Ask HN: What's your process for learning?
My learning falls into a couple main categories: formal study for the sciences (be it math, programming, crypto, etc); and broad research for advocacy and activism.  Both of these involve keeping up with current events, the latter moreso than the former; the former can be especially time-sensitive.<p>I don&#x27;t have the time to put these in any coherent order, so I&#x27;ll just list some:<p>- Bookmarks.  I find much of my information online.  I make aggressive use of tags, and I found that organizing them into folders is too difficult and a waste of time (unless grouping them for a project&#x2F;talk temporarily); the tree structure doesn&#x27;t lend itself well to a graph of concepts.  I have ~10k bookmarks.  I keep them; you never know when they&#x27;ll come in handy, even if only for trivia.  Figuring out what tags are appropriate forces me to extract key material.<p>- Maintain a reading list&#x2F;backlog.  I have short, medium, and long-term lists.  Go through them on occasion and re-order them by interest&#x2F;importance.  Remove ones you know you won&#x27;t have time for.<p>- Learn to speed read.  I find it difficult on a screen, but easy on paper.<p>- Hands-on experience: if you&#x27;re programming, go hack on your favorite project, look at bug reports, or write your own.  Struggle through problems before you give up and look online.<p>- My time is split between many things.  I use Org mode to organize my thoughts and agenda.  Sometimes I can do the entire project in Org mode (e.g. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mikegerwitz.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;sapsf&#x2F;tree&#x2F;slides.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mikegerwitz.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;sapsf&#x2F;tree&#x2F;slides.org</a>, but I left my time tracking private).  It also integrates with my mail client (Gnus), where I live a good chunk of my life outside of work.<p>- While I read many articles and blogs and stuff online, for any in-depth material, I buy the book or print the paper and read offline.  I have a system with 5 different color pens that I use to aggressively mark up and underline (blue general concepts, red a problem, green a solution, purple a technical detail, black misc.).  I have a Bamboo tablet, but I still prefer paper.<p>- As I mentioned in another one of my comments (and as adamnemecek mentioned), read a book multiple times (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pne.people.si.umich.edu&#x2F;PDF&#x2F;howtoread.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pne.people.si.umich.edu&#x2F;PDF&#x2F;howtoread.pdf</a>).  It not only helps with absorbing the information and selecting what is important to you for further study (which is important given limited time), but also helps if you can&#x27;t often finish books; after a few iterations, you&#x27;ll have a good idea on all of the concepts and know _what information exists_ and _where to find it later_ when you actually need it.  Discovery is the most important (thus my bookmarks)---material is always there to reference.<p>- I don&#x27;t have time to watch videos---I prefer transcripts, which I can also search through.  If I do need to watch a video (either because it explains a concept better or because there is no alternative), I watch it at 2--2.5x and slow down when I get to something I&#x27;m having trouble keeping up with.  Some people talk slowly even at 2x. :x<p>- Get rid of distractions.  One of the best things I did was create an agenda in Org mode, because once I complete a daily task (e.g. reading news sites; checking mail; checking GNU Social), I _stop_ and move onto another task.  No peering at my e-mail or news sites 20 times while I&#x27;m doing another task.<p>- Similar to the previous: I only work on personal things at night.  I have a family, and I want to spend time with them---I feel guilty if I work during the day when the kids want to play, and all the noise is a distraction; it breaks flow constantly.  Wait until a calm point.<p>- Iterate over your system.  Everything I do has evolved over the course of many years.  The learning curve for some tools will slow you down, but can be very rewarding.  The iterative process can slow you down.  But that&#x27;s not always the point: a good system can have returns in the long run, but it also _reduces stress_; you want to enjoy learning, enjoy the tasks you&#x27;re doing, and not have to worry about other things.  This might involve writing scripts, too.<p>I have more things, but that&#x27;ll have to do for now.