

How do you track and decide what topics you want to spend time learning? - biesnecker
http://swanson.github.com/blog/2011/12/04/whats-on-your-learning-list.html

======
nyellin
If anyone is struggling to stay on top of notetaking or organizing their life
digitally, I highly recommend org-mode and deft-mode.

One day I will blog about what org-mode has done for my life, but for now just
accept my word: I have typed tens of thousands of words into each of EverNote,
Tomboy, and TiddlyWiki. I attempted to use Remember the Milk, Google Tasks,
and other todo apps for years. I also unsuccessfully struggled to recall
information by bookmarking and tagging three thousand websites in delicious.
Nothing worked and I was on the verge of giving up for sanity's sake and just
emailing myself reminders and notes.

Then I discovered org-mode and took control. I can recall and store any
information in seconds. Org mode can do absolutely everything. Ask and you
shall learn.

~~~
djhworld
<http://orgmode.org/> for those unfortunate Vim souls (like me) who had to
google that!

~~~
ryanklee
For the interested, here's the best non-brief intro/tutorial to Org-mode that
I was able to find: <http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html>

It helped me immensely when I was just getting my feet wet with org-mode.

------
m0nastic
I went through a similar exercise last week.

I'm trying to leave the place I'm working, and I'm mostly concentrating on
places that are a little above my weight class (because if I'm going to try
and get a new job, I don't want to go work at the half-dozen places that do
the exact same level of work that I do. I've had a few jobs not pan out, so I
wanted to take a step back and rethink things)

So I started an Omni-Focus project, which I called Me 2.0 (although I could
have used any of the myriad project-tracking applications, or just a text
editor)

In it I started trying to list all the things I wanted to learn. I noticed
when I finished that it was predominantly a list of books to read (many of
which have exercises that I want to make sure I go through and actually
complete).

I noticed that some of them have dependencies on other ones (so I linked those
tasks) but others I can start working on in parallel. We'll see how well I can
stick to it.

Just writing it all out was a helpful exercise though. There's something
freeing about having specific tasks, and not just nebulous concepts.

------
billswift
>Instead of trying to do Deliberate Practice, I’d fool myself into thinking I
was investing my time wisely by reading blog posts and examples but not
actually doing much of anything.

That is one reason for serious learning I use textbooks. The book itself helps
structure your learning, it is easy to keep track of how much you have
covered, and commitment is simpler, since you can just commit to finishing the
book.

It doesn't help as much though for longer term learning; I have a tendency to
procrastinate between books, and often switch directions and even fields of
study. On the other hand, the OP's "learning list" doesn't help much with that
either.

~~~
swanson
That's a good point about textbooks. Do you find that if a book includes
Exercises at the end of each chapter that you actually do them? That's been a
big challenge for me - so many great books have 'Action' sections but I rarely
find myself putting down the book and doing them.

~~~
jrockway
I am willing to do exercises if the answer is in the back of the book.
Programming Pearls did a good job in this respect.

------
kevinalexbrown
Much better than my lazy default which involves leaving relevant tabs open on
my browser ...

So I just did this exercise now, and at the risk of overtooling I'm going to
keep a detailed list of the precise things I did to learn each thing. Because
otherwise, I have that same tendency to convince myself I've spent 2 hours
learning more about graphical models by browsing some blog posts, or about
cooking by looking through some cooking blogs but not actually taking the 2
hours to flail at bread-making. I'm not talking about every day recounting
what I did, I think that's overly verbose, but just as a list under each of my
goals that details each specific accomplishment.

~~~
kaybe
Two weeks later: Browser takes 10 Minutes to fire up. (One could leave the
computer running, I guess, but argh, too many tabs..) How do you deal with
this?

~~~
gcr
Try Luakit. <http://luakit.org/projects/luakit> It's a creamy webkit center
with crunchy vim keybindings on top, all bound together with lua.

The tab management isn't much better than Chrome's, but boy does it start up
fast, and the memory usage is peanuts even compared to chrome. I bet you could
script your own tab manager in lua if you wanted to. Maybe there's a plugin
for it somewhere.

------
itmag
I have an elaborate system using text-files and tags/subtags, evolved over the
last 5-6 years.

