Whether it’s a form of note-taking or regular repetition or the like, what are some self-education techniques and tools you’ve developed to help yourself learn on your own?
It’s always interesting imo to read about how some folks teach themselves different stuff.
For stuff like chess, programming, drawing, etc where there is a skill you can learn…
Just do it. Every day. Do it in manageable steps. So for example if you wanna program, make a goal to create a calculator app. Then work out how to do that. Then do it.
Just keep doing progressively more difficult projects. After calculator app maybe a demo/visualization of sorting algorithms. And then a basic web server. And then a 2d video game. Etc
Learning by doing is the only real way to learn. Even in CS school the classes were great for certain things (I liked data structures & algorithms) but generally speaking the classes are there to facilitate you teaching yourself by doing.
Tldr: do the thing you wanna learn. Do it regularly. Every day if possible. Even if only 5 minutes.
For programming languages, it helps to find a task that actually fits the language well.
I learned Python as a junior sysadmin in the early 2000s specifically because it was the best language for plugging together different Internet services. The senior sysadmin on my team had written a piece of code in Python to migrate users from one email server to another, by connecting with IMAP to each server and transferring their mail. I needed to maintain this code, so I studied up on Python specifically focusing on the email libraries.
I was coming from Perl, which was the best language at the time for certain sysadmin tasks (like logs analysis). But Python’s built-in libraries made it really easy to work with email servers, web servers, and so on. One language feature I really appreciated was the exception system, where many errors that might pass unchecked in C or Perl (and produce unpredictable behavior later) would instead crash the program with a useful diagnostic message.
I learned Haskell several years later because I’d gone to work in Silicon Valley and all the cool CS nerds were into Haskell. I didn’t find a task that actually needed it until I found myself working on a problem that involved both text parsing and combinatorics. You need to express math facts about trees of strings? Haskell is the right tool for the job.
I’d learned elementary C in high school, but I’m not sure I really got C until I had picked up an electronics hobby in my 30s and built myself a blinky bike light controlled by an AVR microcontroller. C on an 8-bit Harvard-architecture machine is way different from C on i386 or x86_64 Linux.
I’ve way less programming experience than you, but I hugely agree. I started out wanting to “learn programming”, and I struggled without a task. Project Euler(maths puzzles to solve with programming) helped me learn the basics of python, but I stagnated for a few years because I didn’t see any way to use what I’d learned, any ideas for projects.
Things really clicked for me once I took a bioinformatics module at uni. The average life scientist is scared of the command line, but I was suddenly faced with so many ways to practice my programming skills by pairing it with biochemistry learning. Now, I’m better at coding than the majority of people in my field, even if I’m still mediocre overall. I know enough to be able to do stuff that I want to do now though
Getting good sleep helps a lot. That’s how you store what you learned. I found trying to explain the subject matter to someone else, real, imaginary, or rubber duck, helped me figure out what I didn’t know.
Your first sentence makes me angry, because I know that it’s true. No amount of process hacking or optimisation can replace the need for, and the benefits of, sleep
Maybe a cybernetic chip you can store information to :P
Making good goals and evaluating your progress periodically.
There are a lot of resources you can use to get guidance on what constitutes a “good” goal, but the basics are that it should be measurable, have a clearly defined end date or timeline, and it should be attainable but still challenging.
So your goal of “I want to learn Japanese” might become “by November 2024 I want to be able to pass the 3rd level Japanese language proficiency test.”
“I want to run a marathon” might look like “I want to complete the 2024 Chicago marathon in under 5 hours.”
Once you have your goal I find it helps to sort of work it backwards from the finish line. In the Japanese language example you work through the steps it takes to pass the test and set checkpoints along the way. These checkpoints can also be structured as goals: “I need to memorize 15 kanji per month to prepare for the test,” “I need to complete one lesson per month in order to reach the level of proficiency needed,” etc.
And then you evaluate your progress periodically to see if you are moving at the pace you expected. I like to check in about every one to two weeks, but no more than two weeks in between check-ins or I start to lose sight of what happened since last check-in.
If you’re moving faster than you thought, maybe you can adjust your checkpoints or work in additional learning tasks. If you’re moving slower than you’d hoped you can look back on what roadblocks prevented you from progressing and make a plan to deal with future roadblocks, or even adjust your overall goal/expectations if needed.
Here is a free evidence-based resource for self-esteem.
I used to use this website a lot with my clients when I was a caseworker. I’ve found some of the resources helpful myself. Here is their resource page. Distress Intolerance is a neat one.
Thanks gonads125! This looks really useful
When you feel like head is bloated or you start being easily distracted, take a break and do something to ease yourself. I usually play a game for 30 minutes or something.
Some days it just doesn’t work and then you gotta give it a break. Forcing knowledge onto yourself does not work long term in my opinion.
What I also find handy: Take a walk and think about what you’ve learned.
I’m feeling this information bloat for weeks now. I have not tried taking a walk tho. mind I ask if I should try to think on nothing or focus on the thing I want to learn/that’s bloating me?
