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Discussion on: How To Learn Better And Avoid Procrastination

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rduggan profile image
Robert Duggan

The illusion of competence was something I struggled with when first starting out. It's easy to feel like you have an understanding of some new concept until you have an opportunity to use it and realize that you don't actually know what's going on. I don't know if other people do this, but I've started to pretend that I'm learning this new thing to teach someone else. By that I mean, as I'm learning, I try to imagine how I would explain this topic to someone who doesn't know even have tangential knowledge of whatever the subject matter is. If I can't do that, then I know I need to go back and try again. This combined with spaced repetition is almost like a super-power for learning.

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Pascal Thormeier

I really like this approach! I once read somewhere that one has understood something if they're able to explain it to others, which, at least from my experiences, holds true. Explicitly learning with the goal in mind to teach others therefore sounds very reasonable to me.

Also, one thing I noticed: Often times, people teaching can be so very used to the topic that they neglect the smallest details at the beginning, thinking they're "obvious" to the people they teach, but that's often not the case. With this in mind and with your approach, I can imagine that you'll pay some special attention to those very details while learning.