I keep track of a lot of things:

-expenses

-gym sessions

-leads for my magazine

-startup ideas

-personal development insights

-diary entries

-brainstorms

-quotes (see this: [http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-for-some-tiny-web-softw...](http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-for-some-tiny-web-software-l337quotes))

-stuff I should read later (but almost never get around to)

-ideas for lyrics

-fragments for various novels I am working on

-various biometric data (morning weight, stuff like that)

-TODO

-plans (I do try to aggregate all of these into a standalone "plan file" since it's such a crucial function of my administrative system)

-and a bunch of other things I can't recall right now. Let's just say I generate a relatively huge amount of notes every single day.

So a typical temp file might contain some thing like this:

itm: IT9: recruit: foobar foobarsson

itm: todo: find logo designer

todo: buy anal lube

planfile: BHAGs: $big_hairy_audacious_goal

planfile: schemes: $insert_greasy_scheme

diary: 5/12 2011: went to Footown today, got wasted

expenses: 5/12 2011: cat food 10 kr | alcohol 300 kr | anal lube 49 kr

lyrics: $lyrics / $more_lyrics / $even_more_lyrics

idea: business: hamburger earmuffs

read: <http://reddit.com/r/foo/whatever>

insight: $deep_insight

brainstorm: what topics should I learn in 2012?

I dump all of this piecemeal into temporary text files which I then transfer
periodically to a central place. I used to go through them and sort everything
into separate piles, but at this point that would probably be a full time job.

If I need to find something these days, pretty much the only way is to use
grep and hope that I tagged something the right way (sometimes I am too lazy
and just dump crap in there untagged).

If you think it sounds like I run my life like a gigantic byzantine
bureacracy, you would be right. But at the same time, it's probably a huge
net-win for me in the long run as it allows me to keep track of stuff on a
scale that would be impossible otherwise.

I would like to write some software that could parse my notes and make my life
easier. Anyone else in the same boat?

~~~
nyellin
That software already exists and is called org-mode :)

Some reasons to use org-mode:

* Org-mode is part of Emacs, so you can extend it in Lisp. If you so desired, you could record your weight each morning by sending yourself an email and scheduling an Emacs function... But someone has probably already done that in the 35 years of Emacs' existence. If not, Emacs macros are very easy to write, because they emulate the actions you would take yourself. (See my 9 liner for incrementally searching for keyboard shortcuts: [https://github.com/aantn/castle/blob/master/home/.emacs.d/cu...](https://github.com/aantn/castle/blob/master/home/.emacs.d/custom/personal/vim.el#L73))

* All org files are plain text

* All "items" in org files are part of a foldable hierarchy

* All items can be tagged

* TODOs are really just items whose headline starts with "TODO". Org-mode adds features for toggling, finding, and visualizing them

* You can extend org-mode any way you want. For example, I added a DEFER status for my TODO items. ([https://github.com/aantn/castle/blob/master/home/.emacs.d/cu...](https://github.com/aantn/castle/blob/master/home/.emacs.d/custom/personal/org-config.el#L7))

* You can scatter your notes across as many files as you want. Org-mode can parse them to build your daily agenda (<http://orgmode.org/manual/Agenda-Views.html>)

* Org-mode displays formatting without hiding the markup (e.g. everything between two asterisks is bold)

* Org-mode exports to LaTeX, pdf, and html. (Embedded LaTeX is rendered too.)

* Org mode allows awesome links of all kinds (<http://orgmode.org/manual/Hyperlinks.html#Hyperlinks>)

* Code snippets can be embedded in org-mode and even executed

* Org-mode supports tables with formulas. It also includes a ledger for accounting. ([http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/languages/ob-doc-l...](http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/languages/ob-doc-ledger.html))

See my comment below for a discussion on organizing notes and searching in
them.

~~~
itmag
Sure, I'm convinced. But I still have tons of legacy data.

~~~
nyellin
It isn't all or nothing. You can open all your old files in org-mode and
slowly start taking advantage of org-mode.

It's all text. No conversion necessary.

~~~
itmag
Sure, but what I need to do then is to write a semi-automated converter which
just shoves everything with a clear tag formulation into org-mode and asks me
what to do with the rest.

Thanks, this actually sounds doable to me now!

------
danneu
I see Vim on that list.

Best way to learn Vim is to get stuck without internet for 30 minutes. Once
you explore every avenue of entertainment in your documents/downloads folders,
you remember `$ vimtutor` and just have a go at it. Tried and true.

~~~
swanson
I want to be good at Vim, but it isn't practical for me at the moment. At
work, I've spent the last year and half in Visual Studio or Eclipse (both due
to the nature of the projects) and it was really hard for me to switch my
brain into "Vim mode" for my own personal stuff.

With something as fundamental to the job as a text editor, I have to do it 8
hours a day or it won't stick.

