Ask HN: How do you keep track of your learning and progress?

7 points by 8611m 9 years ago | 4 comments

There is an overwhelming amount of resources available for learning - books, tutorials, MOOCs, online paid subscriptions, documentation, conference talks. If you are juggling between multiple resources and learning multiple technologies at the same time (R and Python or HTML and CSS), what is a good way to keep a track of your learning and progress?

sotojuan 9 years ago |

I don't. I learn and do one thing at a time, close down everything else, and visit HN/Lobsters/etc as little as possible. I take notes by hand but that's just a habit—I don't go back to them often.

I casually updated a "knowledge" repo[1], but I don't do a good job at it. I keep it tech-knowledge only, though.

I think daily practice over long periods of time is more important than "keeping track" of things. Pushing your comfort zone a bit everyday (if possible) will lead you to mastery.

[1] https://github.com/sotojuan/knowledge

mattbgates 9 years ago |

It is insane the amount of information available. Facebook feed. Hacker News. Extensions or plugins that show you streams of your news. Medium.com showing your selections. Email subscriptions. Definitely see your point! There's no way to really "track" it. Very rarely do I ever read the same article twice, as it is familiar, but I certainly don't remember every single piece I've read.. just pretty much obtained the information and maybe used it to improve some things I do.

But something I did do to at least take notes for myself... I designed https://mypost.io (MyPost) which I created for as a content platform in order to put anything on the Internet in seconds. Of course, it is for everyone. Before that, I would probably log into Gmail and compose and email and just save it into drafts. Then I got acquainted with Google Drive and create a document or spreadsheet to keep track. But if I wanted to share that, I'd have to give access to the person I wanted to share with. I love Google Drive but it is not without its annoyances, particularly with permissions issues.

I don't keep track of things that I've read per se, but I tend to take tons of notes for myself, usually bullet points. If an idea pops into my head, I can navigate over to the site, jot it down, publish it, save it, and blam, done! I also added the ability to save posts. And later on, return to it to edit it.

It helps. I also run a blog so coming up with ideas and making a list of them on there helps. Already still, just asking that question of how to keep track of learning and progress is probably the idea for a new web app that is designed for that. How to keep track exactly ... is the next question! :)

Cozumel 9 years ago |

One way is to revisit your old code, as you get better you'll see ways to improve it that you just didn't know before.

dmarlow 9 years ago |

I use https://degreed.com. It's a great way to not only keep track of your learning but also find new content to learn by using the search, recommendations and by following individuals who are learning about the topics you're interested in.

Disclaimer: I work at Degreed.