tags: learning
title: Learning to Learn

Something that gets missed out a lot is the 'learning how to learn' thing. If I simply tell you how to do something, and you don't learn how to find stuff out on your own, then you're dependent upon me to tell you everything. Whereas if you learn how to discover things for yourself, you become far more independent. When it comes to learning, you want to find out what methods help you best remember and understand stuff; what you want to memorise, and what you want to understand from basic principles; what to take the time to burn into muscle memory through repetition, and what isn't worth the time; what online resources are worth going to; how you take notes.

In the case of notes, I would recommend something like Obsidian which manages collections of pages written in Markdown. This was inspired by that, but designed to require only a LAMP stack on the host end, and only a modern browser on the client end, so as to avoid having to install apps and find ways to sync things between machines.
On this wiki I put notes that are for public consumption. Then I have private wikis for other notes.

Also in the case of notes, **write things down**. When you want to find out how to do something, first write down what you want to learn to do, and why. Then search for solutions, possibly by asking questions on FB, possibly on Stack Exchange, possibly via googling for stuff. When you find something worth trying, try to experiment safely (e.g. in a VM) until you're sure it's doing what you want, and not causing problems. When you find something that works, write it down. If something doesn't work, make notes on what didn't work, what happened, and ideas as to why it didn't work. Again this all helps the learning, researching, and problem solving faculties, which is worthwhile.