HACKER Q&A
📣 sprsimplestuff

How do I learn how to learn hard things?


I'm about to graduate this December and I truly feel like I have an issue with learning complex topics. I'm a CS major for context. After my freshman or sophomore year, I realized that I'm pretty solid with reading, memorizing and spitting back out info, but taking info/frameworks and applying it to new problems/contexts is where I fail. I feel like my brain is hopelessly linear/rudimentary when I try to solve problems, if that makes any sense. Since realizing that, I have not fixed this gap, I've just been barely getting through school. I seem to have a...hill that I need to climb before I get into a focused, deliberate state of learning and applying hard things. When I do manage to complete complex work...it's poorly done/organized/thought through. This is likely a result of a combination of poorly selected shortcuts in learning/getting through classes and doing the bare minimum at certain points. I valued getting through school over thoroughly understanding what I'm doing and maybe having to retake some more classes. I'm at a point where this weakness has shown/will probably show in high level classes and potentially in whatever job I start in January. I'm not sure if I'll ever be someone who "loves to solve problems" or "loves getting into the details", but I'd like to be able to get to that kind of mindset when necessary.

Now, I think can have a bad to mediocre career at this point, but I don't think I'll achieve the goals I have unless I handle this issue. So ya - how do I learn how to learn hard things? Or how do I learn to turn my desire to learn/apply certain topics/do certain projects into meaningful action? If anyone has gone from a similar point to actually becoming thoroughly competent - I would love to hear how you turned the ship around.

  👤 morty_s Accepted Answer ✓
Keep going.

Don’t be afraid to “go deep,” learning begets learning.

Read more. This might sound obvious: the more you read, the more you _can_ read. You might find it helpful to stop memorizing info in order to just ceremonially regurgitate it (eg. onto some quiz/exam).

Read with a pencil/pen and take notes in the margins. The goal is to keep moving; you will eventually find something you think is really worth digging into.

You’ve highlighted your own points of failure, now you can get to work on correcting these perceived failures. A big part of solving complex problems is learning how to break them down into small chunks and then simplifying those chunks if need be.

There are plenty of books that try to teach problem solving skills (eg. how to solve it, George Polya). You can also find a clip of Feynman talking about how solving a lot of problems made him a great problem solver.

Forgetting about the whole “cult-of-interviewing flavor of loving to solve problems,” solving problems becomes more fun the better you get at it. It’s like anything else, you have to practice. Other students thought I was a “math genius,” but these same students rarely studied or completed their assignments. I did (and I don’t advocate this) every problem in the book, then got a second book and started working through it.

Consistency is key and its effects compound. You’re going to have a much longer career than you think. Now is the best time to exercise disciplined consistency. It seems like you’ve realized there’s no magical path—-that’s great. There isn’t any path except the one we carve out for ourselves, step by step, one foot in front of the other. So, keep going.

Confusion is the sweat of learning.

👤 atsaloli
Check out “Deep Work” by Cal Newport if you want to improve the quality of your work. Quite a few good tips in there.