photo by mindandi

Learning the smart way. Part 1

While working in the tech industry we’re constantly bombarded with information of various sorts. We always need to keep up with the new technologies, frameworks, new versions of the languages that we work with, etc.

Here are some tips that have worked for me and I hope they will be equally as valuable to you. Also, I highly recommend that you take this course to understand how we learn and how our brain functions. The points below are a mix of my personal experience and the useful tips I’ve amassed on this topic.

1. Pick what you really need to learn. I know that this sounds obvious but a lot of the time we get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information we need to process. As programmers and perfectionists, we want to understand every bit of the topic that we need to get a grasp of. Very often this leads us going down a rabbit hole that effectively has no end. One topic transitions into another one and soon enough you find yourself learning stuff that you didn’t intend to. Don’t get me wrong — the more you know, the better, and I applaud people that are experts in a certain domain, but most of the time we need to just get a high-level understanding of something to do our job effectively. In terms of software engineering, my advice is to focus on learning the fundamentals of computer science instead of trying to learn every new framework that comes out. All of the latest frameworks are built on top of fundamentals. So get a good grasp on that and you will find it easier to get familiar with new stuff.
2. Do not force yourself to learn something. Or a better way to put it — you have to be genuinely curious about what you want to learn. Our brains are not wired to consume abstract information. On contrary — our brains receive a dopamine hit whenever we get the “a-ha” moment, when we understand something concrete. If you’re not truly interested in the topic — try to think about how you can spark interest. Even if it’s the most boring and mundane topic try to see if there’s something that you’re curious about in it.
3. Focus. It’s really important to get rid of all of the distractions while you’re studying and the Pomodoro technique is a great way to do that. The whole point of Pomodoro is to focus completely for 20–25 minutes at a time on a subject at hand. That means you should turn off / silence your phone, close all of your open tabs in your browser and preferably find a quiet place to study. According to some studies, it takes an average of 23 minutes to get focused again. Hence, it really is smarter to be intensely focused on a certain task and then give yourself a break after, instead of constantly being distracted.
4. Reward yourself. It’s equally as important to reward yourself after an intense studying session or just after 1 Pomodoro. This doesn’t have to be something significant — it can be something as simple as getting a cup of coffee or playing a video game for 15 minutes. The benefit of this approach is that your brain will associate the completion of your study session / Pomodoro with a reward i.e. something pleasant. This is key for forming new habits and will aid you further when your motivation to study might drop.
5. Make sure you truly understand what you’re trying to learn. Oftentimes we rush through the material, pat ourselves on the back, and finish up with the studying as soon as we think we understood the general concept. We think that we understood the topic, but in reality, we have no idea how to apply what we just “learned”. This is what Barbara Oakley calls the “Illusion of Competence”. In order to avoid this — test yourself. After you’ve read through something, this information is still in your “working memory” so it’s important to test yourself on the topic later. One way to do this is to make up flashcards with the question on one side and the answer on the other, or use an online tool like Quizlet, for example. You can do this in various ways, but the important thing is to try to recollect the information after a while.
6. Practice. You’ve heard this a thousand times probably, but the only way to actually learn something is to practice it. Whenever we learn something our brain establishes new connections between our neurons. However, at their inception, the connections are very weak. They’re prone to destruction by metabolic processes of our brain. Practice is what makes these neural connections stronger.

I think that these are the most important points that can help you advance in your studying, however I’ll cover additional details on this topic in the further post.