Rapid learner skills(10)——How to quickly extract the best insights from a huge topic
How to quickly extract the best insights from a huge topic
There are somgthing unnatural about how you are been taught to learn all your life.
Consider a typical class. You show up and the professor hands you a syllabus. It lists all the topics you are going to study. At the end, you will take an exam bsed on that list.
What is unnatural is that life has no such list.
Learning in real life is always unbounded. You can not ask, “Will this be on the final exam?” In truth, anything and everything can be tested. That you did not prepare for it is not life’s problem, it is yours.
Learning Unbounded Subjects
Learning without bounds is a fundamentally kind of different chanllenge.
An analogy comes from computer science. When seraching for something, there are two strategies you can use: depth-first or breadth-first.
Depth-first works by picking one direction and going deeper and deeper. When that path is exhausted, you back up to the start and begin digging again.
Breadth-first works by fanning out. You first explore your surroundings. If that does not work, you pick one direction and fan out again.
If the space you are exploring is bounded——like a fenced-off backyard——both approaches will work. Eventually you will cover the entire area.
If the space you are exploring is unbounded——like a vast open plain——this equivalence breaks down. Now, going depth-first, you may head down an infinitely long detour and never find what you are looking for.
Learning is similiar. With a list of topics to learn, and the expectation that you need to learn everything on it, then the path does not matter so much. Anything that cover the entire syllabus will do.
But if you are learning outside a finite list, for life, different strategies can have wildly different results. Choose poorly and you can stuck on a path that never leads to your destination.
How to Explore a New Topic Efficiently
Say you want to learn everything useful that could help you grow your business, all the computer science concepts that will make you a better programmer, the words and phrases that let you communite in a new language——all unbounded topics——what strategy should you use?
In general, we want to learn the most useful, basic and broadly applicable ideas first, only moving onto the esoteric, advanced or specialized later.
But putting these abstractions into practice can be tricky. Here are three different ways for three different domains:
1.Academic Reaearch: Follow the Citations
If you are learning an academic subject, the learning space is going to be papers, books and courses, linked via citations. I have found a few strategies helpful for efficient exploration:
1.Start with a course or textbook. Designed for learners, these will provide an entry-point that does not always presume prior exprtise.
2.Move to literature reviews and meta-analyses. For more specific topics, courses might not exist. Reviews and meta-analysis combine many different studies into one, so they can overview a literature before you dig deeper.
3.Follow citation trails. After these surveys, follow citations, centering on paper that come up again and again. Heavy citations show a paper is thought by other experts to be more important or foundational than others.
Even a narrow problem can often have tens of thousands of pares. Your search strategy makes all the difference between understanding a field and being baffled by it.
2.Language Learning: Usage and Frequency
Most languages have tens of thousands of unique words. Including proper nouns, expressions and other linguistic tid-bits, you probably need hundreds of thousands of memorized factoids for native-level fluency.
The order in which you learn these wrods makes a big differece in your founctional abilities. Here is how to optimize the path:
1.Master a few basic phrases to get started. This can be from any source:Pimsleur, Michel Thomas, textbooks or tutoring.This will give you something to play around with.
2.Use the language in the setting you care about. If that is too difficult, pick an “easier” setting that is still close. Real conversations can be substituted with mock discussions using a dictionary. Real books substituted with graded readers.
3.Pay attention to any words that come up. Make flashcards to memorize any words that you enocunter in the close-to-real situation.
4.Supplement these with a frequency list. Frequency lists often focus on small grammatical words, but the knowing the translation to the most common 1000 English words is a good benchmark to be able to hold interesting conversations.
3. Practical Skills: Projects Help Prioritize
If you are learning to do or make something, a project can help guide you. This works for programming, business, art and more:
1.Pick something concrete you would like to make. If what you really want to make is too hard yet, start with a toy project that is smaller.
2. Learn anything you need to build it. This is only a rough understanding, not mastery.
3. Put topics that come up on a “To-Learn” list. Any time a topic or subject comes up again——bump it to the top.
4. Learn your list. Pick the first item and set aside a fixed chunk of time to dig deeper. Then move onto the second item. If an idea you have covered needs more depth, add it back to the problem.
The combination of a project with a list prioritizes what to learn. The project makes sure what you learn stays practical. The list prioritizes everything else and the fixed chunks of time keep you from getting derailed.
Your Homework: Improve Your Search Strategy
Today the homwork is simple:
- Pick one thing you have been trying to learn.
- Ask yourself how you could improve the order in which you explore it.
- If you are stuck, compare to the three example strategies above.
- Go to the comments and write one sentence with your answer.
Words:
- syllabus:n.
a plan showing the subjects or books to be studied in a particular course - analogy:n.
a comparison of the features or qualities of two different things to show their similarities - backyard:n.
a space at the back of a house, usually surrounded by a fence, and covered with grass - detour: verb.
to go or make someone go a different or less direct route to a place, in order to avoid a problem or to visit somewhere or do something on the way - say:[+(that)clause]
Say can also mean imagine - esoteric:adj.
very unusual and understood or liked by only a small number of people, especially those with special knowledge - tricky:adj.
If a piece of work or problem is tricky, it is difficult to deal with and needs careful attention or skill - presume:verb.
to believe something to be true because it is likely, although not certain - expertise:n.
a high level of knowledge or skill - overview:n.
a short description of something that provides general information about it, but no details - factoid:n.
an interesting piece of information - substitute:verb.
to use something or someone instead of another thing or person - benchmark:n.
a level of quality that can be used as a standard when comparing other things - prioritize:verb.
to decide which of a group of things are the most important so that you can deal with them first - concrete:adj.
clear and certain, or real and existing in a form that can be seen or felt - mastery:n.
complete control of something - bump:verb.
to remove someone from a particular position, sometimes to a different one - derail:verb.
to prevent a plan or process from succeeding
Phrases:
- fan out:
If a group of people fan out, they move in different directions from a single point