Ask HN: Framework to explore multiple topics of interest?

11 points by camelcasing 4 years ago | 3 comments

Hey all! I'm starting my first swe job out of grad school soon. From a few internship experiences, I found myself going all out on the project at hand while not doing anything else.

Now that I have a permanent job, I want to keep my job time restricted to 9-5 and outside of it, I'm interested in learning about multiple topics unrelated to the job like Natural Language Processing, Topics in Economics/Finance/Management, Information Retrieval, etc.

How do you all go about choosing what to read/learn when you have many options to consider? Do you employ any framework for doing this? How have you been able to keep your job time separate from personal development time? Thanks!

ximeng 4 years ago |

Read or otherwise learn about topics you’re interested in without worrying too much about a framework. Take notes.

Separately structure your notes and build up your own framework that represents your interests and priorities. This can include setting structured goals if you want but doesn’t need to. You can also track random thoughts you have to identify new interests you might want to spend time on.

Add in more directed reading around topics of interest that you’ve identified through the process of undirected exploration followed by reflection on and structuring of what you discover.

You can make this a fixed framework by allocating time to each of these three activities in a structured way. But it’s also ok to do this more casually if you prefer.

Also good to share with others what you’re finding interesting and to find out what other people you like are interested in to help direct this process. You can also connect this to your work or desired future career if that feels relevant to you.

camelcasing 4 years ago | |

this is super helpful. thank you!

max002 4 years ago |

If you want to learn a lot/explore a lot of areas i highly recommend spending some time on proper mind mapping (not just same color boxes with same thickness of arrows) those sujbjects. I used to have them drawn and update directly on wall or on paper sheets sticked to the wall. Then you see all that stuff all the tine. CherryTree or mindmaps for logging your day too :D and a paper diary