

Ask HN: How did you “learn to learn”? - Nib

These days, everyone seems to be telling me to &quot;lean to learn&quot;, as thats an art without which no-one can move forward. I tried googling the thing, but the problem is, there&#x27;s just no direct way to &quot;learn to learn&quot;, so I was wondering how you guys &quot;learnt to learn&quot;. 
When I say &quot;learn to learn&quot;, this is the sense in which I mean it: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jamesaltucher.quora.com&#x2F;The-Skills-We-All-Need-But-College-Doesnt-Teach
======
colund
I think learning has a lot to do with talent and persistence. Different people
have different genes to learn different things. I think learning has a lot to
do with someone really needing you to fix something for them. Deliver a
product with some new technology, bug fix, analyse something complex,
whatever. You really HAVE to deliver and your brain will get into ultra focus
mode. Some people I know say that they learn best when things are broken and
they need to fix it urgently because the customer might be losing money.

------
jonex
Obviously everyone has the ability to learn from the start, or it'd be
impossible to even learn to learn. But what have I done to improve my learning
capabilities? The best kind of learning, practice, by newer considering my own
knowledge as lacking for a task, but rather something I'll have to improve I
get practice in learning any time I try to solve a new problem.

University does help a lot as well. Even if I definitely don't remember every
fact from every course I've studied (although claiming that all is forgotten
within 45 minutes would be a major exaggeration), I've been "forced" to learn
a lot of different subjects within a limited time frame. In itself this means
practice in learning and it also creates a large base on knowledge upon which
I more easily can learn new things. Math stands out as the most important in
that, as it's something that I find too tedious to learn on my own, but which
is the language used in almost all technical subjects.

------
theBeaver
Although education can be really expensive, they won't teach you stuff you
really want. If you find a particular subject interesting and study it on your
own, you'll find that you make progress faster than you would if you study it
in school or college. You can teach yourself to do anything if you like it and
are willing to make effort in it.

