Ask HN: How to learn new things better?

It's pretty good.

The main idea is that learning is supposed to feel hard. That sense of frustration and confusion is what building new neural connections feels like.

a.) Print is a lot better than digital.

b.) You shouldn't read books linearly. I generally jump around a lot and read a particular book several times. The first pass might take just an hour or two, I generally try to understand the structure of the book, create a scaffolding of sorts, I might get 15%. During the second pass I might try to get the next 30%. I should have a good idea of the concepts of the book, I might not be able to solve all the problems. In the next pass, get the next 30%. The fourth pass is optional if you really need to understand 100%. The best part is that a lot of times, you don't actually have to do all the passes, the first two might be enough.

The one thing I always hated about school is how you are forced to master each chapter 100% before moving forward. Sometimes going forward actually helps you understand previous chapters because it puts them in context.

c.) Highlighting helps me a bunch. Some people have the issue that they might end up highlighting too much. I don't highlight when it's all new to me, but only after I might have finished the chapter, I'll go back and think about what's important to highlight. It feels like the process of selecting what's important might be more important than the highlighting itself. But when you come back to it later, the highlighting definitely helps. Writing some notes with a pencil in the book is also good.

d.) More important than fully mastering all the material is making sure that you aren't bored or frustrated. If you can't move forward with something, give it some time, come back to it.

e.) Generally if I'm confused, doing a quick review pass from the very beginning of the book tends to clear things up a lot.

f.) Doing a "compare and contrast" between things that seem similar (or even if they don't) is usually a good way of strengthening some connections.

Btw, over the last couple of weeks, I've been trying to learn ML almost full-time. In the process, I think I managed to figure out what are the best resources for this and I'm in the process of setting up a website discussing what I've found. I started working on this yesterday so it's not quite ready yet. However, if you'd like to check out ML in 2017, I'm hoping to make the process a lot less painful. You can sign up here if you'd like to get notified when it's ready

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfnksZmz7oH9Vpjtxp1...

Additionally, you need to write about whatever you're learning. Essays, reviews, whatever strikes your fancy. Learning really happens when you try to use the information.

He was in the process of studying Japanese at the time of the interview and had some specific comments about it vs the several languages he's learned before.

I usually tell people who want to learn to draw to go to http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com/2009/12/preston-blair-le..., get the Preston Blair book, and start doing these exercises by master animator John K (creator of 'Ren & Stimpy'). You will get a lot better, a lot faster. These exercises focus on simple cartoon characters who wear a lot of their construction on the outside; once you can draw cartoon characters, you can keep drawing more of them if that's your thing, or you can build on top of that and start learning anatomy and drawing more complicated characters. (Or do both.)

There's other well-regarded drawing courses on the internet and someday I should probably pick a new one to send noobs to, what with John K kind of being an asshole - but I learnt a hell of a lot when I worked under him, and he is really good at teaching this stuff.

Most of what I know about drawing more complicated figures came from a combination of Bridgeman's "Constructive Anatomy" and Loomis' "Figure Drawing for All It's Worth", and a life drawing teacher who hewed very closely to Glen Vilppu's drawing manual. If you can fit some life drawing classes into your life then TAKE them, you will learn a ton.

Also: Make a space in your life to do this. I ride the bus a lot, and before the advent of smartphones, I'd have little to do to amuse myself besides stare out of the window, read a book, or pull my sketchbook out and draw. Maybe draw some idea floating around my head, maybe draw something I glimpsed out the bus window, maybe something based on my fellow passengers, maybe just some cubes, or the hand I wasn't drawing with. I got a lot of practice in without feeling like I was making myself "practice". Whatever you may be learning, if you regularly drop yourself into a time and place with nothing much to do besides the thing you wanna learn, then you'll do it more often.

Don't blow several hundred bucks on a ton of paints, or on pro software and a Wacom tablet. Just start with a few hardback sketchbooks and some pens and pencils. Oh, and not mechanical pencils. Just grab like a pack of Ticonderoga 2.5Bs, they're cheap and pretty good. And try holding them so that the side of the point addresses the paper for a lot of the beginning of your drawing; this will do several things for you:

* it will train you to keep your wrist fairly steady, and to draw more with your entire arm; keeping your wrist straight and steady will help keep the Carpal Tunnel Fairy away. * it will make your initial lines light, and prone to fade away as your hand brushes the paper; this keeps you from bearing down to gouge an impossible-to-erase line in the paper, and gives you more room to make mistakes before having a dark, illegible mess of lines you can't draw over.

Don't get lost in trying to save a drawing, either. Paper's cheap, turn the page and try the same subject again, or a new one.

When you make a picture you like, hang it over your drawing board, turn it into your computer's backdrop, and keep trying to draw something better than it. You may find yourself hating it because you start seeing all the mistakes. That's great - go draw something new that doesn't make those! (This may take many tries, some mistakes are harder to stop making than others.)

Don't worry about "your style". If someone points out a mistake in your drawing and you find yourself wanting to say "but that's my style!", then you are just covering up your weaknesses unless you can actually sit down and bust out a version of the drawing that Does It Right. When you can do that you can legitim...

