Learning ways to learn new topics

hroCovid-19 is an excellent opportunity for learning. As one of the core foundations of my career is a strong technical understanding, I jumped into a deep dive with Kotlin and Kubernetes. But soon, I realized I might miss an opportunity.

The world has become more dynamic. In 2013, I thought if I learn new technologies, such as I master common Big Data platforms well, I might not have to learn something new too soon.

But also in non-technical topics, there is much change and even confusion. One of my projects this year is to become more health-aware. There is so much misleading and contradicting material out there. It is often not easy to follow the right track.

So how about instead of learning new technologies during a phase where I have time, I also investigated how fast do I get new knowledge into my brain and what I can do to improve—some of the insights I want to share.

Learning KPIs

Let's assume it takes me 10 hours to learn a specific topic. What if I can understand the same within 8 hours?

This KPI is questionable as every student knows who tries to push knowledge into his brain as fast as possible. Learning is instead an on-going process where you reliably build the base. Yes, you get faster eventually, but there are no miracles.

In this way, I also realized there are three phases

• pre-learning
• learning
• post learning

This blog post is structured from pre to post, although sometimes circles overlap. Again, many insights did not come just during this covid-19 face but have a long history as I had always been interested in reflecting on the ways I work.

1. Structured Learning

In the past, when there was a new topic, I sat down and studied the first material I found about it. Often it was the result of initial web research, sometimes a book that I had at hand.

My first research gave me confidence and also sometimes the illusion that I mastered a new topic. How good I understood it, often had to learn when I tried applying the knowledge. Sometimes, it worked and sometimes realized that I was not as efficient as I thought.

Structured learning is the first lesson I learned from my exploration of how to learn is to establish education similar to a project plan and put some governance around.

This experience included keeping track of resources that I own already or find interesting (e.g., ebook, audiobooks, or online courses). Instead of jumping right into learning, I ask myself: "What is the most important topic, I want to learn." and then I come up with a list of items. I also ask myself how I can find out that I successfully understood and applied knowledge. In short, I prepare myself a curriculum like a teacher would have done for me at school. Deciding what not to learn and what to avoid is also essential.

One meaningful learning was to connect learning with ceremonies. When I dive into a topic, I understand that some resources are essential, and the best is to learn everything I can from it. When processing, I create ceremonies such as what I do when I finish a book (e.g., writing a Goodreads review).

2. Keep a Todo List

One part of my learning is to maintain a todo list. I have a personal todo list that I organize per week. Each week I set the tasks I want to accomplish.

I have all my work in one workweek in the bucket planned. I define these tasks as SMART tasks. Top of Backlog are tasks that I would do in case I ran out of projects.

In my planned bucket, I have all tasks. Learning is part of a project, and so my bucket planned contains learning lessons. The amount of learning tasks depends on the project work, but each week I want to have at least one learning task.

I have also milestones defined. Measurable goals that contain measure points to I want to reach. One example: Through a phase of hard work and family, I gained more weight than I should have. So I have defined some milestones where I have set a specific number my scale to show so that I can mark this milestone as done. So I cannot directly influence a milestone, but just indirectly, by doing what is right to meet the goal.

Milestones are also deeply connected with learning. The topic is to be able to reduce weight; I also need to learn more about nutrition and the right way to work out. So if my life milestones are about to lose weight, I can mark every learning that helps me to understand how to lose weight as necessary. I might be at the same time interested in other topics. Maybe I want to learn about the History of Armenia. But as long I do not have a tangible milestone, a specific goal, something I want to achieve, I will always put learning activities in my todo list that help me to reach my milestone goals.

Another topic is learning modules. I decide on resources and split them into chapters so that I can add them to my todo list what brings us to the resourcing.

3. Only the best Ressources

If something is essential, people invest much time to find the best resource for it. Take a house search for an example. Sometimes house searchers look for years for their perfect home as they would not want to accept something that is not optimal.

I apply this perfectionism in my search for knowledge. I read only high-quality newspapers, like the NY Times or The Economist, and do not waste my time on tabloids.

If we explore technology as one example, there are so many half-trained people out there. Somebody thinks he can become an influencer by putting a new YouTube video online where he explains a technology he has not yet wholly mastered himself. The same thing applies to the before-mentioned topic of weight loss. Some books are more written to be able to be sold than to bring good. They do not provide real content.

I try to pick the best resources. It took me one day to have my learning base for learning Kotlin, for instance, but in it paid off. The creators of Kotlin put the Coursera course on Kotlin on the platform. If I had picked just a random training, I would not have learned nearly the same and maybe even worse, some concepts I might have even misunderstood. The same thing I applied to nutrition, it took me a long time to find the books I want to learn from, but also, this pays off.

