Effective learning

Published

September 29, 2013

Learning tips

http://first20hours.com/ by Josh Kaufam.

The First 20 Hours - How to Learn Anything by Josh Kaufman at TEDxCSU.

  1. Deconstruct the skill
  2. Learn enough to self-correct
  3. Remove practice barriers (distraction and tools)
  4. Practice at least 20 hrs (overcome frustration barrier)

The major barrier to skill acquisition isn’t intellectual, it’s emotional.

Overcome the resistance to learn a new skill (initial excitement and realization of the difficulty).

  1. Focus of very few topics
  2. Set concrete performance targets
  3. Make sure you have necessary tools
  4. General overview -> Divide into subtopics
  5. Learn in short bursts (< 1h)
  6. Fast feedback
  7. Active recall

Examples:

Programming

  • I spent some time learning what “programming” and “web applications” are in general,    then deconstructed these skills into smaller sub-skills that are easier to understand and practice.
  • I set my target performance level by choosing two specific projects I wanted to create,    then defined what those projects would look like when finished.
  • I deconstructed those projects into smaller sub-steps then identified which sub-steps seemed    most important.
  • I made sure I had the tools I needed to work (like the latest version of Ruby),    and that I was able to find and use any additional tools I needed.
  • I found a few reliable sources of programming information, but I skipped canned tutorials    in favor of jumping in and writing the actual programs.
  • I worked on the most important sub-steps first, like figuring out how to test programs    on my computer, push the finished application to production, etc.
  • I used reference examples to get started and build confidence, then tested various approaches    to figure out how to program the features I wanted.
  • When I made an error, the program crashed and gave me an error message,    creating a fast feedback loop.
  • After getting an error, I experimented with several ways to fix it.    If I couldn’t fix the problem myself, I searched for help.
  • I kept using the build / test / fix approach until my programs were complete.

Touch typing

  • I learned how to change my keyboard layout to Colemak.
  • I created a fast feedback loop by rearranging the physical keys on the keyboard,    so if I forgot  where a character was located, I could find it easily.
  • I used the Keyzen typing tutor to learn the placement of characters by touch,    learning the most-used characters first. Keyzen re-introduced characters to the training set    as I made mistakes, so I spent most of my time practicing difficult characters until    my accuracy improved.
  • I practiced for 45 minutes every night, just before going to bed, so my brain could consolidate    the motor skills into long-term memory most effectively.
  • Once I got to functional speed (20 WPM), I switched to Type-Fu, focusing on typing sentences    as fast as possible with over 99% accuracy.
  • When I reached 40 WPM, I used Amphetype to train the most common English bigrams    and trigrams, further increasing my speed and accuracy.
  • Once I mastered the n-gram set, I switched to training the most common English words    in Amphetype until I reached 60 WPM sustained with 99% accuracy, which happened at the    21 hour mark.