~~~
statenjason
I actually learned most of my Vim foundations using ViEmu[1] for Visual
Studio. While some things are missing, it does an impressive job of emulating
Vim and not stepping all over VS and R# (aside from Ctrl-R key bindings).

I used the viemu cheat sheet lessons[2] for the learning process. As I became
comfortable with the commands in each, I moved on to the next lesson.

[1]:<http://www.viemu.com/>
[2]:[http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial...](http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial.html)

~~~
dekayed
On the Eclipse side, I've been using viPlugin[1]. It is not free, but I've
felt like it has been worth the cost since my forays into vim had all failed
before getting this plugin. If you're working heavily with Eclipse/VS, it is
definitely jarring to switch back and forth between one of those and vim, but
using a plugin like this eases that pain.

[1] <http://www.viplugin.com/viplugin/>

------
delwin
This is a great idea. As a step two, I would group them into categories
(JavaScript, self-improvement, etc.) and then figure out time needed to become
proficient in each one. Vim, for example, takes about 5 days to really get the
hang of it, to pick up the essentials. The other tricks come later.
CoffeeScript can become familiar after a weekend or two. A few of the others,
like Arduino, take a little longer.

This is what I do when I want to learn things. Of course, I have a problem
limiting it to programming. My list often includes stuff like "Thai cuisine"
and "German" and "Celtic mythology".

The hardest part, in my opinion, is not tracking NEW things to learn, but
tracking things to improve on.

------
davedx
I don't really focus on "topics", I pick something I really want to build then
try and work out what the best suited tools and technologies are for that
objective, then take it from there.

For my web startup idea this was Grails, because I work with Java in my day
job and like the Rails convention over configuration philosophy. This leads to
other areas like modern JavaScript frameworks.

For my video game idea it's Unity, for mostly productivity related reasons.
This leads to JavaScript again (doesn't everything these days), C# and
programmable shaders.

I don't want to spend my valuable time learning the latest new thing just for
the sake of it. (I see loads of 'weekend projects' on here using
Node/Backbone/Redis that seem to be this kind of thing). I want an immediate
real-world application. I want something that will help me solve problems and
smash my personal deadlines down like a pile driver. :)

------
TeMPOraL
I have a lot of non-IT stuff that I'd like to know at one time - so, in a
spirit of sharing our TOKNOW lists, my current one:

    
    
        - Economics
          - Micro
          - Macro
          - "Applied" - stock markets, credits, all that stuff - how it works, etc. (I know almost nothing about it)
        - Knowledge about societies - how they form, how they function, etc.
        - Bayesian probability (working on it right now, thanks to AI Class), set theory, maybe category theory
        - Control theory (I do really, really regret I didn't care about this at university)
        - Biology
          - Genetics 101 & blood groups (I forgot all this stuff since high school)
          - Nutrition 101
        - First aid
        - Pretty much whole physics (Feynman's lectures sitting on my bookshelf and waiting ;))
        - History
          - of civilization, especially Roman history
          - of science, technology and enterpreneurship
          - of modern geopolitical structures
        - Geography
          - World energy infrastructure
          - How many resources do we have, where they are, how fast we use them
          - How the world trade works
        - Literature
          - "Homeless People"
          - "Crime and Punishment"
          - ... and then some other good books
    

And that's really just (non-IT) knowledge; there are also some skills I'd like
to acquire that are not listed. I know some (most?) of that stuff was covered
in high school, however I somehow missed it all then (I didn't care / school
wasn't really helpful to make me care). This list reflects some topics I spend
time thinking about / worrying about, but at some point I realized I should
either sit down and learn some of it, or stop caring that much about things I
don't understand.

From the technical side (which is actually the main topic ;)), I keep all of
this in plain text; it used to be .txt files somewhere on my hard drive, now
it's in Org Mode.

~~~
Marwy
It's funny and sad when you realize that you care more about knowledge,
learning etc. when you're out of school. Or maybe I was just not mature enough
to appreciate it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think it's not about maturity, it's about having reasons to know. School can
kill ones's interest in pretty much everything, as soon as your curiosity gets
replaced by tests, grades, homeworks, rote, memorizing etc. But it's a long
topic, covered on HN many times.

