve all of that chapter's exercises in order without skipping any, and only then allow yourself to peek at the next chapter. Don't "take a first pass through the…

> If you're having trouble with some exercise, you can look up the answer key for that specific exercise, but only after you've spent 5 minutes of effort on that specific exercise without making progress. I've wondered what the ideal time of effort is on several occasions. Sometimes I'll get stuck on an algorithm problem and no matter what technique I try I can't make progress. Sometimes I'll try for days, until I ev…

I sometimes remind myself that (i) I don't have to re-derive all mathematics from scratch and that (ii) there are always more problems to do.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage self-study?

#222

Post by dempedempe »

rajlego wrote: post #217
dempedempe wrote: post #105

I often feel this way. I think it helps _a lot_ to have an effective task management system. Why? There is this thing called the Zeigarnik effect. The Zeigarnik effect states that unoccupied tasks tend to overwhelm your conscious thought. When you have too much stuff to do you get overburdened and stressed and start watching Youtube. (I've definitely been there). How do you deal with the Zeigarnik effect? Well, you c…

It wouldn't work for all of your tasks but have you tried prioritized tasklist (tasklists assigned a value and a time and then sorted by that). I have ADHD meaning managing doing things is horrible but with prioritized tasklist I can just start at the top and go down during timeslots in the day assigned to finishing tasklist items. If I don't finish low priority things with the time I had it just means they're not im…

That sounds interesting! I'll check it out.

For me, I think the most important thing is simply having a plan and focusing on a few tasks at a time and not worrying about _everything_ to do. It sounds like a prioritized tasklist would be a nice addition to my current workflow. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage self-study?

#223

Post by rajlego »

dempedempe wrote: post #222
rajlego wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't work for all of your tasks but have you tried prioritized tasklist (tasklists assigned a value and a time and then sorted by that). I have ADHD meaning managing doing things is horrible but with prioritized tasklist I can just start at the top and go down during timeslots in the day assigned to finishing tasklist items. If I don't finish low priority things with the time I had it just means they're not im…

That sounds interesting! I'll check it out. For me, I think the most important thing is simply having a plan and focusing on a few tasks at a time and not worrying about _everything_ to do. It sounds like a prioritized tasklist would be a nice addition to my current workflow. Thanks!

This is the one I use in Notion: https://www.notion.so/71c525aa1d8f41a7bbbe5159807c8d74?v=8ac... It's a bit confusing but it's usable even if you ignore everything to the right of the time column

It's based on the SuperMemo tasklist system which works quite well but is annoying to use when I'm on the go.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage self-study?

#224

Post by elcortez »

I've tried many, many things, because my main problem is that I'm not passionate enough to learn something on my own.

When you have passion, learning flows freely in your mind, and you don't need much discipline. But when you're not a natural, you need to create passion through discipline.

So far, what's been successful for me is :

1. Set ONE very specific goal upfront : for instance, "finish this coursera course completely until I get the certification"

2. Only go through courses that are self-contained, straightforward, and that have at least 60% practice for 40% theory. (youtube videos & books are great when you already have that passion and interest in a subject, but if you don't, you'll just waste your time and energy unless the book is really well written and entertaining)

3. 20min a day, every day. You can do more, but you cannot do less. Set an alarm clock, turn off notifications, and just go through these 20 minutes, even if you don't make progress

It doesn't matter if you don't make any progress during these 20 minutes : what matters is that you get into a habit. This concept is very well-known : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen After 3-4 weeks, if you keep at it, you WILL start enjoying it, and you WILL create some passion inside you. When you start enjoying the learning process, you'll start getting your results.

4. Give yourself some gratification for doing the work : I use the application "way of life" https://wayoflifeapp.com/. Every day when I go through the 20minutes, I mark a green check on the app, and it's sufficient to make me feel good about it. If I don't do the work, I mark a red check, and it makes me feel bad, so I really want to avoid that :)

Good luck !

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage self-study?

#225

Post by vackosar »

I recently written a software for automatic question generation, which I use for learning snippets of text without need to manually create flashcards for say Anki. You can try it here https://quizrecall.com/personal/ and you can read more on the rationale to build this here https://vaclavkosar.com/2019/11/02/Quizrecall-Learn-any-text...

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage self-study?

#226

Post by Jenz »

Sevaris wrote: post #85
Jenz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Practicing a musical instrument This is not fun?

When you know a piece and play it, it can be fun. But the way there can be frustrating and tedious. You'll make mistakes. You'll learn slower than you'd like. You might repeat the same section a hundred times before you feel satisfied. Some days you'll even feel like you've forgotten how to play certain parts properly. But you do it anyways because you know it's rewarding and satisfying at the end of the day (and wit…

Maybe I’m doing it wrong then.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage self-study?

#228

Post by non-entity »

adamcharnock wrote: post #26

I'm hoping my reply is more helpful than it sounds at first glance... This is one of those questions where I read and then exclaim (rhetorically), "what's wrong with people?!" Don't take this the wrong way, I often exclaim this. You are quite possibly in the majority and I'm the odd one. To me it has always seemed inherently clear that the way to approach life is to do something if you enjoy it. If you stop enjoying…

> To me it has always seemed inherently clear that the way to approach life is to do something if you enjoy it.

I enjoy working on challenging engineering and software projects that fall into domains that interest me.

I do not enjoy having to hunt and pick through algebra concepts I was never good at in the first place so I can than spend more time on even more difficult mathematics before I can do much useful work on those aforementioned projects.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage self-study?

#229

Post by giampaolo44 »

A bit late to the party but it might still be of help: @ruph123 I am a bit like you, and a few years ago -- after 30 or so years coping -- I started building a tool to study and keep track of what I get out of my texts and where I leave them. It's called Kjuicer, short for knowledge juicer.

The cool parts are that you'll be able to: 1. Learn faster. Students report they save from 30 to 50% of the time if they highlight with it (more when they collaborate & share 'juiced' material among them) 2. Recover what you learned in a snap, even much later.

I must be dyslexic, so certain topics were totally off for me, like CS. With it I could finally tackle it.

It's still a bit basic but it works on most web pages, or you can use the editor to paste stuff from other sources. It's free for personal use.

Hope it helps.

Please do let me know if you try or if you need support. Message from the website and I'll respond. There's not many instructions but it should be easy to use.

Cheers, Giampaolo

Post reply on HN