One approach that I like is to combine "memorizing almost nothing", with writing things down for myself. Basically, my rule of thumb is that if I have to look something up more than twice, I write down the answer in a Markdown cheatsheet. This has three major benefits:
A) The next time I need to look it up, I can just CTRL+F in my cheatsheet repo and easily find exactly what I am looking for. It is also usually much easier to grok my own notes than what others have written - my brain likes my own writing style :)
B) Writing things down helps cement them in your brain, without even consciously trying to remember them. I always find that I have improved recall of something after I write it down.
and finally,
C) Since I don't normally allow myself to copy and paste into my cheatsheet, writing something down usually means I need to reword it, which forces me to learn the topic enough so that I can talk/write about it.
Plus, a collection of cheatsheets can become a fun programming project. I integrated mine with GatsbyJS to auto-publish them to the web (they are here if anyone is curious).
One approach that I like is to combine "memorizing almost nothing", with writing things down for myself. Basically, my rule of thumb is that if I have to look something up more than twice, I write down the answer in a Markdown cheatsheet. This has three major benefits:
A) The next time I need to look it up, I can just CTRL+F in my cheatsheet repo and easily find exactly what I am looking for. It is also usually much easier to grok my own notes than what others have written - my brain likes my own writing style :)
B) Writing things down helps cement them in your brain, without even consciously trying to remember them. I always find that I have improved recall of something after I write it down.
and finally,
C) Since I don't normally allow myself to copy and paste into my cheatsheet, writing something down usually means I need to reword it, which forces me to learn the topic enough so that I can talk/write about it.
Plus, a collection of cheatsheets can become a fun programming project. I integrated mine with GatsbyJS to auto-publish them to the web (they are here if anyone is curious).
Nice one
You have a really great cheatsheet right there!
Thanks! I'm constantly adding to it as I learn!