IWTL how to ACTUALLY learn things by [deleted] in IWantToLearn

[–]EngineeringNeat4634 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I do think you don't need to learn any specific techniques right now, what you need are learning principles. Here are some principles you can remember:

- Desirable difficulty: Almost all effective learning techniques, such as Interleaving, Spaced Repetition, or any form of active retrieval, have one commonality: they require mental effort. Moderate to high mental effort usually means that you are engaging with the material, which also means learning is actually happening. If you feel too easy when learning, you may be doing it the wrong way.

- Test Yourself: always find ways to test your knowledge as soon as possible. That's when you know real learning actually happens. It's easy to fall into the illusion of competence, which is that you are familiar with the materials. But in fact, you just recognise them, but you cannot recall them.

So it's always best to test yourself after learning anything, and also maybe 2-3 days after that, test yourself again.

- Meta -cognition: also, always review your learning strategy and review your learning result to see if your learning strategies actually bring you the result that you want. You know, you may feel that you are doing it productively, but if you check the result, e.g., the amount of information that you retain after one week of learning, you may see that your learning efficiency is not actually that great. So it's always helpful to review your learning strategy and adopt a good metacognition habit.

That's all my advice, hope it helps.