Notes on Learning

Gagan Sharma — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 16:50:01 +0000

How to absorb information faster and retain for longer

The following is a compiled set of tools that I have gathered from various sources to help in the process of learning. You can
use it as a framework to tackle any learning assignment. There are a ton of material out there and I have included only the
ones that have helped me immensely.

Before Study

Design a near-optimal environment that you're comfortable with.
- Try Airplane mode on phone.
- Try noise-cancelling headphones.
- Try ambient background music to help in concentration (noisli, brain.fm, freecodecamp's code-radio).
Design the study sessions along the lines of Deliberate practice.
- Find material which is not too easy, nor too hard but at a level that pushes you to exercise your brain without requiring advanced skills.
- Model your self-education around these principles. Diversify your resources.
- Focus on applications first when starting out, then learn the theory as and when needed. Example: If you're trying to learn Deep Learning, try building some models first and then learn the theory behind it, as taught in the excellent Fast.ai course. Another example: If you're trying to learn a second language, try speaking useful phrases before learning grammar.
- Learn by doing. Build things. Get actively involved in the process.

During Study

Divide your study sessions into chunks of 25 minutes of focused work followed by 5 minutes of break. See Pomodoro method, Forest app.
Take notes while you study. Type/write the words out in your note-taking app/notebook instead of copy-pasting or capturing images.
Simultaneously create flashcards to use spaced-repetition. This website on learning quantum computing incorporated spaced-repetition into the learning material. You can use Anki for your personal notes. The app would take care of your repetitions.
Try to incorporate visual mnemonics while learning. Nelson Dellis' excellent book and his youtube channel will get you covered.
Most importantly, Pause and Ponder (a phrase taken from videos by Grant Sanderson). Think in analogies and reflect on the intuitive meaning to deepen the conceptual understanding.

After Study

Review often. If you use Anki, this will be taken care of automatically. See this and this. If you don't use Anki or any spaced-repetition software, schedule your reviews in 1, 3, 7, 21, 45, ... days. This is what I used before moving to Anki. You can try your own schedules. See this and this.
Recall trumps re-reading. When you're reviewing, try to recall the material instead of just reading/watching/listening it again. Familiarity gives us a false sense of knowledge. Test yourself while reviewing to help in retention. Barbara Oakley's book and course are amazing resources which delve deep into this concept and other study techniques.
Use the Feynman technique for reinforcing what you learned:
- Pretend you are teaching it to a student.
- Identify gaps in your explanation; Go back to the source material, to better understand it. Also, see this.
Try to apply what you've learned to concrete problems to help cement your concepts.

Have fun learning!!

DEV Community: Gagan Sharma

Notes on Learning

How to absorb information faster and retain for longer

Before Study

During Study

After Study