Ask HN: What's your learning strategy?

As a working adult:

- don't take rigorous notes because it ends up replicating a lot of the material that I'm consuming anyway

- still write some notes if something interesting stands out; it's usually related to some core idea/explanation, not to technical details

- don't obsess over having "complete" notes or worry too much about organizing them

- try to write some relevant code alongside whatever I'm learning

- spaced repetition is for memorization; I'm not trying to memorize

This is different from how I used to learn for exams at school/university where I would repeatedly re-synthesize notes to a shorter and shorter format until I can reproduce the material from a cue.

I think the distinction between the two modes is important; it seems very weird to me to see knowledge workers putting so much effort to memorize stuff that they can look up anyway.

SRS works well enough for me. At least it's near the top in the ROI optimisation.

But remember that it's just a scheduling mechanism to save you time, not to help remember, necessarily. I like the Harry Lorayne book on memory for various tricks and techniques to actually remember. It's not groundbreaking but goes over a lot of the standard and proven memory hacks.

I think notes are generally a good idea to help you summarize the knowledge you've acquired while spaced repetition is the aspect that will help in retaining the knowledge you've learned. The important thing is that the notes are written in a way you understand and can be picked up and read-again with a limited amount of context. What I mean by 'limited context' is sometimes I forget big portions of what I've learned and writing notes as if I'm teaching someone who knows very little about the subject allows my future self to pick forgotten things up faster. I personally use one of the Anki apps to do this myself.

The best form of spaced repetition IMO is the application of the acquired knowledge in a big project over time. That way re-visiting the concepts comes naturally as you continue to develop something over time.

Obsidian.

I copy/paste what I think are the "atoms" of the thing to learn. And i build a small graph of interconnected .md files in Obsidian.

To me, it is very important to break the medium that brings the information into a graph that suits you the most. (call that process my knowledge ETL, and the result .md files my personal knowledge graph :)

PS: the funny thing is that you indeed refactor your graph when you come back to it with more knowledge. You usually do not remove things, but reorganize it in a better way. Very interesting process...

In my opinion we are bad at deciding what knowledge is important and what ought to be forgotten. I leave this to my subconscious. If I forget something that means I wasn't using it anyway, why try to artificially retain a piece knowledge?

So my strategy is to work first and learn second. When I encounter a roadblock I try o learn something new, but in most cases I then quickly forget about it soon. This might happen several times over. Once I had to learn about unix file permissions, I knew all the commands and numbers and what they meant and it all made sense. But now I only remember `chmod +x` and that there is a command named `chown`. This satisfies for my day-to-day needs and is enough so that I can re-learn the thing if necessary.

And for the general context that are important to know in detail I found that teaching is a good way to remember and reinforce. I teach a course every year and every year I am surprised how much I've forgotten. But it quickly comes back after I start preparing materials for the class.

When I was young I used to think that you can learn a thing once and then remember. Now I know that, speaking strictly for myself, this is not the case.

Go back and forth between theory and practice. If it's something practical like programing or music that means applying the techniques to make something. If it's something you can't really practice like history, that means explaining what I've learned to people. Also use a variety of material about the same subject (book + online articles + videos). Taking notes after having completed a piece of material is a form of practice. Taking notes while consuming material should be avoided, focus on the material and try to really understand it. Of course all of this is iterative.

Can you do it `forwards', `backwards', `inside out'? What these mean depends on what you are trying to learn.

In programming, examples would be:

• writing code and reading and understanding other people's code.

• `executing' some code with pen and paper

• translating a formal statement of an algorithm into code

• translating some code into a formal statement of the algorithm

• translating code between two languages

• implementing the same functionality in as many different ways as you can think of

In learning scales on a musical instrument:

• ascend, then descend

• descend, then ascend

• start/end on notes other than the root

• all of the above but whilst playing the scale in intervals or arpeggios

In learning the times tables, examples:

• what are the factors of 24?

• recite the multiples of 7 backwards from 70

Giving an improvised lecture to an imagined audience in my head on a topic I am studying I find a very useful way of consolidating and systematising my understanding, and of finding gaps to be filled.

Use what you are trying to learn.

Learning is an exercise in creating space in your mind to represent a new map of interrelated symbols.

When you start something new, all the symbols are "too close together" and it takes time and repetition to increase the "resolution" on that map so that you can put the symbols into position with more precision and not have them confused with one another. You don't yet have a good intuition for the significance of each symbol and it won't come from being told, because sources have biases - frequency over time and space is a much stronger signal. It's the same with connections between symbols.

Doing, rather than just reading, is important; you need to try and find that Goldilocks zone of growth, where if things are easier you're not learning but if they're harder you lose hope. Try something just beyond what you know how to do, page in new information on demand when you get stuck (from docs, people, source code, whatever it is).

