
Ask HN: What are some methods you've used to increase your learning capacity? - yawboakye
I&#x27;m excited by knowledge. Knowing how things work, or don&#x27;t work has always excited. More than anything else. Lately I&#x27;m coming face-to-face with the fact that there&#x27;s too much knowledge in the world and I can only know so much. Nevertheless I want to learn as much as I can.<p>But here&#x27;s the thing: I feel that I&#x27;ve reached peak learning capacity (with my current methods) and I&#x27;m looking for new ways to enhance it. What methods have you used to increase your learning capacity? Have you taken on a traditionally youthful program (math is considered one of those) and succeeded? How did you do that?
======
Nadya
I heard an argument once that made me try a 3 month experiment in my Japanese
studies. The argument's core is summarized here:

 _" It's easier to learn something after you've already been introduced to
it."_

What is meant by that is that it is better to learn 20 of 100 things than 10
of 10 things and that after being introduced to 100 things the other 80 things
will be learned more easily as you've now been introduced to them. Introducing
yourself to new things, therefore, is more important than actually learning
about each individual thing.

So after five days of study the comparison might look like this:

    
    
        20/100 | 45/200 | 70/300 | 100/400 | 135 / 500 (learned 135 things, introduced to 500 things)
                          vs
        10/10 | 20/20 | 30/30 | 40/40 | 50/50 (learned 50 things, introduced to 50 things)
    

I drastically increased my daily vocab study from 5 kanji/10 vocabulary words
a day to 50 kanji and "hours of vocabulary" a day (200-300~ words on average).
I'd fail to remember 70-80% of it (and this was tracked on Memrise quite
well). But remembering 20-30 vocab words/day was already twice as fast as
remembering 10 vocab words a day. This had a knock-on effect: the more kanji
and vocabulary I learned the easier it was to learn new kanji and new
vocabulary and so that 10-20% would slowly increase until I was remembering
30-40% each day. The vocabulary and kanji I learned during this time are also
the ones I remember best and can recall without prompting.

I now use this method of "completely drowning yourself even after you think
you've already drowned" when learning anything. Whenever I get to a point of
"OK, I think that's enough studying for today. I couldn't possibly remember
more than this." I take however much time I had just studied for and, time
permitting, continue studying for that length of time again. Without fail - I
learn more than I thought I could.

This also helps identify "problem topics" that I can delve more into, focus
on, or even put off entirely to come back to it later. Sometimes understanding
what comes after brings enlightenment on the things meant to come before.

The only issue with this study method is that being wrong _almost all the
time_ can be very demotivating. You have to keep in mind that that is the
point! You'll be wrong most of the time - best get used to it.

------
amolo
For me, taking notes (short notes) while sticking to the bottom line of why im
reading or watching a video.

For example, iv been reading alot about k8s. Why? To learn how to deploy apps
with it.

All that adding nodes, maintaining is quickly skimmed.