One option to find resources is to look in Quora. This way was how I found the Kotlin course. There are always questions such as: What is the best resource to learn a specific topic, and the experts answer it. By finding the right help from which you want to know, you are also able to learn a lot about the subject already.

4. My Digital Brain

I always loved to have a structure in my knowledge base. A Course of Learning on how to learn on Coursera recommends chunking as a method to sort knowledge, among a lot of other things. I recommend this course, btw. Barbara Oakley, the course instructor, is a personality, and I found the lessons to be beneficial. It does not consume much time, and the lessons are helpful.

I used OneNote to structure information; now, I am gradually exploring an alternative Joplin. But this is a topic for another article.

I want to outline this on a technical topic; I have notebooks for other areas of my life as well.

I have grouped all knowledge of technology. This structure is, of course, flavored on my focus of Data and Cloud Engineering, a Front End Developer might replace topics such as data management, maybe with UI Design. But in the end, some of the core structure is universal for every software engineer.

The structure is bottom-up. In the topic core, I keep information on Operating Systems, Infrastructure, Development, and DevOps. These are essential topics for my engineering work. I group all topics logically above Core topics as well. So above Infrastructure, which part of the core, there is data platform, data engineering is done on a platform, and then we have analytics to create value that drives business.

The key is to work from the overview to the details. So, I keep track of the core section on, for instance, on some commands to monitor my Linux application, but I also store all my notes on detailed troubleshooting.

In sum, all my notebooks are two-dimensional. I group them into fields, and within the areas, I go from basics to details. The same things apply to other topics like health or languages or whatever topic I check in my notebooks.

These notebooks grow with my research, and this is where I see progress. When I started to care about my health, I knew that things such as carbs, protein, and fat exist, and I had an idea of what to eat and not. Now I have a very structured notebook on that topic, and I group these items under the category macronutrients and collect many details, so I understand better now what to eat and what to avoid.

The above is an excellent example of this routine in practice. I think one of the fundamental ways to knowledge mastery is to have this evolving knowledge base system.

I, however, want to highlight one downside of this. Once you get used to this structure, you depend on it. It can be painful if you are working as a consultant environment, where you cannot access this structure.

5. Mens sana in corpore sano

When I was taking the first week on Course of Learning on Coursera, there was also one point about exercise and how it helps Dr. Terrence Sejnowski to process knowledge and learning. There was even a video that showed him running somewhere on the beaches in California.

At this point, I have to make a small confession. In March, my primary brain fuel was sugar and energy drinks. I was still working on a project and powered myself up so that I can make one more day with sound output.

Retrospectively seen, I realized that my self-empowering was short-lived. I pushed myself through 8 hours of work, but that was it. I was extra exhausted.

Starting from April 1st, I dropped all sugar bombs, and energy drinks followed soon. I changed my diet and invested much time to ask myself the question of what I can do to live more healthily. I also ensured a good night's sleep. Not just lost, I already quite some weight since then. I also feel more energized to learn something new. Changing to a healthy lifestyle has had maybe the most profound influence on what I will accomplish in the next years.

6. Clean Mind (Mindfulness through inner preparation)

We are sometimes affected by our emotions. We are angry or worried about things that happen to us during the day.

The anger, of course, can also be a motivator. Sometimes I achieved many results through defiance. I was angry about something, and then I got the energy to get things going that before I instead pushed away.

But often, these boosts of energy through emotions can also sidetrack you. When people worry about their finances, they cannot study how to create a smart financial strategy, because they will always shift to their current financial problems such as a mortgage payment. Also, in many cases, strategic decisions in an emotional state have negative consequences.

So, I always take some time to clean my mind. I learned to put some worries aside, and a structure in my work often helps me a lot.

A clean mind goes hand in hand with what I call a stoic sense. The more you learn on how to deal with emotions, the more resilient you get, and the less you put yourself in longterm situations that drains energy from you.

7.Keeping distractions at bay

By taking care of the structure and being healthy, we have some tips on how to prepare to learn. Now it is time to focus on the progress of learning itself.

The course mentioned above on Coursera, recommends the Pomodoro techniques, which I found useful.

I learned that I could focus better if I clear mu workspace(which includes computer desktop screens) will work more focussed. So before I start something new, I close the windows of my tasks before.

The biggest challenge is that if you have an environment, you cannot optimize easily. In Covid-19, it can be family as many people now have their kids around them. Also, spouses calling the kids affect you and the utterly silent space where no-one talks, can become a utopic idea.

Sometimes, the perfect workplace with silence is a goal.

8. Measure

Pomodoro is a way to measure progress. The amount of Pomodoro cycles completed gives you an indication of how effective you are. In short, in Pomodoro, you create cycles of 25 minutes focus and 5 minutes rest. More to this technique here.

