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Comment by mooreds | Hacker News Reader

I have a friend who talks about the flywheel model of learning. If, every day, you spend even 15 minutes towards your goal of what have you (aka, add even a little momentum to your flywheel), at the end of a year, you will have a lot of knowledge.

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I used to agree with this but what I've seen in practice is a lot of people who have half-assed their way through beginner tutorials but have no actual practical grasp of how to do a non-guided project.

What she's done is pretty difficult -- executing a new concept daily -- and it's amazing she managed to keep it up when most others would drop out/fail.

I personally think "a lot of knowledge" comes through those lost hours spent fixing obscure, annoying problems and bugs and inconsistencies that force someone to really think through how that system works.

Hmm... I guess I'd say half assing your way through beginner tutorials is better than doing nothing (if it is on the path to your goal). That said, flywheels are slow to start up, and you can't expect to do one or two or ten tutorials and have it spinning fast.

As Aristotle said: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

It's also called the "Seinfeld Method" (http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se...) or "Don't break the chain."

The chain of Xs reminds me of github's `green squares` signalling a push!

Some people take the "Always Be Pushing" mantra very seriously. That's exactly it.

15 minutes per day is not long enough for effective learning. I think you'd be better off with 1 hour 3x per week for a similar time investment - especially when you take into account setup time and context switching.

That's true enough if it's a straight choice between those two scenarios. But it's a quirk of human nature that if you try and do something 3 times a week you're less likely to stick to it than doing something every day without fail. If it's only 3 times a week then it's easy to say to yourself "I'll leave it until tomorrow".

I'm deeply skeptical of this. Any sources backing this up (preferably something looking at the cognitive value of this kind of learning)?

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