For me, most of the school subjects were utterly meaningless. I didn't
understand then why could I care about how we produce electricity, where are
the resources located. I didn't see any use for learning about kings and
battles of the centuries behind (the only date I really remembered back then,
is the 6th of June 1944, Operation Overlord; Second World War at least seemed
interesting to me personally). Or genetics. Or social things. Or
entrepreneurship. Or whatever.

I don't miss the school per se. I only wish I put up with crap back then, I
wouldn't have to learn some this stuff right now the second time.

I still believe the subjects, the way we're taught, are devoid of meaning. To
pick one example, physics and geography classes contain enough of knowledge
for people to make smart decisions about complex subjects, which scales up in
democracies to nation-level. Instead, we see e.g. young mothers boycotting the
construction of nuclear power plant in Poland, or whatever. Society seems to
be unaware as of where do we get power from, how much do we need, and why it
is a damn important problem. People only complain about gasoline prices going
up; but hell, if the society doesn't care (or, doesn't even understand enough
to be able to care) about energy, how can it expect politicians to care? It's
a lack of mental picture of issues the world is dealing with. And energy is
only one example.

I remember being taught all those things in school; I didn't really understand
anything back then, and I think most of the people didn't. Things like
"renewable" / "not renewable" resources were to me like Lisp symbols. Their
only meaning for me was in tests, like: (member 'coal _renewable-resources_ );
get it wrong, have 0 points. Somehow, between grades, tests and homework, the
real meaning of things we learn got lost.

Anyway, I wish to go once again through the school material, this time for
real, and try to extract some meaning out of it for myself and others around
me.

~~~
personlurking
I recently made my own list

    
    
        Linguistics (psychological, pragmatics)
        Anthropology (social, cultural)
        History (Colonial, Victorian, social)
        Psychology (social)
        Etymology
        Humanism (Renaissance)
        Philosophy (Epistemology)
        Libertarianism
        Barter Economies
    
        Generalism
        Miscegenation
        Languages (Romance)
        Entrepreneurship
        Technology Startups
        Film (foreign, documentary)
        Music (folk, world, classical)
        Literature (fiction, creative nonfiction)
    
        Coffee Houses
        Salons
        WWOOF
        Wordplay
        Photography
        Curation
    

I used to study them all quite frequently but have stopped in the last few
years without knowing why. Now I realize it's because I'm trying to justify
knowledge vs. usefulness. Trying to get back to some of them now, though.

It's interesting that I have yet to find others who also like to learn about
varied topics, outside of those who enjoy learning about technical topics. I
guess that's why I'm a generalist (and why generalists are usually INTPs).

~~~
personlurking
I should add cultures and languages, too.

CULTURES

    
    
        Brazil (10 years)
        Spain (5 years)
        Colombia (5 years)
        Argentina (3 years)
        Portugal (1 year)
    
        Cuba (months)
        Italy (months)
        Germany (months)
        Australia (months)
    

LANGUAGES

    
    
        Brazilian Portuguese (fluent, self-taught)
        Spanish (semi-fluent, self-taught)
        Italian (intermediate, self-taught)
        French (basic, self-taught)
    
        German (attempted)
        Swedish (attempted)
        Russian (attempted)
        Catalan (attempted)

------
alanav
In my case, I try to keep realistic dates of completion (considering that I'm
no longer an undergraduate and right now I can focus in any topic I want.)

Sometimes it's difficult to get things done if you don't have someone behind
telling you what to do next; but I realized, that if you master this skill,
you are at a whole new level. I think this is the type of motivation that
keeps moving the PhD students or the entrepreneurs.

At the moment I'm learning how to program for the Android platform, and this
mobile paradigm has open my mind for a lot of things. I really want to pursue
more this area.

I think it's a great idea that if you don't understand something in a book,
tutorial, etc. investigate about those topics. But, never lose focus in what
you are trying to accomplish in the first time; I know that sometimes it's
tempting to keep checking that Math theory and things like that.

At the end, knowledge is another tool to get the job done.

------
gurkendoktor
Inspirational articles go into either Instapaper (URLs) or iBooks (PDFs), I
read through these when I'm offline. If they sound interesting, I make a note
in OmniFocus' inbox. (The new 'Share' button in Instapaper can do this
automatically.)

When processing OF, I turn those things into a task in "Weekend Projects" - a
list of things I want to toy around with for a weekend (or any other two free
days).

