part in a two-part series on career-long learning as a knowledge scientist. The primary article covered why try to be a career-long learner and the right way to give you topics to review.
In this text, I’ll discuss:
- Multiple strategies to avoid burnout
- The 2 learning strategies I exploit
- The (often missed) power of solitude
Let’s get into it!
Avoiding burnout
As a career-long learner, burnout is the last word enemy. You’ll be able to only reap the advantages of years of study in the event you… well, . Burn out puts that development in jeopardy.
It is a marathon, not a sprint. On this section, I’ll share things that I do to maintain myself engaged and excited in my learning journey.
Create a fun and motivating incentive structure
When doing self-directed study, it will be significant to place together an incentive structure that works for you. Do some soul-searching and work out an approach that’s fun and motivating.
You’re reading my incentive structure! I like learning about/mastering topics after which writing articles to share what I learn. It is actually fun to have a look at the reads my articles get and count the dollars they make. It’s not in regards to the money — I don’t make much — nevertheless it is a fun game that motivates me to maintain studying and writing.
If writing isn’t your thing, there are loads of other things you would do. I’ve seen people make YouTube videos, post short comments on LinkedIn or buy themselves a fun reward once they hit a milestone.
Nobody can inform you what is going to give you the results you want, you’ll should figure that out on your individual. But it will be significant that you simply find something that makes your studies fun and fascinating. Otherwise, you’ll likely start feeling burn out.
Arrange clear stopping points/check points
It’s important to feel like you might be progressing in your studying. You should feel a way of accomplishment. An excellent motivation structure will certainly help with this as discussed within the last section. You must also make certain you’ve gotten good stopping points/check points. Endlessly studying a subject with no exit plan can result in frustration and tedium.
Before you begin a study topic, arrange goals for what you need to learn. When you’ve achieved your initial goals, you may reassess if you need to proceed deeper on that topic or move to something else. Being intentional will make you are feeling like you might be on top of things. Having check points will make you are feeling like you might be progressing.
Again, writing articles serves as check points for me. I write an article on a subject, once I’ve written it, I can resolve if I need to put in writing one other article on the identical topic, diving deeper, or move on. Writing gives me good stopping and check points that help me feel like I’m moving forward. Identical to your incentive structure, you’ll have to search out the approach that works best for you.
Lower the pressure — slightly study is infinitely higher than nothing
You aren’t in class anymore. Nobody goes to fail you! It’s important that you simply turn down the pressure you place on yourself when studying. For those who are doing something, you might be doing higher than most.
You is perhaps busy for a time period, and your studying may decelerate. That’s okay — I’m the daddy of a toddler; I studied loads more before my child was born than I do now. And that’s okay! I’m still studying and making progress.
You would possibly take longer to master a subject than you expected. You would possibly should take a break from studying for health or personal reasons. All of these items are okay, so long as you might be doing something when you may.
Lowering the pressures in your studies will help avoid feeling of stress and guilt. For those who feel stressed, you’ll avoid what’s supplying you with stress. For those who feel guilty, you’ll force yourself to review to avoid the guilt for some time, but eventually you’ll likely feel burned about and quit.
Giving yourself grace and lowering the pressure you place on yourself pays big dividends by helping you avoid negative feelings together with your studies.
You will forget things, come to terms together with your mortality
Forgetting things that I learned is one in all the largest frustrations I face as I attempt to improve myself through continual study. I had to come back to terms with my mortality and accept that I’ll forget some things. Accepting this has decreased my frustrations and disappointments in my studies, which has helped me avoid burn out.
For instance, I wrote an article in regards to the simplex method utilized in linear programming over a 12 months ago. I could give an outline of the essential ideas of the algorithm, but I truthfully couldn’t walk you thru the specifics right away. This frustrates me, but I even have come to terms with the indisputable fact that I’m not going to retain an encyclopedic knowledge of all the topics I study.
