Ask HN: How do I learn faster?

11 points by AlexAMEEE 9 years ago | 11 comments

I'm afraid that this sounds like a stupid Quora question but ...

How do I learn faster ?

Things I already do:

- I do sports to stay fit.

- I repeat the things I've learned the next day.

- I do breaks.

- I do things that I enjoy.

- I sleep enough

- I try to connect the thing I'm learning right now with things that I've already learned

- I don't learn too many things

- I batch things, for example: one day: math, physics, CS, the other day something else.

I'm aware of the fact that we are all humans, I'm not trying to accomplish anything impossible, I don't have any weird expectations, I just feel like that I'm not getting my 100%.

What are your tricks ?

sharmi 9 years ago |

Coursera's learning hoe to learn will mostly cover what you have said here already.

This is something I found recently in another thread and would like to work on this now. "how to learn without a mentor"

https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/04/17/learning-without-a-m...

sharmi 9 years ago | |

Hi responding to my own comment, it has been some time since I took that course, and reading multiple articles about Learning has muddled my thoughts on what I had learnt and where.

So I went back to refresh my memory about the course 'Learning How to Learn' and realized there is more value to it than what other articles normally outline. I am linking to a few course notes to give anyone who reads this a better understanding of what you will gain from it.

https://github.com/Espores/Learning-how-to-learn-Coursera-No...

https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivated/comments/5950tm/text_i...

tchaffee 9 years ago |

I thought the Learning to Learn course on Coursera was excellent. It covers some of the things you mentioned but a lot more and also explains why in terms of how your brain works. It only took me a few hours to complete the course.

AlexAMEEE 9 years ago | |

Thanks I'll check that out.

kleer001 9 years ago |

> - I try to connect the thing I'm learning right now with things that I've already learned

That's a big one. You're right on target.

Personally, I try to focus on cross domain topics and heuristics.

Like Sturgeon's law, The 80:20 rule, exponential growth, KISS, etc...

If you're asking about raw memorization I'm sure there's a physical limit to the ratio of usefulness to depth of data.

And don't forget about The Dunning–Kruger effect and the fact that lots of people get stuff done without knowing how to do it at the outset. But that's only if you're learning to do rather than learning to learn.

itamarst 9 years ago |

Reflecting one one's mistakes. "The Power of Intuition" by Gary Klein has some good bits on this, but basically look for the cues and patterns you missed, so you know what to look for next time. been doing that with programming (https://softwareclown.com) and the effort of seeing why I made mistake usually gives me much better understanding of what to do better next time.

MurdocTannen 9 years ago |

Best approach for me is to make sure I apply what I'm trying to learn to a specific project. If I'm going to learn a new programming language, I cannot just learn it from a book, it does not stick. I always find some project (which may or may not be relevant to what I'm learning) and build the learning up around the project. For me this also works with other things than a programming language.

sgillen 9 years ago |

Something I didn't see mentioned yet is putting what you learned into practice. Building even a small program (from scratch) to demonstrate some new tool you learned. Doing this I feel I learn The subject faster and in more depth.

bjourne 9 years ago |

My one trick would be to practice a lot. For example, if you are learning math or programming, you won't learn very much by watching ted talks, youtube videos or reading blog posts. Instead you need to spend all your hours typing code and working on progressively more difficult problems. Like if you want to learn graphics programming, start by drawing pixels, then lines, then 3d rotating shit and shading stuff. Active learning is much more important than passive learning.

destruktive 9 years ago |

Vocal repetition works for me. I find that everything I try to teach someone else sticks right away. My poor wife has heard a lot of PowerShell cmdlets but she's aware that I learn better like this.

LifeQuestioner 9 years ago |

By learning more slowly. And not rushing, being mindful and asking questions

that way the info you learn will actually stick