I’m sometimes very curious; however, I think the primary reason I’m not learning more is that I forget things very easily. This might just be me, or it might be fairly common.
Anyway, if you periodically blow away (lose track of, stop using) the external-memory tools that cue and reinforce your good habits, then there is a ceiling to your tools’ sophistication, and your average set of tools will be significantly less powerful than the ceiling.
For example, I rewrote a programming-process helper recently and it’s not that much different from the previous version, that I might have written two years ago.
Mostly, my tools are for programming, but I’ve had procedures and tools for systematic reading and retaining knowledge, procedures for evaluating arguments critically, procedures and tools for developing mathematical theories including proofs, conjectures, and examples.
To become stronger, you might have to plan for forgetting your current passions, and throw your memes/tools outwards like dandelion seeds or boomerangs, hoping that even after forgetting, you will re-encounter them. This suggests that even very personal tools need a certain sort of polish, in order to be taken up and re-adopted by your future self—small size, readmes, source distribution, good comments, extremely portable implementation, and so on, all help with reuptake.
(This also connects to my belief that you should not identify with your genes alone, but also your memes.)
I’m sometimes very curious; however, I think the primary reason I’m not learning more is that I forget things very easily. This might just be me, or it might be fairly common.
Anyway, if you periodically blow away (lose track of, stop using) the external-memory tools that cue and reinforce your good habits, then there is a ceiling to your tools’ sophistication, and your average set of tools will be significantly less powerful than the ceiling.
For example, I rewrote a programming-process helper recently and it’s not that much different from the previous version, that I might have written two years ago.
Mostly, my tools are for programming, but I’ve had procedures and tools for systematic reading and retaining knowledge, procedures for evaluating arguments critically, procedures and tools for developing mathematical theories including proofs, conjectures, and examples.
To become stronger, you might have to plan for forgetting your current passions, and throw your memes/tools outwards like dandelion seeds or boomerangs, hoping that even after forgetting, you will re-encounter them. This suggests that even very personal tools need a certain sort of polish, in order to be taken up and re-adopted by your future self—small size, readmes, source distribution, good comments, extremely portable implementation, and so on, all help with reuptake.
(This also connects to my belief that you should not identify with your genes alone, but also your memes.)