I’ve had to come back to terms with the indisputable fact that I won’t retain every thing I learn — you most likely should too. I’ve give you a couple of thoughts that I review once I get frustrated:
- 100% efficiency (retaining every thing I learn) was never the goal and isn’t possible
- I’ll remember loads of things I study; I’ll all the time know more a few topic after studying it
- If I take good notes, I can remind myself of most of what I forget by reading explanations in my very own words and manner of pondering — I’ll refresh on topics much faster because I studied them previously
For those who’re bored, or hate it, move on
Top-of-the-line things about not being in class (apart from the schooling as mentioned partly 1!) is that you’ve gotten to review anything specific. For those who are studying a subject and also you stop “feeling it” sooner or later, it’s okay to simply move onto something else. Don’t feel bad about it and don’t force yourself to “tough it out.” For those who aren’t having fun with it, you might be likely going to begin burning out.
At one point, I used to be doing a deep dive into splines. I developed understanding of them, but I wanted to grasp them to a level that I could write code to manually calculate them in Python. I spent hours attempting to figure it out without success. I began getting frustrated and I wasn’t having fun. I made a decision to let it go and move onto something else.
I felt light, free and most significantly, ready to review something else after I made a decision to maneuver on. Perhaps I’ll come back to it in the future, perhaps I won’t. But not forcing myself to do something I didn’t enjoy helped me proceed to enjoy studying.
The 2 learning strategies I exploit
When studying any topic, I exploit a combination of two primary learning strategies:
- High volume, low retention
- Low volume, high retention
High volume, low retention
On this approach, I quickly cover loads of material. I prioritize coverage of fabric over retention. An example of this approach is listening to a podcast or audio books while cleansing the home or casually watching YouTube videos without pausing/taking notes.
I exploit generally use this approach in two situations:
- The subject is something I need exposure to, but not something I want to master. Topics where a high-level overview is sufficient. Examples of those topics for me are data engineering and software engineering. They somewhat apply to my job and broadly help me develop my skills, however the overwhelming majority of the worth to me might be provided by high-level overviews.
- When doing ‘discovery’ studying through my ‘discovery channels’ (see part 1 for my definition of discovery channels). This approach is great for getting quick exposure to a broad range of topics before narrowing in on topics to review in greater depth.
Low volume, high retention
Probably greater than ninety percent of my study time is spent doing low volume, high retention learning. This approach is characterised by going through the fabric slowly and mastering the main points. I often reference multiple books, articles, videos and papers once I’m using this study strategy. I aim to get a deep understanding of the fabric.
The low volume, high retention technique is best once you’ve identified something that you need to know rather well. A number of examples of topics that fall into this category for me are most topics related to predictive modeling, experimental design and optimization.
The importance of solitude and quiet to digest and internalize
Once I began my career-long studying, I made the error of spending just about all of my study time consuming material; reading books and papers, watching lectures on YouTube, listening to podcasts, etc. It took a while for me to understand that my studying was missing a hugely vital component — time away from the books in solitude to digest and internalize the fabric.
The goal of your studying needs to be to have a deep understanding of the fabric, not only to have the option to regurgitate the knowledge. The most effective option to try this is to shut the books and think through what you’ve learned. When using solitude to deepen my understanding, I ask questions, challenge premises and extend the connections of what I’ve learned to other topics.
By combining ‘traditional’ studying with ‘solitude’, you get one of the best of each worlds. You leverage the large amount of well-thought out, well-researched and well-organized body of knowledge available to us in our era you are taking the time to internalize it so the knowledge becomes yours.
For me, my ‘solitude’ time has two forms — long and short forms. For long forms, I intentionally put away the fabric and think it through. I often go on walks or pace a room backwards and forwards (often talking to myself like a crazy person). This provides me loads of time to arrange large amounts of knowledge in my head. I even have time and the main target to ask and check out to reply deeper questions on the fabric.
My short type of solitude is usually just taking a couple of minutes to stop my traditional studying and take into consideration what I’m learning. Sometimes it may well be as short a five-minute break from ingesting material. It is a powerful technique since it helps me ingest the things that I’ve just learned moments earlier. This helps me decelerate and really understand what I’m learning, quite than rushing through the fabric.
Wrapping it up
Being a career-long learner, has been extremely rewarding and fulfilling for me. I’ve picked up a couple of tricks and learned a couple of things along the way in which that I’ve shared in this text series. I hope that what something that I’ve shared is useful to you.
Link to part 1: link
