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How to Learn Stuff Quickly

joshwcomeau.com

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Re: How to Learn Stuff Quickly

#41

Post by andhuman »

inconfident2021 wrote: post #31

Learning quickly only works when every situation favors you. Because learning requires time while knowing doesn't. In this context, to be learned means to craft on your own. And only by knowing things do you get to master things. If the above lines made sense to you, then only read the following paragraphs because I don't know if you can relate to this or not. Learning quickly happens when you can know things quickly…

> But there were cases where I actually didn't understand the fact as I hadn't absorbed it completely. I just knew how things were but not the idea and reason why they were such.

That's to grok[0] something right?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok

Re: How to Learn Stuff Quickly

#42

Post by tofflos »

m0zg wrote: post #35
tofflos wrote: post #33

> If you're anything like me, you don't like making mistakes. You want everything to go perfectly, the very first time. This mindset is generally helpful in life... I'd say that it's normal to feel that way but that it's directly detrimental to learning. If you want to learn something outside your comfort zone you must first learn to recognize, identify and embrace the fact that you are outside your comfort zone. Wan…

> This mindset is generally helpful in life... I don't think that's actually true. I mean, obviously, I'd _like_ things to go perfectly the first time I try, but I'm resigned to the idea that they most likely will not, and that in fact they might _never_ go perfectly. Playing the guitar taught me that. :-) So I don't stress about failure too much, and encourage my son to start small and fail from time to time. The op…

Yeah, also it might be poorly expressed of me to say that the desire for things to go perfectly is the thing that is holding people back. Maybe it's better expressed as the fear of looking bad in front of others (and often even to ourselves).

Re: How to Learn Stuff Quickly

#43

Post by inconfident2021 »

andhuman wrote: post #41
inconfident2021 wrote: post #31

Learning quickly only works when every situation favors you. Because learning requires time while knowing doesn't. In this context, to be learned means to craft on your own. And only by knowing things do you get to master things. If the above lines made sense to you, then only read the following paragraphs because I don't know if you can relate to this or not. Learning quickly happens when you can know things quickly…

> But there were cases where I actually didn't understand the fact as I hadn't absorbed it completely. I just knew how things were but not the idea and reason why they were such. That's to grok[0] something right? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok

It hits the spot!

Re: How to Learn Stuff Quickly

#44

Post by imiric »

I glanced at the article and there are some good tips here, but I really enjoyed seeing an actual hit counter at the bottom. :) Love the throwback to a simpler web, even though this one is surely much more complicated under the hood.

Re: How to Learn Stuff Quickly

#45

Post by marginalia_nu »

shahinghasemi wrote: post #22

I have created a learning framework for myself to learn literally anything. First of all It’s not going to be easy to get started learning something new because there are many holes in your mental model about the material and the aim of the learning is to fill those holes. We’re living in an information era. You can drawn yourself in surfing the web/docs/articles if you are some kind of perfectionism to convince your…

I think it's a very big problem when learning things that almost everything can be made to sound plausible when you don't have real world experience to compare them to.

It's also very easy for those plausible-sounding ideas to stick around for so long in your mind that you sort of start taking them for granted, and we tend to be really bad at scrutinizing those things we take for granted.

It's only much later, when it just isn't working, and you're relutantly forced to come face to face with the difficult fact that some of the things you thought you knew really well were just some loudmouth opinion on the internet.

Re: How to Learn Stuff Quickly

#47

Post by noud »

I'm thinking of writing an anti-blog post on how to learn stuff slowly. In my experience, the subset of "stuff" that I mastered and differentiate my skills from others is actually the "stuff" that cannot be learned quickly. It's often not so black and white how to learn this "stuff". It requires years of deliberate practice, there will be no tutorials, there will be no king's road (guided learning), there will be no mentors that can help you, there will be periods with no progression, there will be setbacks, there will be periods with no practice at all.

P.S. Teach yourself programming in 10 years might be a good example as well: https://norvig.com/21-days.html

Re: How to Learn Stuff Quickly

#48

Post by agumonkey »

noud wrote: post #47

I'm thinking of writing an anti-blog post on how to learn stuff slowly. In my experience, the subset of "stuff" that I mastered and differentiate my skills from others is actually the "stuff" that cannot be learned quickly. It's often not so black and white how to learn this "stuff". It requires years of deliberate practice, there will be no tutorials, there will be no king's road (guided learning), there will be no…

I'd add another layer.. learn how to adapt between the two. Ability to be quick and sharp, or patient and focused are both very good skills IMO.

Re: How to Learn Stuff Quickly

#49

Post by bertr4nd »

Where I tend to get stuck is somewhere between the “make something similar to tic-tac-toe, like bingo” and “make a level editor for beat saber”.

It’s a difference both in scale, and in divergence from the known. While I’ve built large systems for work, it’s usually on the scale of ~1000 development hours and 10-100k+ LOC. Most of my personal projects are basically toys, a few hundred LOC and do-able in an afternoon. I’d like to be able to build medium-scale things without dedicating a significant chunk of my life to them.

The other facet, divergence from the known, is the other sticking point. Given a tic-tac-toe board it’s pretty obvious how to build bingo. I don’t even know what I don’t know about how to build a 3D editor, so it’s hard to get started. (I have this problem with math, too; since so many concepts build on each other, it’s hard to jump in and do something interesting.)

Re: How to Learn Stuff Quickly

#50

Post by wanderingmind »

One thing that has helped me to learn better is not immediately ask for help but try to solve it on your own. While it might not be possible for everything, trying to solve on problem by yourself in a day goes a long way.

For example in programming, when I stumble on a problem, not immediately going to SO for an answer but thinking about it for a while has helped me to learn better.

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