In my experience, understanding theoretical concepts is challenging because the process of learning is often not legible [0]. What has worked for me is having

In my experience, understanding theoretical concepts is challenging because the process of learning is often not legible [0]. What has worked for me is having multiple periods of immersion into a concept or topic, while referring to multiple sources, with notes [1] summarizing small bits as I learn them. I keep refactoring those notes as my understanding grows, to include coherent maps of larger and larger chunks. On short time scales, my learning is not measurable, but experience indicates that my understanding grows over time. Looking back, my periods of immersion range from a few hours/days, while I tend to revisit topics every few weeks/months. I guess this falls under the umbrella of spaced repetition methods. Since my interests and pursuits are very diverse, and I'm seldom "finished" with something, I don't like the psychological weight of todo lists [2]. I maintain lists of interesting stuff [3], and several hundred browser tabs [4] but they're mostly not things to be checked off, and languish peacefully for long periods. That said, I'm on the lookout for better knowledge/idea management workflows and software. What I currently use is organically grown, and very messy. That was for theoretical understanding. Practice helps, for things one "does". --- [0]: Venkatesh Rao: A Big Little Idea Called Legibility -- https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-called-legibility/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-call... [1]: Markdown files, or scribbles/diagrams on scratch paper [2]: Scott Hanselman: It's not what you read, it's what you ignore -- https://www.hanselman.com/blog/ItsNotWhatYouReadItsWhatYouIgnoreVideoOfScottHanselmansPersonalProductivityTips.aspx https://www.hanselman.com/blog/ItsNotWhatYouReadItsWhatYouIg... [3]: Zim Wiki notebook -- http://zim-wiki.org/manual/Help/Notebooks.html http://zim-wiki.org/manual/Help/Notebooks.html [4]: I <3 Firefox and the TabGroups extension