When I hve started said projects, I flesh them out to be normal GTD projects
and see where they go from there.

If something gets stuck and obsoleted before I have a chance to work on it
again, I kill it in my Weekly Review.

GTD. \o/

------
HeyImAlex
I keep all of my ebooks in my ipad and have library, active, and completed
sections. I have four books in my active section that I read through as time
goes on and every time I complete a topic I pop a book from active onto
completed and push another into my active section. I found I was shifting too
quickly between books whenever I got disinterested or the material got tough
and I would never pick them up again until weeks later which gave me very
little context for what I was learning. Finishing books and being able to
review them gives you much more closure on topics and makes you retain the
material better. By having four I still allow myself to shuffle a bit but it
reminds me to force my way though the hard parts when a book's been sitting
there too long. Maybe once a month I'll map out my interests and try and find
books pertaining to them and add them to my collection. Most of the major
publishers have good daily deals on ebooks, and my library has a really good
collection of hard copy books when I'm strapped for cash.

------
wattjustin
I did this about three months ago and have been laser focused on learning ever
since instead of spreading myself too thin as it's too easy in this industry.
I hope this doesn't sound like I'm tooting my own horn, but I genuinely hope
everyone takes 10 minutes out of their week to do this for themselves. I can
attest to this simple exercise being very much worth it.

~~~
breathesalt
I feel the same way. It wasn't until now that I realized my learning "hitlist"
was really a histogram at heart. However, instead of tick marks I use list
item comments. I also have to add that formatting my notes well (I use html)
is essential--otherwise I'll avoid reviewing them.

------
daedelus
I've written several of these lists in Evernote over the past few years. It's
always interesting to go back and look at them to see how my interests have
changed over time. Three years ago, my number one priority was to learn how to
write short stories (and eventually a novel). Now my number one priority is to
learn Clojure (and a handful of other technologies).

------
pacomerh
What I do is revise the list every week and see what things on the list I
still want to learn, so I practice the ones that have prevailed more than 2
weeks and the other ones I kinda question them. What has worked for me this
year is always ask "WHY ?" , Why do I want to learn A, or B, and if the reason
is strong enough then the item goes in ink.

------
jonsagara
I have been using Trello since it launched. It works great for managing my
reading list.

~~~
c4urself
I've been using Trello for just about everything, from organizing Groceries
with my wife to recurring events to todo lists, it's simple and it's not
paper.

------
Sukotto
Really timely article. Thanks.

December is a good time to re-evaluate these sorts of things, and to book time
for the ones requiring more effort (learning vim?) since many people have a
lull at work at this time of year.

My own contribution to the OP is to encourage everyone to also create a "Pass"
list of topics you had on your list but have chosen _not_ to pursue (example
in the OP was Shopify templates).

I find I need a list like that to stop my mind from revisiting those "I should
learn" topics that I actually _don't_ want to learn.

------
pbackx
I use Evernote to track everything, including this.

I dump everything looks cool into a "maybe" notebook. Before I add anything I
search to see if there's a related note. This lets me aggregate and if I sort
on "last updated date" I tend to get a good idea of what's important to me.

From time to time I go over the list and see if stuff can and should be
purged.

------
Cyph0n
Interesting idea. I'll list down what I want to learn here then:

\- Python \- Django \- jQuery \- Bash \- XHTML and CSS \- Physics (currently
learning at college) \- Mathematics (same) \- Psychology \- Philosophy \- Sci-
fi reading \- Islamic finance \- World history

Now that I look at the whole picture, most of the topics are unrelated, save
the first two..

------
roel_v
I order all my 'stuff to learn' under a category in my Getting Things Done
(GTD) workflow. I use Due Today for Android and Toodledo online (they sync
automatically), and a bunch of paper scraps to transfer from whereever it is
that I want to record things until I can enter them into the One True
repository.

------
johndbritton
Back in September I went through a similar exercise and wrote down some
details about it here:

[http://johndbritton.com/2011/09/30/consciously-deciding-
to-l...](http://johndbritton.com/2011/09/30/consciously-deciding-to-learn/)

------
sktrdie
Actually one thing that really distracts you from actually getting the list
done is blogging about it! :-)

------
Shtirlic
Also doing this kind of things, but with local wiki system(Golum based) and
shared via DropBox.

------
pkrumins
I don't track anything. I just jump in topics I want to learn at any time.

