Disclaimer: This post is about trying to validate an idea of mine. It's also my first post here.
By now, you've probably read a thousand times this advice: 'validate your idea before you start building it' or something along those lines.
And probably like me, you started building it anyway! 😬
So even though I already started, I'm thinking it's not too late to get some sort of validation.
My question is quite simple: How do you learn?
It's a very open question and any insight is interesting. Though, here are a few elements that I'm most curious about:
Looking forward to all answers!
My go to has always been books. Because there's higher barrier of entry to get a book published than to write a blog post. This is how I've learned most of what I know about coding. And I'm applying the same strategy right now to learn about entrepreneurship and marketing. I prefer real books to ebooks. Much easier to flip back and forth, take notes and dog ear.
I usually read the whole book before I dive into something. I don't really "remember" everything from the book per se, but I've turned all my unknown unknowns into known unknowns at a minimum and also get some known knowns too. Then when I do dive in, I know what to google and I'm much more effective at weeding through blog posts, forums and videos. I don't think you ever stop learning. I always say that half of being a good software engineer is knowing how to google stuff.
One thing about videos. I have a chrome extension that lets me play videos faster so I can watch youtube / khan academy videos at 1.5x the speed.
You touch on an important point with the barrier to entry, but allow me to expand on it. The economics of blog posts are largely broken compared to books. A book has to guarantee delivery of enormous value up front for the transaction to place and they are paid for doing so. Blog posts aren't getting paid for directly and so they are incentivized to funnel you towards a product and are likely biased in a given direction.
I place a great deal of trust in books because the economics of them alone.
I strongly believe in 1) Getting Started 2) Having a plan and above all if possible Human guidance. Check out my site www.newskillstudio.com , this has my complete thought process on What is the better way to learn. Thanks.
Mostly I rummage through Behance or Dribbble and try simply recreate. Meanwhile, I think about ways that I would do better and then just try it.
Technical (code):
2a. Watch video
2b. Re-watch video, but this time pausing and coding myself
Language (Spanish, etc):
Business / Startup / Entrepreneurship / Self-Improvement:
Thank you to everyone so far for your answers! Really appreciate and also interesting to see so many different approaches!
My active-learning process:
For me it's really hard to just follow courses, I really don't like this. Whatever I learnt I did it by doing, doing and doing again.
Work on a project, face a problem, read the doc / blog posts, continue working, repeat.
Why don't I use courses? They just teach you what's on the surface but I want to know the fundamentals.
I totally agree on that courses teach you the surface but if you have no deep understanding about the topic it should be better start from the surface and use your listening and watching senses after then you can do deep by reading blogs of reputed guys and further by reading content matter experts books meanwhile in the process of learning practicing what you have learned is a must.
It comes down to how you learn best.
Me for example, when I have a goal, I reverse engineer it. I break it down into smaller pieces (by using google/doing research) until I find myself at the root. Then I "work up the tree" until I'm at my desired goal.
Elon Musk mentioned it:
"it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree -- make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to."
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I am curious. What makes it more fun for you over text?