Writing notes helps me personally creating the space for symbols and reminding myself of what I already heard about but I don't know that it's necessary for everyone, and I especially think I've found it more useful as I've gotten older (and know more stuff already). Sometimes when I learn something "new", I pin it close to a concept I already know, which dulls its novelty and I'm probably more inclined to forget it, until I'm reminded of it again. And this is down to that "creating mental space" idea again.

Repetition increases symbol salience, particularly when you're surprised by the divergence between what you thought something meant and what it actually means. The risk of simply reading, and not doing, is that you're not surprised often enough. Doing stuff keeps you honest.

A research paper called "Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology," which is backed up by experimental studies, can serve as a great introduction to develop a learning strategy [0].

The summary is that doing practice tests (e.g. creating flashcards in a question-and-answer format, or regularly doing practice problems) is highly effective, along with studying over a longer period of time instead of cramming. Switching between learning subjects ("interleaved practice") is also effective, along with creating explanations in your own words about a text, together with asking yourself questions about the text. In contrast, highlighting the text and rereading as a way to learn is relatively ineffective.

[0] Full text [PDF]: https://pcl.sitehost.iu.edu/rgoldsto/courses/dunloskyimprovi...

I have been really obsessed with this one.

Somehow I failed to learn things when I was taught in "official ways", yet I managed to learn the language by being brutally forced into practice and environment that pushed me to make it happen. I moved countries when I was 12, they put me in school straight away without knowing how to speak (although I have been studying for a few weeks, at least the basic grammar).

The language group has been similar to my native tongue, however the alphabet was different (as I was used to cyrilic). Nonetheless, as a kid - I already saw some patterns and similar rules.

I managed not to fail my class as well as spoke and wrote really well after 2.5 years. After 5 years I was better than most of the native tongue speakers in terms of grammar and on par with their vocabulary. Obviously using the language every day and being pressed to do so contributed.

Years later I started learning German in high-school... was so bad it and never managed to even get to the basic level after 4 years. I moved to Berlin again years later but because English was already quite prevalent, it never pressed me to learn German and I never did.

Somehow the most effective learning curve was just doing the thing, making a lot of mistakes and I never took textbooks into account even when doing so.

The methodology was just deliberate practice and tacit knowledge in the end.

I take notes, as energetically as my interest allows. While I do read them subsequently, I do not really make too much use of them. For me, the act of taking notes strongly helps my mind connect to the information in ways that make me know it better, sooner.

I went through a bad patch as the nineties ended and I thought that computer note taking might be a good idea. It produced pretty good notes (I type well) but was much less conducive to learning. In fact, I felt it was distracting and counter-productive.

Handwritten notes. Definitely my first line of offense against ignorance.

After that, teaching it. If I can find an opportunity to make a presentation. That's great. I will always confirm understanding and level up when I explain what I know in a semi-formal way. Explaining to colleagues and friends is good. I didn't do study groups in college but found analogous social activities very helpful since.

After that, doing it. If it's a practical topic, putting the lessons into practice asap is very helpful. Like, I'm sure, many of you, I am a programmer. If I start using a new tool, technique or idea, I will soon have solid understanding.

Of course, I also keep going. If I do not keep seeking progress in a topic domain, then any knowledge I have will fade.

In order to understand things I need to use what I learn. So I try it out and if it's useful I drill it until I remember a few ways to apply it.

This is something I've thought about a lot; I ended up compiling tips on learning from a variety of different sources into a master document that I go back to every once in a while to see if there's any new things I can implement [0].

I only integrate one or two practices at a time, and I stopped short of implementing SRS or a Zettelkasten because I began to realize I was spending too much time on productivity to actually get anything done. I'll probably return to them later - I think SRS especially gets a bad rap from people who like to think about things conceptually as "just being rote memorization", but IMO the human brain is not a computer for Platonic objects. It thrives on hard data and real-world examples, and "memorizing" components or instances of a particular concept so they're at hand for effortless retrieval just makes connecting them to existing ideas easier (which is arguably all understanding things is).

[0] https://pastebin.com/sk6iNDpp

No notes, just binging hands-on immersion iterating on short feedback loops.

This will make you look like a „genius“ to outsiders, but it only works on subjects that allow for short feedback loops.

(example where it works: coding, example where it wouldn‘t work: raising a child)

Carry a notebook around and frequently take notes for things to look back at. The wet concrete of the brain needs frequent imprinting for success in memory/recall. One notebook for career, one notebook for side business and projects. Have tried multiple notebooks, 2 seems to be the balance for me. Different colors. Keep colors consistent over the months/years of getting second and third ones.

My learning strategies are very personal, subtle, and hard to explain. I believe I build most of them a long time ago after reading Mind over Machine [1]. It's a critique of the, back then, glorious promises of AI, but it has a very thorough take on what learning is and is not.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Over-Machine-Hubert-Dreyfus/dp/0...

