General Tips

• Reduce Variance as much as possible: Learning effectively requires a focus. But the mind can itself get in the way, due to fear of failure or getting into uncomfortable territory. Get around this by taking the smallest step possible, trying the simplest examples - copying existing samples if necessary. Emulate a child's ability to explore and try things out even if it fails. Observe. Failure is how we learn. For physical activities try to get your body into a routine.
• See Inner Game of Tennis approach

• Pekka Enberg used this approach to learn Rust

• When learning a skill it's worth getting fast on things that take less than a minute. These are typically things you'll do a lot of. Removes the cognitive overhead when learning more abstract things. When learning a subject ask the simplest question that can explain some fundamental principle you don't understand. Continue to expand the domain of questions that have easy decision processes, such as rules or laws that. Learn to distinguish between what you know and what you kind of know (and might be cargo culting). Take pleasure in being wrong. Write posts in a way that are falsifiable.

• See Taking pleasure in being wrong (with Buck Shlegeris)

• 10 Things Software Developers Should Learn about Learning)

• Go at least one level deeper on a topic to identify the building block. The surface levels can change pretty fast, but the fundamentals stay relevant longer. (via @amodm). Scott Young in Ultra Learning mentions a related thing that for skills to be transferable one has to identify abstractions that are common across fields and this requires going deeper.

• Use spaced repitition techniques to reinforce earlier learnings to long term memory

• Use writing to clarify your thinking. Read in support of your writing, which means be comfortable not reading content cover to cover, but skipping to the relevant portion to the part you’re writing at the moment. Get feedback on your writing. Be proactive in finding holes in your argument, don’t hesitate changing your position if the arguments in favor. It’s worthwhile switching sides (or to “invert” in Charlie Munger’s language) regardless of your current position to make sure you understand the opposing viewpoint correctly. Publish the work to get more feedback. See Learn by writing

• Experts Recognize, Beginners Reason

• To understand a concept keep switching between concrete to abstract to concrete. This is also referred to as a "Semantic Wave" a concept defined by Australian Scientist Karl Maton. For example, when learning a new programming language, start with a simple program, then try to understand the underlying concepts, then try to apply those concepts to a different problem. (via How to build a learning machine)

• Reading a lot of code will help someone become a more efficient programmer.

• Seeking to succeed (rather than avoid failure) and believing that ability is changeable are important factors in resilience and learning.

Tips on Reading & Understanding Effectively

• Read in multiple phases. Don't feel compelled to understand things in the first reading. 1. High-level concepts in first phase. Write down key/unknown terms and map how they relate to each other. 2. Go one step deeper and make notes.
• Chunking We can only hold a handful (6-7) key items in our brain at one moment. So use multiple phases to build higher level abstractions or chunks
• Read the chapter headings and try to gather what the chapters might be about (via Ravi)
• The last paragraph of a chapter usually summarizes the chapter. Read it and see if there's anything surprising to make you want to read the full chapter.

Bookmarks

• https://www.cold-takes.com/learning-by-writing/
• https://superorganizers.substack.com/p/how-to-build-a-learning-machine
• https://www.are.na/satchit-haridas/modes-of-thinking
• Alan Kay annotates video of Timothy Gallwey demonstrating his thesis from Inner Game of Tennis
• Taking pleasure in being wrong (with Buck Shlegeris)
• 10 Things Software Developers Should Learn about Learning