Also, I built a search engine for lectures, which has a lot of talks from tech conferences, which I find helpful for learning about software development topics - https://www.findlectures.com

The ideal scenario is to become immersed so the topic becomes "part of you".

I also give myself a two year gestation period of incremental learning to see results and build muscle memory. I did this with programming and once you do it with one topic, you will build the confidence that it will come to fruition with anything else you decide to do.

I'm not a fan of peddling the idea that anything worth learning can be learned "fast". It may work for some people, but I think they are the minority. it's been my experience there's usually a fair amount of self deception involved in "fast" learning....or "fast" anything for that matter. This works for some people - I'm not one of them.

If you want to learn a new language then walk around with headphones listening to people speak it. When you talk to people in English in your head ask yourself how to say the same thing in the alternate language. etc....

https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/

This is especially true with languages, unless you can be fully immersed, but I still recommend it. Look into metacognition and spaced repetition. You'll need a system that works for you but look for techniques backed by research.

Specifically, Fluent Forever is a fantastic book on learning how to learn languages and Scott Young's blog mentioned is great. I second the art recommendation "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". Good luck!

The concept goal: Learning Japanese! (I've been 'learning' for 3 years now).

Here's a screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/afAW49V.png.

Basically it's a moodboard that combines a timer, todos, insights, notes, images and links.

'How does that help me learn new things better' you ask?

The challenge with goals - as I see it - is keeping the path from the you of today to the aspirational you (the one that speaks Japanese) clear. January kicks off, a whole bunch of life gets in the way and when you finally get time to focus that path has become a nebulous mess.

The idea with Goals is to be able to open the app and immediately know:

1. What have I achieved so far: insights on hours spent, tasks completed and how close you are to your goal.

2. What do I have to do next: this is your "how". Tasks, links, audio files, notes.

3. Why am I doing this, again? images, media, notes.

The 'Why' doesn't really fit into most methods of learning but I think forgetting this is the biggest point of failure.

I'm going to grab a coffee and get this shipped. I'll post it to Show HN tomorrow and you can see if it's for you.

Chinese TV sucks. I paid no attention to the ctl+c-ctl+v plots. However it did help me learn tonality in a way that the butchered American classmate pronunciations could never do. Subtitles also helped with learning characters.

I have found that learning works best with as much immersion as possible. It is never as casual as a subway commute crossword puzzle.

Drawing is a giant world that means many different things. Being good at drawing is also very subjective.

A fantastic example of that is the book "Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain" which I see mentioned already. That book is an interesting read and I did enjoy it myself, but I should caution that it teaches more about visually tracing. Some people consider that an example of skilled drawing and if that is what you are looking for then go for it.

From another angle some people consider skill at drawing to be how pleasing it is to look at. This generally has more to do with the line work and shading and color usage. You can draw a significantly anatomically inaccurate arm with beautiful line work and styling and some people would consider that skilled drawing.

Yet another would be to create something from the mind without a visual reference. This has more to do with an understanding of mass and depth and space than either of the two above. And to some people this is what they would consider skilled drawing.

These are only three of the many, many possible goals of a drawing.

Why am I telling you this? Because to me the endeavor of learning to draw is learning what you personally consider a good drawing. The physical world is not made up of lines and smudges. When you draw you are continually making those translations and decisions. That process of discovery is what will lead to you become better at it.

In the end, there are only two reasons why you put a line in the wrong place. Either you physically missed the correct spot with you pencil, or more likely, because you haven't discovered where the right spot is yet.

Don't overthink. Just do it.

And after a few months of trying and reading the process will get better automatically.

Key is to just start and be regular.

A few things that have helped me so far:

- Setting aside at least 1 hour a day to draw. This one is the most important.

- Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards

- Fun with a pencil by Andrew Loomis

- Ctrl+Paint: http://www.ctrlpaint.com/ especially the Traditional Drawing, Composition, Perspective and Anatomy sections.

- Sycra's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0373FA2B3CD4C899

Drawing... well, I'm not having much luck with that. Did 6 months of drawing 1 hour a day last year. Think I got a little better. Reddit has a couple of useful groups to follow:

https://www.reddit.com/r/learntodraw/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals/

* Positive reinforcement: cheerful noises and visual progress once I completed a section.

* Negative reinforcement: if I didn't practice at all that day, I would get a notification at 11pm. If I ignored for a while, they were super passive aggressive, saying things like "These don't seem to be working. We'll stop sending them". I felt guilty and would start agin.

* I wanted to keep my daily streak going. It made me feel like Jerry Seinfeld with his "write a joke a day; put an X on the calendar" technique.

* I liked the concepts of experience (exp) and levels; it let me feel like I was making concrete progress, even if I was totally incompetent. I indulged my gamer side while still being productive!

* duolingo works just as well on browser as mobile

* Training sessions were short enough that if I only had a few minutes of downtime, as long as I had my phone on me, I could actually be productive. This made subway rides that much better.

* duoolingo offers a practice mode where I could work specifically on my speed if I had longer chunks of time and wanted to dive deeper.

And today, I can totally speak intelligible Swedish [1]. It worked.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxoXe5FDIkA – some phrases are off (I should've said "hur man sköter marknadsföring själv") and pronunciation is off.