Ask HN: How do you study and analysis day by day?

Phil Tadros · February 26, 2024

2024-02-26 06:01:07

I’m working my way through Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte. I can’t say I’ve digested it well enough to recommend it, but a key point that stuck with me is to get into the habit of making a note of things you encounter day-to-day (including while reading and researching), and using the “PARA” method to file them into projects, resources, areas, or the Gmail-like “archive.” Projects are things you’re actively working on — 2023 taxes, planning a night out for your anniversary, reaching a level of proficiency with LLMs, etc. Resources are a little longer-lived than projects; they’re subjects you find interesting that don’t have a clear start or finish the way a project does, like a bash cheatsheet, or a gardening hobby. Finally, an area is something that never goes away, like personal finances or family paperwork.

These groups have helped me organize my “lifestream” a lot better. Rather than torturing myself about deciding the perfect place for everything I learn, PARA helps me understand that organization is more of a lifecycle with stages over time. Something might go into a project folder today, but when that project is complete (or abandoned), its parts can go into reusable resources, mini-brain areas, or the archive. That fluidity has made filing of information a lot easier.

This isn’t a full answer to your whole question. But knowing how to deal with the influx of daily information, and developing more of an opinion what a research session’s work product should look like, is a piece of the puzzle.

*https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/

I read a lot. I used to have time to read basically whatever, and would generally just follow the bibliographic of referential trails in other books. Now, my time is much more limited, so whenever I want/need to learn about something new, I’m more disciplined and devise an “essential reading list” as a first step. To do this, I’ll perform a basic google search for the topic, check a wikipedia article, or search for the topic on a publisher’s website. I’ll read the abstract for each book and try to determine which ones are oriented toward beginners. I’ll usually select at least three “beginner books” and read them, along with a couple of select “advanced” books that I know I’ll have to wait to get to until later.

I try to read for at least 45 minutes each day and I take notes on the books I read. From there I move on to the more advanced stuff I gathered and use my old habit of following bibliographic references for more.

Umberto Eco has a book on how to write a PHD thesis, How to Write a Thesis
. I think a lot of the techniques described in that book are valuable for any kind of research, whether your aim is to write a thesis or just to learn something new.

I don’t normally post here- normally I lurk. But this spoke to me.

Learning and research is something you(someone) has to impose on themselves as a self-discipline(like working out, eating right or some other habit). I learned this early in my adolescent years- but it was not honed or realized until university. Once I got into college, I found out that I need to push myself to do the research for things I wanted to pursue- even if it wasn’t directly related- in order to achieve my end goal. In comparison, as a naive kid- I would research hitboxes, best shooter tactics and related gaming notes. Now, I open myself to anything and everything- because I realize now 20 years later, that I can easily make what I learn into something I benefit/enjoy from with enough effort and perspective insight.

Long-story-short(tldr)?

Just because you don’t know something now, doesn’t mean it won’t be important to you later. When that day comes, the last thing on your mind will be passive interest- and moreso long-term passion. Which, in retrospect- the former is the dopamine calling you home to stay placated with who you are- rather than you want to be.

Read a book. Save a life.
-Chuck

Regarding learning, I usually start with YouTube videos to get a foundation of the topic to see if it interests me. If it does, I’ll look more for advanced courses or books and go from there.

For research, I usually just use a search engine and read what seem to be credible sources. News articles, court documents, studies, etc.

I think everybody is struggling with this. I found very good example and that is Duolingo, it forces you to take lessons every day. And after month or so it’s just in your mind, that feeling you need to finish something, no matter if it’s 2 minutes, it’s just that you are doing it each day.

I.e. I started learning Data Science lately (frontend developer here), and I just picked one course and learn each day few lessons. More and more, I’m convinced that these small steps are once that moves you forward whether you are learning something new or going to gym, what ever. Just show up, and do that small step each day.

Everything else will come together. You will need to do some research anyway if you want to ‘finish’ some task, so I don’t bother with that. Just go, and learn.

I can vouch for that, Duolingo is a very good example, it creates that urge to complete the lesson so that we don’t break that streak.

