- I Don't learn for the sake of learning, in the phase of life, where I have to be picky!
- Spend some time (few hours to 1 week max) based on the subject I am trying to learn
- Augment my learning with mind maps and Anki flash cards for long term augmentation
- My favourite: make a small from scratch, throw away version of whatever it is trying to learn, so I internalise it (again set a 2 week time constraint). Example: write a home grown version of Numpy (not everything the core only) or an augmented reality library (may be something that can just detect the horizontal plane)
Can you go into more depth about mind maps, and specifically how they help you?
I'm building an information repository (of a sort..) and my plan for retention is spaced repetition (ala Anki/etc), but I've been unsure how to fit mind maps in it. I've got an inkling that I can automate mind map construction based on a form of labels, but tbh I'm not sure what problem I'm solving with mind maps. How do you find they help you?
It is an interesting idea to be able to generate mind maps automatically.
I just keep a few pages aside, scribble notes, use bookmarks for pages if I am reading a book. Only when I am done, I build a mind map. Usually a book's mind map is made up of multiple mind maps, 1 per chapter.
I use mind maps for the forest overview while flash cards are my trees and leaves! I find the combination very simple to build, maintain and fun to review. Hope this helps, let me know if you want any help in your auto mind map construction idea.
Really a personal mix of analog and digital; I will try to explain a bit in detail, hope this gives an idea.
So I use Bullet Journal (analog notebooks) for perusal work and Notion/Org Mode for office work; Notion for non IP work and Org mode for IP work. My org mode is not in cloud anywhere; only on my disk. All my planning and to-dos go somewhere in here.
I follow this directory layout convention in my home directory:
So for everything I am working through, say a book 'Realtime Rendering' under 'Graphics' subject area, I make a dir 'Books/realtime-rendering' directory with 'mind-map' directory which contains all mind-maps scanned from my analog mind map notebook where I make the mind maps with pen and paper. This also contains the exported Anki flash deck for that book.
After making this a habit, I have found that I have become selective about what to work through; I take my time to find out as there is good but worth-it effort to make flash cards and mind maps for long term memory augmentation. Even if I am not very regular (only about 50-60% a week) to review my cards, I am way better off now than before putting this system in place.
- Spend some time (few hours to 1 week max) based on the subject I am trying to learn
- Augment my learning with mind maps and Anki flash cards for long term augmentation
- My favourite: make a small from scratch, throw away version of whatever it is trying to learn, so I internalise it (again set a 2 week time constraint). Example: write a home grown version of Numpy (not everything the core only) or an augmented reality library (may be something that can just detect the horizontal plane)