

Ask HN: Best ways to learn new stuff? - vijayr

Especially on limited time?  Some people are lucky that they can learn at work, but most corporate type jobs don&#x27;t teach much.  So how do you learn new things, when you have limited time outside work?  Also, how do you decide what to learn?
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sdrinf
Josh Kaufman have recently released a new book called "The First 20 Hours -How
to learn anything" -which is an awesome, operational description of rapid
skill acquisition.

The better question is: "How do you decide what to learn?" -for which I
strongly suggest taking a strategic portfolio approach: have a few skills that
you know in depth, and maintain a consistent flow of learning new things on at
least a surface / API level so that given the opportunity you can reach out
for them.

Having a few of these under your bells will open your eyes to new
opportunities both within your job, and in your life that you can pitch / take
advantage of; at which point you can tie it into the "things people pay me
for", and start the journey of mastering it in depth without any danger to
your livelihood.

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jlengrand
I honestly don't recall where I read this, but one thing that really struck me
is "Work 60 hours a week. 40 hours a week for your company, 20 hours a week
for yourself"

I find it true. As you say, company work don't teach much. Better said maybe,
they don't teach much diverse skills. Most of your time is spent doing CRUD or
API modifications.

When I get out of work, I try to get projects about things I don't know
anything about. Like learning web dev (or at least trying), publishing an
android app, or even teaching yourself marketing.

For me, the rule is usually simple : \- Do something you don't know anything
about. \- Make it small. \- Do it fast enough so that you don't get bored. \-
Publish it.

I like it because I usually struggle a lot, and then understand the rough
concepts. Adn the next project is easier, because I am used to trying to
understand how stuff works. It basically keep your brains agile.

And the best thing is that it makes you better at your job. Because you can
then think out of the box, and offer new solutions to problems. More than if
you'd spend 60 hours a week on your job only.

Last thing is, those small projects, you can show them off; which makes you
more seducing for other companies / people. Simply because you can talk about
them, without having to know too much context :).

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iSloth
Working for a smaller company will normally give you a far wider scope of
technologies due to how many staff they have, this isn't always a positive
however, but it can certainly be more interesting.

Working in a larger company normally will have the other benefit that you
become an 'expert' within your field much more easily, because your silo'ed
working on that one thing most of the time, however make sure you enjoy that
one area your working in!

Out side of work just try dedicated some time each day, say an hour or even
just 30min, read some material or try build something a little bit more each
day. Once you have a plan stick to it and look back at the end of each week to
see if your actually learning anything, if not amend your plan to suit.

Picking what to learn when you have limited time is going to be fairly
difficult, your probably going to want something that you already have an head
start on so you can make decent progress with your limited learning time. For
example if you know Cisco routers, learn Juniper routers. If you know PHP
learn MySQL, Memcache etc...

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sunnybythesea
I've been in a funk for quite a long time now. I think the most important
thing is to establish a vision for your life. What do you want your life to be
about? It's a question that might take some time to answer. You could always
randomly pick a popular subject to learn (economics, web dev...). But the
question you'll have to ask yourself is why do I want to learn one thing over
another. Time is the most precious thing you have, and so it's good to have a
direction in your life, so that, what do you do is gradually guiding you in
that direction. On the other hand, sometimes you could take that analysis to
the extreme (called analysis paralysis) and never decide what you want to do.
In that case, just pick something that's interesting and _stick with it_ for
an extended period. This is something that most of struggle with. There is so
much to do, you can flip-flop between activities, never really getting much
depth. Good luck, it's a long journey, but you're already asking the right
questions.

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haney
I just attempt to remain passionately curious. If I don't know something I
read about it on Wikipedia, if it still doesn't make sense I search Amazon and
order a book. I've learned things about Sociology, Politics, Corporate
Finance, Theoretical Computer Science and Parkour this way. We live in a
really interesting world, try to understand how everything you come in contact
with works (on some level).

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amac
Maybe the easy answer is, find a job where you can work on what you want to
work on? Whether that's for a company, or for yourself, life's too short.