I also use Tyme to track my progress. Time is a time management tool for the mac. Below there is one screenshot of my internal project.

To each task in my task list, I have a category. This approach gives me discipline, and I stay focussed. If I have a full workload for one week and if a new topic is not on the todo list of that week (unless there is an emergency case), I don't do it.

It is sometimes hard to get used to time management. We are in a creative flow, and it feels that if we measure our time, we take something of the creative magic, but this is not the case. Also, it feels like sometimes like being controlled (even if it is yourself who has put this mechanism in place), and this is, of course, odd.

A good time measurement helps us with planning. If we know our time invested from the past, the better we can estimate what it will take us in the future. We have also to realize that we can see time from two perspectives.

• Time as score
• Time as investment

If we are in a time as score view, we believe that the faster we are, the better it is. If one person says that he spent 2 hours on specific work, it is better than if he needed 3. If you see time as an investment, on the other hand, if you invested three is better than 2.

The goal is always to see time as an investment, but also to choose your assets wisely. If you plan to invest 10 hours in x and 10 in y, it would be counterproductive to invest 20 in x and 0 in y.

We should not feel bad if we, at some point, realize that we were wrong with our estimations. At the moment, we can learn this; time management becomes powerful.

The last good thing we get from time management is to detect when we invest unnecessary time in a topic. Often we sit on one problem for hours, and we do not make progress.

9. Feedback (Mindfulness through feedback)

Some people - engineers, as well as non-engineers - seem to believe that they know everything. This phenomenon appears to be some kind of protection mechanism against the enormous amount of information we have to process every day. If we make ourselves believe that we are better than others and that we are all-knowing, everything looks less scary. But this attitude it blocks our progress. Because who knows everything already, does not need to learn anymore.

I have, of course, to admit that some people who can blind themselves in extreme ways can also get successful. The combination of the Dunning Kruger effect(which makes it possible that people get so boastful) and mirror neurons (the factor that might make convince us that some people are smart if they believe they are smart) is a cunning combination.

But most people I know who are excellent and smart are the opposite of people who consider themselves all-knowing. They accept that you learn all your life and that you build up gradually knowledge.

Some people meditate and explore their nature by exploring what comes up in them when they sit still and focus on their breath. In my opinion, Mindfulness in Plain English is the best introduction to meditation. Others follow the principles of the Ancient philosophies(such as Stoicism or Epicureanism) on how to lead a mindful life.

But one thing can be dangerous. If you seclude yourself and meditate or go deep into stoic contemplation, if you do not talk with people, you are still "within your system." Secluding yourself also means to seclude yourself from feedback and input that can make you strive to become better.

Openly asking for feedback is not easy. Often we learned at school that learning is to avoid mistakes. So if we now get constructive feedback on what we can do better, some people still might feel as if they failed. It sometimes reminds us too much about teachers telling us that we simply were not good enough.

I found my way to deal with this situation. I rate everything I do on a scale from 1 (miserable) to 10 (perfect). But the catch is to assume that the standard of outstanding performance is 8. If you get an 8, you already are hugely successful. 10 is the optimal value that you might only achieve once in a lifetime.

With that, I make myself to internalize that there is almost every time feedback to improve. Feedback does make 7 to a six but rather shows me how to get eight instead of a seven the next time.

You sometimes land a four or even worse. It also happens that you have a bad day, and you land a three even if you could have reached a 6 or 7. The point is not to bash yourself for negative performance, but rather to ask yourself what you can learn.

I believe sometimes I exceeded an 8 in my life. But the resources I needed to exceed an 8 I always learned after a being as low as below a 3.

So, remember: Outside Feedback is the best way to get to know what you do not know.

10. Clear out old content and occasionally remove items from your library

I have around 250 books in my electronic library and 100 audiobooks. Also, I put various MOOCs on my todo list.

I feel sometimes really struck with the vast amount of information that I have. I also know that I am not alone with those sentiments. Lots of people think that way. There is so much to read and learn. And maybe you are useful if you have read 10% of all your material.

If I had never cleaned through my libraries, I would have three times as much, and I would lose sight of what is useful and what's not.

I also discovered that sorting out things can be difficult sometimes. Although it would be the most straight forward thing to throw away old books or delete them if they are electronic, it is easy to fall into a "clean out vicious cycle." You spend much time wondering if you should get rid of an item or not. If some people would sum up the time they need to think about throwing away or keep things, they could often read a whole book.

That's why I set up rules for myself when I clean up. I asked myself the following question:

• Is the information outdated (e.g., A book on the internet written in the 90ties)
• Does the book work in a tabloid-style("Hear the shocking news!")?
• Does it cover a topic I have no relation to, and I am not interested?

If so, I delete or throw away.

I hope this helps others.