Think about the last technical book you started on your own. The first three chapters went well. Somewhere around chapter five a busy week arrived, and the book is still on the desk with a receipt marking the page.
Now think about something you learned alongside one other person. The odds are good you finished it.
Solo study fails for a boring reason. Nobody notices when you stop. There is no cost to skipping this week, and next week the gap makes it harder to restart, so it quietly ends without a decision ever being made.
One partner changes that more than any app or plan. Not a class, and not a group of eight, where everybody assumes somebody else is keeping it going. One person, roughly at your level, who wants to learn the same thing.
Keep the arrangement small and fixed. One chapter or one module a week. Thirty minutes on a call or over lunch, on the same day each week. Each of you arrives having done the reading and having tried one thing from it.
Then use the time for what reading alone cannot do. Explain the part you found hardest and let the other person ask why. You will find out quickly which parts you understood and which parts you only recognised. Argue about the examples that do not match your work. Ask each other what you would actually change because of this chapter.
Choose the partner for reliability over brilliance. Somebody who turns up every week with the chapter half understood is worth more than a genius who cancels every third session.
Agree an end at the start. Eight weeks, or the end of the book. A fixed end makes it easy to say yes, and easy to stop without anybody feeling let down. If it went well, pick the next one.
Two side benefits nobody plans for. You end up with one colleague who knows exactly how you think. And you have a standing half hour where saying I do not understand this part is the normal thing to say.
Monday: think of one person who once mentioned wanting to learn the thing you want to learn, and ask them.
– Asael Shinder
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