As a former perfectionist, it was easy for me to fall in to the trap of learning “brick by brick”, where I would try to understand everything in great detail and know it once and for all. I think a better learning metaphor may be splattering paint on a canvas. You’re going to forget lots of stuff, so don’t worry if you’re setting yourself up for going over the same stuff twice, it’ll probably be helpful review anyway. (I think I read some LWer write something like “people tend to really grasp things once they’ve read their 3rd textbook on the subject”.) You might as well follow your nose and learn in a way that interests you. Also, there may be unresolvable dependencies in what you’re learning… e.g. maybe to understand A fully, you need to know B, but to fully know B, you need to know C, and to fully know C, you need to know A. You may also find that reading something without understanding it one day allows you to read with full understanding a few days later. And unlike many types of work, your benefit from learning is a smooth linear function of the amount of it you do… i.e. reading and understanding 10% of a textbook is probably 10% as good as reading and understanding 100%. So embrace the messiness of things.
An even better metaphor than paint splattering may be “just-in-time” learning, where instead of learning stuff, you figure out what you want to accomplish with what you’re going to learn, then learn only what you need to complete that accomplishment, in order to accomplish it. One problem with “just-in-time” learning is that sometimes you don’t know what would be useful to know. For example, maybe the problem you’re working on is isomorphic to some problem in a field you haven’t studied at all. But if you had studied the field at least a little, you would be reminded of it, and then you could study up on it more in order to see how it might apply to your problem. This is an argument for the style of learning in the above blog post: the more fields you have basic knowledge of, the better the odds that you’ll have a vague idea of what might be brought to bear on your problem. I also suspect that learning stuff can develop useful skills even if you forget everything you learn, e.g. lots of MIT alumni profiles in their alumni magazine seem to say stuff like “MIT taught me to think analytically, which has been really helpful for [job that doesn’t require science or math]”. Figure you’re overcoming your aversion to using System 2 or something.
I’ve experimented just a little for using Anki to retain technical knowledge, but it seems like the time investment for memorizing stuff is really high. And it’s all a few clicks away on the internet, so I’d rather just look stuff up when I need it. But it’s probably worth keeping in mind that if you want to get a good, semi-permanent grasp of something conceptually, it’s optimal to space your study out, and try to answer questions for yourself instead of just imbibing information directly (IIRC a study showed that taking a quiz is a more effective way to review for a quiz than rereading was. Also, the Socratic method rocks, in my experience… kinda hoping that online education will eventually shift to that.).
(Note: I’m a novice as autodidacts/researchers go, so don’t take my advice too seriously.)
It may be worthwhile for me to develop a sense as to when I’m able to fully understand something. I wonder how one would go about doing that?
Also, I’ve been using SuperMemo consistently for about six months now. I understand that rote memorization isn’t really “learning”, but it’s helped actually learning in so many ways. At first, it took a while to set up the cards in a fashion I approved of, but now it only takes a few minutes to set up multiple cards, and 10 minutes at most to do the review every morning. I think the time I’ve spent in SuperMemo is well worth what I’ve gained from it.
Henceforth, I’m going to make a conscious effort to “embrace the messiness of things” when it comes to learning. I seem to do do that pretty well when it comes to my environment. ;)
At first, it took a while to set up the cards in a fashion I approved of, but now it only takes a few minutes to set up multiple cards, and 10 minutes at most to do the review every morning.
Could you try to summarize what made you faster at this? Maybe I’m missing something.
I used to be like you, but over time I’ve gotten myself to follow the procedures described in this blog post more closely: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for-programmers.html
As a former perfectionist, it was easy for me to fall in to the trap of learning “brick by brick”, where I would try to understand everything in great detail and know it once and for all. I think a better learning metaphor may be splattering paint on a canvas. You’re going to forget lots of stuff, so don’t worry if you’re setting yourself up for going over the same stuff twice, it’ll probably be helpful review anyway. (I think I read some LWer write something like “people tend to really grasp things once they’ve read their 3rd textbook on the subject”.) You might as well follow your nose and learn in a way that interests you. Also, there may be unresolvable dependencies in what you’re learning… e.g. maybe to understand A fully, you need to know B, but to fully know B, you need to know C, and to fully know C, you need to know A. You may also find that reading something without understanding it one day allows you to read with full understanding a few days later. And unlike many types of work, your benefit from learning is a smooth linear function of the amount of it you do… i.e. reading and understanding 10% of a textbook is probably 10% as good as reading and understanding 100%. So embrace the messiness of things.
An even better metaphor than paint splattering may be “just-in-time” learning, where instead of learning stuff, you figure out what you want to accomplish with what you’re going to learn, then learn only what you need to complete that accomplishment, in order to accomplish it. One problem with “just-in-time” learning is that sometimes you don’t know what would be useful to know. For example, maybe the problem you’re working on is isomorphic to some problem in a field you haven’t studied at all. But if you had studied the field at least a little, you would be reminded of it, and then you could study up on it more in order to see how it might apply to your problem. This is an argument for the style of learning in the above blog post: the more fields you have basic knowledge of, the better the odds that you’ll have a vague idea of what might be brought to bear on your problem. I also suspect that learning stuff can develop useful skills even if you forget everything you learn, e.g. lots of MIT alumni profiles in their alumni magazine seem to say stuff like “MIT taught me to think analytically, which has been really helpful for [job that doesn’t require science or math]”. Figure you’re overcoming your aversion to using System 2 or something.
I’ve experimented just a little for using Anki to retain technical knowledge, but it seems like the time investment for memorizing stuff is really high. And it’s all a few clicks away on the internet, so I’d rather just look stuff up when I need it. But it’s probably worth keeping in mind that if you want to get a good, semi-permanent grasp of something conceptually, it’s optimal to space your study out, and try to answer questions for yourself instead of just imbibing information directly (IIRC a study showed that taking a quiz is a more effective way to review for a quiz than rereading was. Also, the Socratic method rocks, in my experience… kinda hoping that online education will eventually shift to that.).
(Note: I’m a novice as autodidacts/researchers go, so don’t take my advice too seriously.)
It may be worthwhile for me to develop a sense as to when I’m able to fully understand something. I wonder how one would go about doing that?
Also, I’ve been using SuperMemo consistently for about six months now. I understand that rote memorization isn’t really “learning”, but it’s helped actually learning in so many ways. At first, it took a while to set up the cards in a fashion I approved of, but now it only takes a few minutes to set up multiple cards, and 10 minutes at most to do the review every morning. I think the time I’ve spent in SuperMemo is well worth what I’ve gained from it.
Henceforth, I’m going to make a conscious effort to “embrace the messiness of things” when it comes to learning. I seem to do do that pretty well when it comes to my environment. ;)
Could you try to summarize what made you faster at this? Maybe I’m missing something.