61–70 of 142 posts
If you need to pass an exam, obtain a certificate, etc. you will need a different approach than if you are just curious about a subject and explore what it is about.
There are commonalities, however. Much of the advice on deliberate practice (From the book Peak Performance) is valid even if you don't try to be a top expert.
Posts like this that talk about learning "efficiency" always come off as soulless and dystopian to me. I think learning should be fun and that fun learning is the most effective---that's the only thing I optimize for and I certainly don't think about efficiency percentages. What a drag that would be.
I don't disagree, but maybe the author is making do with what they have. Maybe they only have 30 minutes ~ 1 hour of free time per day (which is dystopian on its own), and need to think about efficiency if they want to achieve a certain degree of proficiency in whatever they're learning.
Another interpretation is that they are only trying to optimize their learning process if it's work related, because they need to. Or maybe they have an engineer mindset, and make the process more efficient is a fun thing to do by itself.
Posts like this that talk about learning "efficiency" always come off as soulless and dystopian to me. I think learning should be fun and that fun learning is the most effective---that's the only thing I optimize for and I certainly don't think about efficiency percentages. What a drag that would be.
I would say "fun" is overrated. We have become so focused on everything being fun that everything including fun itself has become tepid and mediocre. It is important to slog through the hard parts to cross the barrier of expert beginner. We are over downplaying the value of hard work and grit.
Who is doing that?
A big hole in this article is that you need to find the very best learning resource there is. This is a must. Eg: For RL it would be Barto&Sutton book. Sometimes the best source is not intuitive. Eg: The best way to become a safe driver is to go to performance drivign school - its a bit expensive but they tell you how to sit and stay alert in a car which I have never seen outside of these schools. One of my most comm…
While I admire the drive to become knowledgeable in the field of medicine outside of a professional curriculum in the disciplines, I’m not aware of any curriculum that proposes competency as a medical doctor in two years. Though I haven’t practiced medicine in many years, I do have a degree in medicine and went through internship, residency and fellowship. Trust me, it was far more than two years. Further, I don’t see how you would be able to (legally) gain experience in any of a range of procedures without following the consensus training path.
A big hole in this article is that you need to find the very best learning resource there is. This is a must. Eg: For RL it would be Barto&Sutton book. Sometimes the best source is not intuitive. Eg: The best way to become a safe driver is to go to performance drivign school - its a bit expensive but they tell you how to sit and stay alert in a car which I have never seen outside of these schools. One of my most comm…
> My own learning project - learn Medicine "on the side". It seems ludcirous that we give up the keys to our health to doctors just so we don't have to learn 2 years of courses. Am going to fix that! While I admire the drive to become knowledgeable in the field of medicine outside of a professional curriculum in the disciplines, I’m not aware of any curriculum that proposes competency as a medical doctor in two years…
I personally know couple of doctors who themselves are clueless in fixing their own chronic conditions. Let alone helping someone else.
Sure go to the doctor if you broke your arm but they are totally out of their depths if you have any chronic conditions. Not sure what exactly they study for like a decade if they don't have answers to almost anything.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>you need to find the very best learning resource there is. This is a must. I think there's a line around "good enough", unless your goal of course is to be on the road to "become the very best". I think the better metric is making sure you have a accurate resource over a quality one. The 15-20 hour "sprint hard" methodology isn't stopping after that first sprint, just slowing down. So if you find/can now access a be…
The other problem is: How do you recognize what is "good enough" if you lack the skills/competence required to be able to say "this is good enough"? For example, I'm a frontend developer who wants to learn backend. And let's say that I chose C# and .NET for this. I can either do tutorials in Microsoft docs and then reach out to Reddit or some other community for resources, to receive the commonsense advice "just buil…
I ended up dropping 4o and going exclusively with Claude. Claude is amazing at teaching.
A big hole in this article is that you need to find the very best learning resource there is. This is a must. Eg: For RL it would be Barto&Sutton book. Sometimes the best source is not intuitive. Eg: The best way to become a safe driver is to go to performance drivign school - its a bit expensive but they tell you how to sit and stay alert in a car which I have never seen outside of these schools. One of my most comm…
It's similar to how I learned software development as a hobbyist, so I understand a little about headlines like OpenAI switching from Next to Remix, but at a deeper level, I don't really understand what it's like running Next.js at the scale of MAUs. But it's still worth learning so that I have a little more understanding about the world around me.