I like how we use bloat here
A good one is a half hour sit-com. Like The Simpsons, or Big Bang Theory. Whatever you prefer. Take a few minutes to slow your brain down, put on a sit-com or cartoon and try to relax. When the shows over, get back to it. I like this way because it times itself, I can’t just add five more minutes, the shows over.
I like this idea. However, I practice drawing and usually have some show in the background. But its pretty relaxing all over if I’m actually in the mood to do that.
problem is I only like media that makes you think, not in a deep way, but in an intriguing fantasy way. And it doesn’t help much when I try to get my mind off of things and find Gravity Falls 11 years late.
This happened a week or two ago.
Personally, I’ve found that it varies. Sometimes thinking more about the tricky thing helps, but sometimes a break is necessary. When I am struggling from info bloat, I am less able to figure out what’s needed, so trial and error helps.
I also agree, this is a fun word usage; I don’t think it would have occurred to me if you’d not said anything. It reminds me of how there are a lot of words that have been given new flavour or meaning as a result of modern tech. Bloat, for example, makes me think of “bloatware” on my phone as much as it makes me think of an upset tummy.
haha, I came at it from a bloat is what slows PCs down because it fills them, and now we are using it for filling and slowing down our minds. I’m not native (I’m Hungarian) so I didn’t even realise at first that that’s the origin of the word.
I wonder how many other things I learned in reverse order. There are probably a lot of words that will completely change meaning with new generations.
Anyways I kind of fixed myself by just getting bored lol. I took a day or two focusing on different things (brain dead games and school). Now I feel as good as new :D (although I need to get more sleep)
Walking helps to get your mind free. I usually listen to a podcast and think a bit about what I’ve read. Trying to understand it.
I’m not a pro, but that usually helps a lot.
For straight memorising, I used to rewrite by hand the text. I took a long time, but I was stuck in my head since I had to “think” every word as I wrote it. Then usually I didn’t even had to read it again. But that was in high school, so probably it wouldn’t work that well now
I work on a presentation of the subject.
I do this when I take walk breaks. I often end up “presenting” what I’ve just learned to someone in my head, anticipating questions they might ask and trying to concisely explain the material
So much this! You really need to understand something to explain it well to someone else. So on top of other techniques I would pretend I was teaching someone else. If I couldn’t explain something to someone else, I didn’t know it yet and had to put more time into that part. If I could explain it once then I’d do it again.
oh god I do this too!
I read out loud. It helps me remember what I’m reading.
Not sure if this is taught in school anymore, but I found the outline process of note-taking to be helpful in both lectures and reading material.
This was the most decent website I came up with that describes the process: https://www.taskade.com/blog/outline-method-of-note-taking/
I felt it was the best way of quickly organizing topics, subtopics, and important items in a way that was simple to read and understand relationships between subjects.
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Don’t buy things from Amazon. Go to your local book store, or direct to the website of the book you want to purchase.
Have you heard of Bookshop? For physical books they seem a decent option, albeit their reach is limited at the moment to the US, UK, and Spain.
Outside of that, and suggesting folks check their libraries, I’ve nothing else to add to your good suggestions.
Why not?
Amazon is a union busting company. They abuse their employees, they underpay them, they’ve taken advantage of communities they have distribution centres in, etc etc etc.
How can you be on the internet and not know the issues behind Amazon as a company…?
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Everything you buy and consume in some way shape or form is going to exploitation.
This type of attitude is a distraction from actual change. Similar to individuals telling others to lower their carbon footprint. Fact is, until the people who actually run the world decide to change - nothing is going to happen.
“Carbon footprint” was a genius PR campaign by BP. Take away blame from companies and government’s lack of regulation and put it on individuals.
A regular working class person is going to purchase the cheapest and most convenient product. Don’t blame them and instead focus your ire on the people actually responsible.
Nah, I’ll continue to tell people to stop using Amazon. Absolving yourself of any of the responsibility is bullshit. If nobody uses Amazon, they stop existing. (I understand that they make most of their money via AWS, not the point). It’s very much within our power to change things. Laying down and taking it because we need the people who run the world to change things is pathetic.
Ya and if we all lived in the forest the world wouldn’t be heating up. If we all gave our money to charity there wouldn’t be any homeless. If we all didn’t go to work the capitalist system would collapse.
But you know as well as I do that it isn’t going to happen. Like I said, this individualistic approach to “changing things” is used as a deliberate distraction.
It’s meant to take advantage of people’s sense of responsibility. Nothing will ever change. If people stopped using Amazon then Walmart would step in to fill the void. It’s a Medusa’s head. The only way to ensure worker’s rights is to write it into the law. Anything else is moral grandstanding. Which I think is even more distasteful when done to working class people.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Everything you buy and consume in some way shape or form is going to exploitation.
While that’s true I would still watch out on buying books on amazon anyways cause people have been pointing out there are books written by AI on there and might actually be useless.
Thanks for the book suggestion! I checked and it’s available via my library, so I may have to give it a read sometime!
I am a big fan of the Cornell Note Taking System. It really helped organize my undergrad notes much better than any other system I tried. Also, it is the only system that is Andy Bernard approved!
dig deep hole, jump in.
i like to surround myself in a project with stuff i do not understand and a defined goal, and learn my way out of the hole into a functional state (product).
learn by doin i spose
