My Learning - Part 3 - My strategy

Before going into details about how I learn, let's look at my overall strategy and process.
 

Learning a new topic

1. Build a learning foundation
• Find the most influential experts
• Find the most praised learning resources (e.g. books or courses)
• Find the key concepts
• Find the different schools of thought and learn their differences
• Meet people with the purpose to start understanding the playing field
      
2. Build a topic foundation
• Study the most praised learning resources
• Study the one school of thought (if several) that makes the most sense to me
• Use only a few resources that focuses on core concepts
• Make sure the few resources I learn from stick
• Meet people with the purpose to learn from them
      
3. Practice the topic foundation
• Find ways to practice the foundation to make it stick
• Experiment and start to ask more in depth questions
• Meet people with the purpose to get feedback and guidance
      
4. Branch out
• Find blogs, podcasts or other sources where the new and fresh ideas are spread
• Learn "everything there is to learn"
• Gradually question more and more of my foundation
• Meet people with the purpose to mutually challenge each other's ideas

Important: I don't move from one step to the other, I make additions to my approach meaning early on I only "build a learning foundation" while later on I do all of 1, 2 and 3; not just "practice the topic foundation" but I likely spend most time with the step I most recently added.

This strategy is basically the same no matter what I want to learn but different topics and different levels of ambition will alter the time I spend on individual steps, how I move between them and how much time I spend in general.
    

Make learning happen

How I make myself learn things:

• Describe what I will gain from learning this
• Clearly distinguish between focused and distracted learning
• Make time for it (prioritization, not magic)
• Have the resources ready (e.g. podcast episodes downloaded)
• Surround myself with passionate learners
• Remove unwanted distractions
• Create a rough plan
• Join discussion groups etc. to constantly expose myself to the topic
• Engage friends in my learning (if possible) and/or try to find new peers
• Constantly plan experiments or tasks so I don't get stuck with information gathering
• Keep track of my progress and remind myself of completed milestones (not predefined milestones, see Motivation for explanation)
      

Key ideas

• Motivation is my most important tool and must be handled with great care
• People are my second most important tool and must be handled with great respect
• Focus my attention on the most influential experts
• Teacher quality is more important than content quality
• Only focus on the big lessons
• For things to stick, I need to make them "my own"
• When I've already learned something, reflection is more effective when I need to "relearn it"
• A clear direction is invaluable
• Finishing something for the sake of finishing it is a waste of time
• Act on the things I learn (I always know enough to start)

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