

How do you avoid this trap in learning? - zukhan

In the information age we live in, it's so easy to be overwhelmed with the sheer amount of reading material we have at our disposal. I love learning new things, as well as improving my understanding of topics I'm already familiar with. In the little time I have to learn/read, I find myself falling into a trap of jumping around a lot. Some days I find myself watching Machine Learning lecture videos, some days reading up on computer architecture, design patterns, and the list goes on.<p>I'm very interested to learn how other people cope with this problem. There is too much to learn, but not enough time...
======
karterk
Have a goal based learning approach. Tie your learning directly to a project
that you are intending to finish. That way - your learning has some end goal
and does not become an end in itself. Also, aggregate what you want to read
before hand and sort them into related things and read them together.

------
chrisbennet
It's only a problem if it is keeping you from some goal. Example: If you're
doing a research report on a certain president and you find yourself reading
up on a dozen other interesting presidents, well that's a problem because it
keeps you from finishing your report. On the other hand, if you are interested
in genetic algorithms and you wind up reading about real genetics, epigentics
and then Dawkin's book "The Selfish Gene", I don't see how that is bad.

------
kls
Organize interesting information on subjects that you are not immediately
working on. Use a product like Evernote and to organize the different pieces
of information into groups on the same topic. They when you are done with the
current subject that you are trying to get you head around you can move on to
the next one and pull back up all those old interesting bits of information on
the subject.

------
nodemaker
The book "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foyer has some really good
insight about how to retain more of what you learn!