One trick I have for taking lots of notes rapidly is the following:

Say somebody says a long string "The Cap Theorem is Consistency, Availability, and Partitioning," you write down the initial letters with space to come back and complete the words: T__ c_____ t_____ i_ c_______ a______ p_____. Once you have the initial letters down the hardest part is done. For very long sentences you want to remember this helps a great deal because you will still remember the last several words with the hint of the first letter when you do a second pass to fill the (rest of-the-word) in.

1) no notes

2) n/a

3) yes, sort of. Learning something an hour per day over 10 days > learning something for 10 straight hours in one day

4) no method, but I tend to naturally go just below the surface on many different topics, so I think that helps.

A key thing for me is that I learn best by doing.

So maybe watching 5-10 hours of a structured "course", usually at 1.5x speed is about my limit before I have to get started on my own project applying what I'm learning.

After that, it's mostly blog posts, GitHub, and Stack Overflow to learn the more advanced aspects.

I create the shortest possible time loop between consuming something (text, video, etc.) and applying it to a real project or problem. Then shortly after applying it, perhaps at the end of the day I'll write about the process as if I were explaining it to someone who doesn't know about the topic beforehand. If I can't write about it while clearly explaining it while having a complete and total understanding of every word then I go back and research anything on demand to fill in the gaps.

The idea is you consume and apply, then quickly turn a combination of theory + practice into your own words which is proving to yourself that you understand it. The key point there is "you", you don't need to publish the written component to anyone. Its purpose is to force you to come up with unique thoughts to combine this new information into something coherent which I'm sure has some benefit in making your brain remember it (but I have no scientific proof of this). It can also be used as a personalized detailed reference in case you ever forget the details which IMO is much better than scattered notes you tried to quickly write while you listened to or read something.

I don't know if this is a formal way of learning something. It's something I've done for most of my life because it felt intuitive at the time and still does.

Gain familiarity and background (exposure to facts and ideas without struggling to understand them fully). Dig into particular paths of interest. Get my hands dirty--or discuss with someone.

Andrew Huberman has some really good podcasts describing how learning habits and how you can change you day to day to help learn more https://youtu.be/hx3U64IXFOY

This might sound kind of bizarre, but I don't really try to learn. I think I have a minor learning disability where I have a very hard time remembering things that I deem (consciously or not) as unimportant in the long term. Instead, I try to focus on extracting the nature and patterns of relationships, instead of the specific details. An example might be: learning the purpose of a wristwatch and its power source, versus understanding how all of the gears work together. Unless I'm working on a specific problem involving how the gears work together, I won't remember it. Even then, I'll put it in my working memory just long enough to solve the problem and then forget it. But the patterns of relationships stay forever, and it's easy to associate with other patterns of relationships, once you forget the specifics.

In tech this can be an obstacle when communicating because many engineers have an extremely fine-grained memory, seemingly all the time. I will hand wave different concepts as a black box that we don't need to know right now, where they are happy to explain them at length, in detail. But if it's not relevant, I just don't care. They will also expect me to explain concepts that (to me) aren't relevant to the problem, and I have to say "I don't remember."

I like to use the phrase "practice makes permanent" - not "practice make perfect", cause every instructor disagrees, and not "perfect practice makes perfect" because perfection is subjective and a fool's errand. In a nutshell, whatever you do in practice will be what you do in application.

This leads to then what I consider "foundational knowledge", or refining your understanding on Bloom's Remember, Understand, and Apply categories. I think we try too hard to push students toward the Analyze, Evaluate, and Create categories too quickly, which results in poorer performance, especially in the classroom context where the next course assumes "mastery" (another term I dislike, I prefer proficient). Once a student is proficient, then we can talk theory all day.

So, in my classrooms, I mirror the methodology I commonly see in martial arts - warm-up, demonstrate technique, drill the technique, and (depending on the art) spar, or apply the technique. If you are struggling at one of these steps, then we can identify the issues and provide intervention practice at the appropriate level. Traditional classrooms don't really allow for extended spaced repetition, but I do believe it helps form autonomy.

More specific to your question since most of the above is just my general opinions on learning:

- Notes are good and writing notes is better than copy-pasting them [1]

- Highlighting your notes for important details is a lower level practice that is also beneficial [2]

- If you are given a technique/algorithm, attempt to do it on additional practice problems. If you can, through spaced repetition. For example, if you were learning the A* Search algorithm, change the starting and goal nodes in your current examples or make a new one with randomized numbers.

- Chi's ICAP Framework has a few additional points as well on which lower level practices are better than others [3]. However, as I'm arguing in my dissertation, better overall may not be better for the individual. If a student is struggling in a Constructive activity, I'm arguing it may be better to 'downgrade' them to a lower-level activity to reinforce understanding (again, my thoughts toward foundational knowledge).

[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1240624.1240773

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/036147...

[3] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1044018.pdf