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How do you track and decide what topics you want to spend time learning?

swanson.github.com

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Re: How do you track and decide what topics you want to spend time learning?

#11

Post by delwin »

This is a great idea. As a step two, I would group them into categories (JavaScript, self-improvement, etc.) and then figure out time needed to become proficient in each one. Vim, for example, takes about 5 days to really get the hang of it, to pick up the essentials. The other tricks come later. CoffeeScript can become familiar after a weekend or two. A few of the others, like Arduino, take a little longer.

This is what I do when I want to learn things. Of course, I have a problem limiting it to programming. My list often includes stuff like "Thai cuisine" and "German" and "Celtic mythology".

The hardest part, in my opinion, is not tracking NEW things to learn, but tracking things to improve on.

Re: How do you track and decide what topics you want to spend time learning?

#12

Post by wahnfrieden »

einhverfr wrote: post #10
billswift wrote: post #2

>Instead of trying to do Deliberate Practice, I’d fool myself into thinking I was investing my time wisely by reading blog posts and examples but not actually doing much of anything. That is one reason for serious learning I use textbooks. The book itself helps structure your learning, it is easy to keep track of how much you have covered, and commitment is simpler, since you can just commit to finishing the book. It…

Good point on textbooks. I would add to that a couple other things: 1) There are a lot of development-related things that I simply want cursory knowledge about right now. Blog posts, textbooks, and the like are great there. The way I go about things is to maintain a list of books to buy and buy them on a FIFO basis. Typically there is about a year lag between when a book goes onto the list and when it comes off and i…

What's your process for consuming a textbook in 3-4 days?

Re: How do you track and decide what topics you want to spend time learning?

#13

Post by delwin »

swanson wrote: post #5
danneu wrote: post #4

I see Vim on that list. Best way to learn Vim is to get stuck without internet for 30 minutes. Once you explore every avenue of entertainment in your documents/downloads folders, you remember `$ vimtutor` and just have a go at it. Tried and true.

I want to be good at Vim, but it isn't practical for me at the moment. At work, I've spent the last year and half in Visual Studio or Eclipse (both due to the nature of the projects) and it was really hard for me to switch my brain into "Vim mode" for my own personal stuff. With something as fundamental to the job as a text editor, I have to do it 8 hours a day or it won't stick.

It took me 5 days to stabilize my workflow in vim, and well worth it. Of course, those were 5 days without too much stress or deadlines, a few weeks ago. I still have a cheat-sheet print out, but am finding myself needing it less and less every day.

Although I've been working on fairly small web projects. For larger, corporate-style software development, the transition might be more difficult.

Re: How do you track and decide what topics you want to spend time learning?

#14

Post by biesnecker »

swanson wrote: post #3
billswift wrote: post #2

>Instead of trying to do Deliberate Practice, I’d fool myself into thinking I was investing my time wisely by reading blog posts and examples but not actually doing much of anything. That is one reason for serious learning I use textbooks. The book itself helps structure your learning, it is easy to keep track of how much you have covered, and commitment is simpler, since you can just commit to finishing the book. It…

That's a good point about textbooks. Do you find that if a book includes Exercises at the end of each chapter that you actually do them? That's been a big challenge for me - so many great books have 'Action' sections but I rarely find myself putting down the book and doing them.

This is a problem I frequently have. A while ago I decided to try to read through the whole book, and then go through and do the exercises. When I actually did it it worked _really_ well, but I found myself not being honest with myself and skimping on the review.

Re: How do you track and decide what topics you want to spend time learning?

#15

Post by alanav »

In my case, I try to keep realistic dates of completion (considering that I'm no longer an undergraduate and right now I can focus in any topic I want.)

Sometimes it's difficult to get things done if you don't have someone behind telling you what to do next; but I realized, that if you master this skill, you are at a whole new level. I think this is the type of motivation that keeps moving the PhD students or the entrepreneurs.

At the moment I'm learning how to program for the Android platform, and this mobile paradigm has open my mind for a lot of things. I really want to pursue more this area.

I think it's a great idea that if you don't understand something in a book, tutorial, etc. investigate about those topics. But, never lose focus in what you are trying to accomplish in the first time; I know that sometimes it's tempting to keep checking that Math theory and things like that.

At the end, knowledge is another tool to get the job done.

Re: How do you track and decide what topics you want to spend time learning?

#16

Post by daedelus »

I've written several of these lists in Evernote over the past few years. It's always interesting to go back and look at them to see how my interests have changed over time. Three years ago, my number one priority was to learn how to write short stories (and eventually a novel). Now my number one priority is to learn Clojure (and a handful of other technologies).

Re: How do you track and decide what topics you want to spend time learning?

#18

Post by pacomerh »

What I do is revise the list every week and see what things on the list I still want to learn, so I practice the ones that have prevailed more than 2 weeks and the other ones I kinda question them. What has worked for me this year is always ask "WHY ?" , Why do I want to learn A, or B, and if the reason is strong enough then the item goes in ink.

Re: How do you track and decide what topics you want to spend time learning?

#19

Post by einhverfr »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #12
einhverfr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point on textbooks. I would add to that a couple other things: 1) There are a lot of development-related things that I simply want cursory knowledge about right now. Blog posts, textbooks, and the like are great there. The way I go about things is to maintain a list of books to buy and buy them on a FIFO basis. Typically there is about a year lag between when a book goes onto the list and when it comes off and i…

What's your process for consuming a textbook in 3-4 days?

2-4 hrs per night, spreading several related textbooks out with other topics in between.

Re: How do you track and decide what topics you want to spend time learning?

#20

Post by kevinalexbrown »

Much better than my lazy default which involves leaving relevant tabs open on my browser ...

So I just did this exercise now, and at the risk of overtooling I'm going to keep a detailed list of the precise things I did to learn each thing. Because otherwise, I have that same tendency to convince myself I've spent 2 hours learning more about graphical models by browsing some blog posts, or about cooking by looking through some cooking blogs but not actually taking the 2 hours to flail at bread-making. I'm not talking about every day recounting what I did, I think that's overly verbose, but just as a list under each of my goals that details each specific accomplishment.

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