Learning to learn 🔗

This post is mostly a documentation of my learning process. I bought a Kindle (11th gen, paperwhite edition) in May of 2022, filled it with a few books, but really started to read just a few months back (~ Aug 2023).

But now, I am kind of hooked to it :). I read books, blogs (which I send via Send to Kindle browser extension) which I find interesting or someone shared on our company Slack which they find interesting. I also send some research papers as well (mostly by using sendtokindle Amazon page where you drag/drop files).

I don’t think I have ever completed any research paper which I had sent on my Kindle, although blogs and books I definitely have. I am still not sure if it is because research papers are boring to me, or I just have not found any interesting one yet..

Anyways, I take highlights from the content I have in my Kindle, but I feel I am starting to forget many things since I do not apply them practically most of the times..

I also listen to some podcasts, mostly the Founders podcast talking about great entrepreneurs who came before us.. But I had never made any notes out of them yet.

I am writing this post also to just know my process myself, and see what short-comings are in it..

Some of the actions I feel I can take to improve the process:

1. Maintain a page/blog where I summarize the content in a few short points, and if I ever need to actually go in deep and see what I learned, I can always go and read my highlights.
2. Mostly read only the things I can apply in short term. For example:
   1. I should ideally read only those self-help books which can actually help me with my current situation!!!
   2. For technical things, I cannot always just read what I can apply on job immediately since that would limit the breadth I can explore, so I should atleast try to do a POC, implement whatever the author is talking about if it’s a hands-on thing, or read the corresponding code myself if it is something open-source for example..
3. If I am reading something just for the entertainment, then nothing needs to be done per se to remember or anything.

With respect to all this, I would now try to list down all the things I have open for reading at the moment in my Kindle, and see what I know from them so far, and decide whether or not I want to continue reading those. This will be continuously added in continous reading zone blog..