It also helped me in habit stacking, which led to better productivity too. routines help.

The big icon with the streak and it turning red toward the end of the day really helps. Recognizing that some days you won’t want to learn but just getting through it is ok. It’s a really slow process if you’re not deliberate but slow is better than none IMO.

Keep a notebook with you at all times, make time to study and reflect on your notebook pages. Also use a computer if you want grad-level dialogue with the ai, very helpful as well. But strongly recommend sticking to physical notebook because can flip pages and can commit pages to memory as landscapes more readily.

Follow your innate curiosity, and respect the edifice of knowledge constructed by those who came before us (i.e., don’t get sucked into quackery without a deep understanding of the SOTA).

The question reminds me of the dilemma between exploration and exploitation [1]. The art (or skill) is learning when to stop and redirect. Talking to friends about certain learning curves and making sure I don’t waste my time just researching or building things that are overloaded with features has helped me a lot. I think it’s generally good to know that there’s a tradeoff no matter what you’re trying to learn or explore.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration-exploitation_dilem…

This is my second time seeing a reference to this concept today, but apparently the Wikipedia article was created in 2023. It’s an interesting idea though… did it come from machine learning research?

I remember learning something akin to this in social psychology in the context of a single risk-taker fish breaking from the school of fish to explore and take risks which ultimately benefitted the whole group.

I remember discussing this idea with my friends 10 years ago, when I started my first engineering job and felt my time shifting from mostly exploration to exploitation. I had spent years learning for the sake of learning, with no strings attached. Then, all of a sudden, I was applying what I had learned in exchange for money, and the people I worked for expected something valuable to come from how I spent my time.

I didn’t research machine learning, but my friends did, so it could have been an idea I picked up from someone else.

Anyway, I think it’s a valuable framework because we need to make time for exploration—it’s a great way to let go, have fun, and dissolve the fear of failure.

Nowadays when I’m ready to learn a new field, I start by talking to chatGPT to get a general picture of the field and a few introduction books, specifically ones that are admittedly objective, not propagandistic. After reading these books, I will have an understanding of the field in order to reasonably plan what and how to learn next.

The key is de-fragmentation, which is the most important discipline in this age. Read serious publications by professional authors. Stay away from any traffic-driven information. I can’t say they are 100% rubbish, but spending time on them causes far far more damage than gain.

I’m unemployed.

Joking aside, I worry when I start working again too. I think recognizing that struggling is learning and aiming to get into the rhythm/habit of struggling even when you’re tired – even a little bit – compounds. I’m also toying with the idea of cohort-based learning

I typically use Google to search for links and usually end up finding the top 2-3 most helpful ones. After reading through them, I have recently begun saving these links to my GitHub account for future reference. I use a web extension along with a keyboard shortcut to do this. Here is an example of a saved link: https://github.com/dvcoolarun/til

I really love Anki as a tool, especially to learn mechanical things (like vim key bindings), to remember arguments of key articles, and to situate myself back in the thoughts that I previously had.

For mechanical things:
I was able to learn lazygit keybindings by heart in a week that take care of 95% of my usage.

To remember key arguments of an article:
I make a card like

    In the article _The Bitter Lesson_, what types of methods work better in the long run?
    General methods that use computation (search/learning)

For situating myself:
I take a project I worked on and I make a card on what I found challenging, or the tools I used. Or what I learned after. A lot of our problem solving is pattern matching to things we’ve seen before so leveraging this is really powerful.

I work on a programming language with a friend. We try to remove as much of the pain points of day to day programming as possible, and it’s very motivating to find solutions to various problems we’ve had for a long time.

I’m going through this right now. What I’m beginning to notice is that I need to have a direction. If I don’t have a direction, I’ll consume all content that seems interesting. It’s frankly too much. So I should be more specialized/directed at a particular goal/purpose. This is purely for the sake to not experience content overload.

At least, that’s my working hypothesis for now, still testing this out.

I dont, then i realize i’m getting behind and madly try to catch up then realize its so hard to do when you dont sleep properly and start sleeping better then realize I’m getting behind and the cycle starts again.

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