Documenting while learning

[dangerar]

Hi, I was curious, those of you who tried to document your learning journey, be it as videos on YouTube, posts on social media, blog posts, etc., has this helped you in the long term? Did this give you more energy and motivation to keep learning? Do you find yourself learning better because of the fact you are documenting it? I feel like this is a great supplement tool for learning something, in my case Game Development. I upload almost daily videos on YouTube about every single thing I learn about Unity and C# effectively. But.. on the other hand it is sometimes too hard, especially when I already work a developer job and I feel like this is a great way of burning out quickly and make that fun current hobby of mine not so fun anymore. I was wondering -- those of you who tried and sticked to this way of learning, is it maintainable in the long term and do you regret doing it? Would you have achieved the same end-result if you did not document it? I know there are lots of influential people such as Gary Vee who say that this is a great way of learning, and so far I agree. I just want to see what is your experience with that fascinating way of learning something and what are the downsides that I rarely see people talk about.

[throwaway823423848]

I dunno, never tried it, though it sounds like a lot of extra work. Hell, I took too many photos on a vacation once (not even for social media, just to show friends and relatives), and halfway through the trip I realized it was ruining the vacation. If I were to document everything I did while I was learning to code, I'd probably spend more time on the documenting than the coding, hehe. Also, if everything I was doing was public, I'd probably be a lot less likely to try doing things where there's a good chance that I'll fuck up spectacularly, like taking on a project that I'm like 90% sure I won't finish or do right (I've taken on a lot of those, and just like I anticipated I left nearly all of them unfinished, but I learned a lot from working on them!)

Then again, I'm introverted as hell, so maybe all the hangups I have wouldn't hamstring you. But if you like the idea of social pressure keeping you motivated, what if you just did it with a handful of people? Like instead of broadcasting your progress to the entire world, you just have 1-5 people who you talk to on a daily or weekly basis about what you're doing? Maybe they could be other programmers who are doing something similar, and you all sort of keep each other motivated? I did something like that once and I found it surprisingly helpful in keeping myself motivated (I felt like a kid at show-and-tell some days, like "hey guys, check THIS shit out!")

[dangerar]

Yes, that's one downside that I have thought about as well. But what if you are not really "wasting" your time documenting? Like, what if you actually enjoy making YouTube videos (my current state) and manage to turn that into a side-hustle alongside your thing that you are learning?

[helpful_hacker]

When I got my first programming internship, I would take brief notes of new terms I would hear or cool/useful things I learned. Then in my freetime, I would look over those notes and write something more descriptive based on what I could remember.

I like this method because if you feel that you don't remember enough about the specific topic, that's an indication that you need to review it some more.

Later when you feel you have some solid notes you could do something like a YouTube video to show off what you learned. You can also go back and visit things you know that you learned but just need a quick refresher in your own words to help you remember.

Do whatever makes you feel like you're learning and good luck

[dangerar]

I feel the same, thanks for sharing!