4 ms·

Ask HN: Best ways to learn new stuff?

• amac 13y ago
  Maybe the easy answer is, find a job where you can work on what you want to work on? Whether that's for a company, or for yourself, life's too short.
• iSloth 13y ago
  Working for a smaller company will normally give you a far wider scope of technologies due to how many staff they have, this isn't always a positive however, but it can certainly be more interesting. Working in a larger company normally will have the other benefit that you become an 'expert' within your field much more easily, because your silo'ed working on that one thing most of the time, however make sure you enjoy that one area your working in! Out side of work just try dedicated some time each day, say an hour or even just 30min, read some material or try build something a little bit more each day. Once you have a plan stick to it and look back at the end of each week to see if your actually learning anything, if not amend your plan to suit. Picking what to learn when you have limited time is going to be fairly difficult, your probably going to want something that you already have an head start on so you can make decent progress with your limited learning time. For example if you know Cisco routers, learn Juniper routers. If you know PHP learn MySQL, Memcache etc...
• sdrinf 13y ago
  Josh Kaufman have recently released a new book called "The First 20 Hours -How to learn anything" -which is an awesome, operational description of rapid skill acquisition. The better question is: "How do you decide what to learn?" -for which I strongly suggest taking a strategic portfolio approach: have a few skills that you know in depth, and maintain a consistent flow of learning new things on at least a surface / API level so that given the opportunity you can reach out for them. Having a few of these under your bells will open your eyes to new opportunities both within your job, and in your life that you can pitch / take advantage of; at which point you can tie it into the "things people pay me for", and start the journey of mastering it in depth without any danger to your livelihood.
• jlengrand 13y ago
  I honestly don't recall where I read this, but one thing that really struck me is "Work 60 hours a week. 40 hours a week for your company, 20 hours a week for yourself" I find it true. As you say, company work don't teach much. Better said maybe, they don't teach much diverse skills. Most of your time is spent doing CRUD or API modifications. When I get out of work, I try to get projects about things I don't know anything about. Like learning web dev (or at least trying), publishing an android app, or even teaching yourself marketing. For me, the rule is usually simple : - Do something you don't know anything about. - Make it small. - Do it fast enough so that you don't get bored. - Publish it. I like it because I usually struggle a lot, and then understand the rough concepts. Adn the next project is easier, because I am used to trying to understand how stuff works. It basically keep your brains agile. And the best thing is that it makes you better at your job. Because you can then think out of the box, and offer new solutions to problems. More than if you'd spend 60 hours a week on your job only. Last thing is, those small projects, you can show them off; which makes you more seducing for other companies / people. Simply because you can talk about them, without having to know too much context :).
• sunnybythesea 13y ago
  I've been in a funk for quite a long time now. I think the most important thing is to establish a vision for your life. What do you want your life to be about? It's a question that might take some time to answer. You could always randomly pick a popular subject to learn (economics, web dev...). But the question you'll have to ask yourself is why do I want to learn one thing over another. Time is the most precious thing you have, and so it's good to have a direction in your life, so that, what do you do is gradually guiding you in that direction. On the other hand, sometimes you could take that analysis to the extreme (called analysis paralysis) and never decide what you want to do. In that case, just pick something that's interesting and stick with it for an extended period. This is something that most of struggle with. There is so much to do, you can flip-flop between activities, never really getting much depth. Good luck, it's a long journey, but you're already asking the right questions.
• haney 13y ago
  I just attempt to remain passionately curious. If I don't know something I read about it on Wikipedia, if it still doesn't make sense I search Amazon and order a book. I've learned things about Sociology, Politics, Corporate Finance, Theoretical Computer Science and Parkour this way. We live in a really interesting world, try to understand how everything you come in contact with works (on some level).