I agree with a lot of the posts here, but noticed one way of learning (specifically about programming, but it applies to most creative endeavors I've enjoyed) t

I agree with a lot of the posts here, but noticed one way of learning (specifically about programming, but it applies to most creative endeavors I've enjoyed) that I have not seen mentioned, which is to learn by teaching. I'm self-taught, and there is an enormous segment of things I've learned by trying to help someone with something I had No Idea how to do. A couple lifetimes ago (say, 99-01) I used to spend a lot of time on a back-then-well-regarded designers forum, and every time a web development question would pop up, I generally didn't know the answer. I was just learning, myself, and the questions always intrigued me. So I'd dig in and start googling and hacking and reading / researching and documenting and finally write up a thorough response. Follow-up questions came with more hacking and research, but always ended in an answer, even if it was "no clue - but here's where I ended up...". I'd eventually become very well known in that community as an experienced developer, though I was generally answering questions I had no business answering. That turned out to be very lucrative for me over time as those designers got further into their careers - some of whom I've been working with on-and-off for more than a decade. I did the same in the early days of StackOverflow. I'd see an interesting question pop up that I knew absolutely nothing about. I'd open up my IDE of choice at the time and start hacking away. 50 browser tabs and a few iterations later, and I'd have an answer. Sometimes it was weirdly brilliant. Sometimes it was ridiculous. But I'd learned TONS along the way. I still do the same when I start new projects. I start with my own questions. I flip everything I've done before upon its forehead, ignoring previous assumptions. I open hundreds of tabs and email myself a whole bunch of links to read after I've slept a bit more. And then I pick a few things that seem reasonable and start running until the project looks like something tangible. I've built quite a few successful things this way, and consistently learn quite a bit more every step of the way.