Learning to Learn | Hacker News Reader

Learning to Learn

simpleprogrammer.com

104 pointsjsonmez32 comments

Does anybody have any (other and more thorough) resources for 'learning how to learn'? Perhaps book suggestions? One of my goals is to become an autodictact / polymath and I'm seeking way to make the process of acquiring new data / skills / learning more time-efficient and more organized (and systematic).

Are there any kind of 'learning theories/strategies' out there? I'm not seeking resources per se (I know about Khan academy, MIT OCW, 'bookportals' on Tor etc), but rather some sort of systematic method similar to the one described in the link but perhaps more detailed and (maybe) anecdote-/experience-based.

Learn epistemology (the philosophy of learning).

Most stuff in the field is bad (worse than useless). Start with this book:

http://beginningofinfinity.com/

Karl Popper's books are good too.

Epistemology is the long term route. No instant results, but useful for everything and very efficient in the long run. That's the best way if you plan to learn about many things to be a polymath.

And for discussion of autodidact stuff, ask your questions on this email list:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/taking-ch...

I've already done this stuff. Feel free to email me curi@curi.us

Epistemology is rather about what "knowing" means. It's not a set of rules that tell you how to learn a language etc.

Epistemology explains how learning (aka creating knowledge) happens and what sorts of methods are capable of learning or not, and what sort are more or less effective at learning (aka at getting knowledge). This is useful to actually learning (anything) effectively.

Note again that most work in the field is terrible, so it doesn't actually do this. But the stuff I recommended does.

Epistemology is a field of philosophy not psychology.

Great question! Self-directed learning is the way of the future. I'm a big fan of Trello for breaking learning goals down into manageable blocks - create a board of your overall goal, then create a list of specific learning outcomes you can tick off as you go (kind of a mash-up of Steven Covey's 'begin with the end in mind' and SMART goals - specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timed). In my experience the foible of learning is distraction, so staying accountable to Trello keeps you on track. Perhaps it would also help to commit to teach someone else, to cement what you've learnt and to stay accountable to your goals; does anyone know of peer-to-peer learning networks like this?

I use Trello for my learning as well. I have a board called "Self Investment" that roughly corresponds to a mixture of SMART goals and other concepts. It's one of my two long term boards, the other being "Ideas".

Whatever tool you use it's a pretty good idea to keep your long term learning goals stored somewhere and get them out of your head (fairly standard idea in time-/selfmanagement)

Edit: I actually have a third "long term" board called "Books etc." where I store the titles of books that look interesting, interesting youtube videos, elearning courses etc. I'd kind of like to integrate that with the "Self Investment" board but haven't found a good way yet...open to suggestions.

Josh Waitzkin (of chess movie fame) wrote this one:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Learning-Journey-Performance/d...

That's a fantastic book!

I've had some pretty good results with Scott Young's ebook and blog in general: http://www.scotthyoung.com (ebook is on the side of the page, can't find a direct link to it).

My goal is to achieve the same goal, except with n-number of subjects (math, science, humanities, the arts, etc) over x-number of years. Thanks for the suggestion!

The Pragmatic Programmers have a book on learning called "Pragmatic Thinking and Learning". I own it and would highly recommend it, one of the more underrated books. It covers the Dreyfus learning model which was mentioned in the article.

The examples and language tend to be programming related (for example one chapter is titled "Debugging your Brain" iirc) because that's the intended audience but I'd also recomend it for non-programmers.

Very good blend of theory (Dreyfus model, r-/l-mode) and practical advice on how to improve your learning and generally use your brain better.

http://pragprog.com/book/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-learni...

I actually do own a copy, thank you for reminding me to read it again. Very useful strategies and the type of 'metaphors' used in the book (CS/IT-related) made it easy to understand.

To increase what you get from books you read, maybe this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book

Interesting. I like the list of classics at the end, though I'm not sure if it's outdated (then again, it's a list of _classics_).

Have you watched many of Rich Hickey's talks? There are videos of them around.. I think you would like them.

Any particular video(s)? All I found was 'Simple Made Easy' and some other Clojure / Datomic related videos. Am I missing anything?

All of Rich Hickey's talks great, but they're not really about learning how to learn. "Hammock Driven Development" is probably the closest, and is about approaching problem solving generally.

Both "Simple made easy" and "Are we there yet" are pretty general, not necessarily Clojure-specific talks, although they do point to Clojure and more broadly FP as a possible solution to the problems presented.

http://blip.tv/clojure/hammock-driven-development-4475586

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Are-We-There-Yet-Rich-Hic...

Despite the fact that this was filtered through HN seeing a stock picture of a key and then skimming quickly and seeing even more stock pictures turned me off from reading the article. I thought it'd be interesting to point out.

Stock-pics aside, I think the content is mildly-interesting and a good starting point.

Agree, I like the article. It would be a pity if the stock0-pics put people off.

Hmm, I didn't even realise it, but that's exactly why I didn't read the article too.

Interesting. I usually add images to post to help break up the text and make some mental connection between sections that I am talking about and a picture.

So Q. Is the problem that the images are stock images? Or is the issue that there are images?

Wouldn't just a bunch of text and no images make it much harder to get through the content?

Not arguing one way or the other, just curious on thoughts on this.

IMO, if the images don't aid the text, they are unnecessary. If people are going to read an article that long, the pictures aren't going to help break up the content. For me they were a bit distracting and actually caused some weird line breaks (I actually stated thinking about creating a bookmarklet that would zap unwanted DOM elements with a click).

Other examples of long blocks of text which people read include books, articles on http://alistapart.com (okay they have one but it is classy and fits with the site), and long comment threads on hacker news.

Not the gp, but I had the same reaction. It is a good idea to break up the text and use images to convey one's point. However, I found the quality of the images chosen quite poor.

Just like there is an art to writing, there is also an art to choosing the correct imagery to accompany the text. Besides the poor technical quality, many of the images in the article are using visual cliches. Together, these problems subconsciously guide the reader into expecting a similarly low quality from the text.

I'd suggest combing through the Creative Commons images on something like http://compfight.com/ for things that are a bit more unusual and visually interesting.

It's also worth pointing out that if you just can't find any good images to accompany your article, it may be better to just let the text speak for itself.

I think this is spot on. I agree with many of the things in the article. Especially the part about setting quantifiable goals. Too many times I find myself not doing this and getting "lost" in the process of learning and then kinda giving up from being overwhelmed.

I totally agree, but what really sets this apart is not only the quantifiable goals. The key, in my opinion, is to have a practical goal. If your goal is to learn C# and be able to write it fluently, then that is kind of quantifiable. But if you set out to learn C# to program a specific game/applikation etc. then in my opinion, you would learn much more along the way.

I attribute that more to having direction. Sometimes when learning things one simply meanders through a field, absorbing knowledge as they find it, and figuring out how to use it.

When you have a concrete goal (I want X to happen), you can (usually!) figure out what you need to learn in order to make X happen.

Apropos of learning new programming languages, part of the way I familiarize myself with new programming languages (or technologies, as applicable) is by maintaining a list of toy projects. These projects ought to be relatively well-defined. Big bonus points for being able to scale upward in complexity; some languages are more similar to others, and so it's less challenging to do basic stuff.

Examples: IRC bot, todo app, text adventure, sudoku solver.

Beware of getting stuck approaching these problems in the same ways as you did a previous language, though. :)

What tools do you use to mindmap your learning plan when you decide to pick up a new topic? I have tried workflowy and trello, but something is missing....

I wish there was a dedicated app for creating your own syllabus or learning path.

Markdown and a good text editor?

arrived here expecting a heated debate on email obfuscation, thank you hn!

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