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How To Learn Something

From my experience I can’t learn things just by reading books or watching videos. Instead I have distilled learning into a small cycle.

1. Get the minimum required theory to start. This could be a blog post, single youtube video, or just some example code.
2. Try to get something working. This could be just a hello world program.
3. List anything that comes to mind; topics, ideas, connections.
4. Repeat.

Iterating through this loop has helped me to learn faster and retain what I’ve learned better. It feels very organic, like I am exploring or mapping out something unknown. I also find that I naturally generate a narrative in my head while doing this. That is probably what is causing the higher retention. Ideally you want to get to the point that actually working on things takes up the bulk of your time each iteration.

A Note About Books

I do not like books for learning. They are too long. Having to power through a thirty page chapter before doing any hands on work breaks my flow and just causes me to get bored. I find things like blog posts to be better sources of most practical knowledge because they are shorter and more to the point.