
Metacademy: How to learn on your own - adamnemecek
https://metacademy.org/roadmaps/rgrosse/learn_on_your_own
======
vezycash
Learning on our own doesn't have to be complex.

Learning via school works primarily because of the fixed, predictable and
regular schedule dedicated to learning.

Learning French on my own for just 5-10 minutes daily has taught me a few
things.

The amount of time spent on a subject is less important than having a
predictable schedule.

Here's why this is important. We all read, hear about people who have read
tons of books, who spend 5 hours learning daily and want to do the same.

And this is really bad. A recipe for predictable failure. You won't expect to
eat five plates of rice because some dude you respect does it would you?

In the past, I would procrastinate when I hit a mental block, or a difficult
lesson.

Now, I simply repeat past exercises because sticking with the schedule is more
important than learning something new.

To keep things brief, the most important factor to learning on my own is
having a reminder because as an adult, my days vanish in a myriad of
unpredictable activities.

Without this reminder, i'll hit my head in six months when I remember that I
was trying to learn something.

~~~
jackgolding
Thank you for this, it resonates with me quite well. When studying for
university entrance exams I produced a very detailed and intense study
schedule. Proud of myself, I showed it to my teacher who suggested it was too
excessive. I don't think I followed that schedule for more than one day and in
hindsight the students that studied for a bare minimum of 30 minutes a day
after school performed the best, even though the numbers weren't super
excessive.

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gtani
HN regularly has threads about self teaching math, theoretical compsci,
physics etc, they're hard to google for.

Best is to find a study group or willing tutor but for books/youtube, MOOC,

\- Cal Newport's books/blog

\- Garrity "all the math you missed", math for physics books by Boaz and
Arfken et al.

\- "Passing exams for Dummies" yellow book

\- Barbara Oakley's books and MOOC,

\- Lara Alcock and Keith Devlin's "how to study" books

____________________________

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12429349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12429349)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13060398](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13060398)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13068215](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13068215)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/5gu1kr/selfstudy_math...](https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/5gu1kr/selfstudy_mathematics/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/5xnhuj/how_do_you_rea...](https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/5xnhuj/how_do_you_read_advanced_math_texts/)

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garysieling
This is a really neat concept. One of the challenges for me for learning is
filling in partial knowledge. E.g., when I understand some statistics / AI
concepts, but want to fill in some new area of knowledge, it's hard to justify
taking an entire class if all the material I need is buried in one or two
talks.

I'm building a search engine for lectures
([https://www.findlectures](https://www.findlectures)) and avoided this
problem by focusing on standalone lectures (e.g. conference talks). Their way
seems much better, for cases where you need to understand all the pieces of a
big problem. Also, kudos for curating data by hand :)

~~~
sitkack
[https://www.findlectures.com/](https://www.findlectures.com/)

~~~
garysieling
Oops, thanks!

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neurocroc
Yeah, this is a really wonderful site.

I do still think that it lacks visualisation of knowledge and all the
different disciplines and fields you can learn.

I try to visualise it as best that I can
([https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge-
map](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge-map)).

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kovek
They mention books. I appreciate books and courses because the `signal / time
spent` ratio is high.

A little bit tangential to this is the idea of being able to find information
online. I wonder, are there any tools that help googling things around?

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jmstfv
This is pretty neat. I have been lurking around this site and stumbled upon
"prerequisite tree"s[0]. Is it possible to generate this kind of "prerequisite
tree" programmatically?

[0][https://metacademy.org/graphs/concepts/beta_process#focus=p1...](https://metacademy.org/graphs/concepts/beta_process#focus=p1fycmrv&mode=explore)

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closed
Really enjoyed the metacognition portion of this article. It seems like the
key here is...

1\. people overestimate how much they'll remember.

2\. this is due in part because in the moment you've learned something, you
can recall it easily.

3\. switching between things, pushes them out of immediate memory, so you can
practice retrieving what you learned from while its less active (and competing
with other things you're learning).

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alistproducer2
I've recently had an idea that I'm really excited about, but it's totally
outside of my wheelhouse. It's a biotech idea and I have no training in
biology or chemistry. I started watching open courseware lectures but then
decided to try using a biology text book instead. I went to a local salvation
army and picked up a biology book for $2. It's been working pretty well, but
I'm trying to figure how to self sustain my motivation. That's always the
hardest​ part of self learning for me.

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IanCal
The code is open source, has anyone tried using this locally to build up
understanding of concepts themselves?

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jaddood
Simply: wonderful article

