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General Tips to Studying

First tip learn how information gets "encoded"​

My first recommendation is to watch the YT video below to know how "studying" actually works.

First I really like the video above. His videos are a bit long winded but! They create a unique mental model to learning that I think is important to draw from on how information gets "encoded" to the brain.

Other tips​

  1. I recommend studying with a friend. The reason why is to utilize the Feyman Technique, where essentially by having to teach and explain to other people, you begin to be able to abstract, analyze, and break down concepts to other people. It’s the idea of explaining a concept to a 10 year old.
    1. If you do not have a friend, find someone to study with
    2. Make recordings explaining it to yourself
    3. Create notes, drawing relationship understanding between applications of a pattern, why are you using it, and then in the future, you can draw more relationships.
      1. Notes like Obsidian are perfect examples where the goal is to draw relational patterns between concepts
      2. Being able to argue even against something like ChatGPT is great! You can learn and question each other, as ChatGPT is not always reliable, forcing you to confirm and double check your knowledge.
  2. Spaced repetition: You lose 50% of what you learn after the first day of learning. What this means to make things stick is to review categories of questions, and to draw the deeper complex understanding of why you are doing something. Again, this means to review, practice, and explanations are necessary. And having deeper initial thoughts of something and how it relates can drastically improve this mental model.
  3. Organize how you approach your problems
    • Coding Template
    • THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT HAVING A STRUCTURE ON HOW YOU APPROACH A PROBLEM
    • Master the Coding Interview Big Tech, on Udemy, is a good example of having a structured analytical way to approach interviews and super important in my opinion. And is a gorgeous method of showing how they come across thinking about a problem, breaking it down to fundamental parts, and rebuilding it back up.
    • Master the coding interview big tech
    • I highly recommend, look at my get cheap udemy courses, and picking up this course even to just review the first 1-3 problems, and return it if you don’t like it. But I think is great, for people who need that small example of breaking questions down analytically.
  4. THERE IS NO SHORTCUT! This is a great video by the Primagen, that I highly recommend to watch. Specifically: "Short cuts lead to long delays". The reality is, you need to put in the work, question if you really know something, and not just accept it. While studying, it can be easy to think you "know it", but the reality is do you really understand? Keep drilling, keep explaing to others, and figure out new ways to approach your understanding.