5 Steps To Learn Fast As A Developer

Intro

Learning is a skill. When applying the correct strategies and tactics you can accelerate the rate at which you learn. The quicker you can comprehend something to the point of explaining to someone else without a reference the faster you’ll be able to move onto the next topic!

Diving into a topic you don’t understand is an exciting time. It’s like discovering a cave system and going down the different paths that lead to new possibilities. Once you understand that something you begin to understand what’s possible and what’s not. This is how innovation occurs.

1. Purpose

Before starting any rabbit hole journey you need to define the end goal for learning something. Is the information useful for building a specific feature in a pre-existing product? Is it a pre-requisite to reaching a certain level of comprehension? Do you want to push the limits of innovation and attempt to build cutting-edge technology by understanding the fundamental knowledge?

This purpose is what gives you the drive, the goal to strive for, the reason for you to get up out of the cosy bed each morning and form discipline around. Without purpose you have no direction and when there is not direction your hard work is consistently inefficient. Know what you want so you envision it and then can start devising strategies and tactics to manifest it into existence.

2. Immersion

It is better to focus your attention on what will actually move you forward and bring you closer to your goal. Zoning in on a singular topic will cause faster results. The more divided your attention is the longer it will take to absorb everything. For example, if you were to try and learn the language Rust but spend half the time doing frontend with Javascript then your mind will be thinking of two different things. Whatever you choose to focus on with dictate what your mind chooses to stand out in everyday life. A great example of this is thinking of a color, you’ll begin to notice that color in your surroundings - pick red for example and look around your environment.

To keep you on track you need to find a community of like-minded people. You are the average of who you spend most your time around. Surround yourself with people with the knowledge of the topic you want to obtain. Join discords, telegrams, any type of group setting that shares the same interests as you. If that’s about reverse engineering, great! Go find a community and be active in it by being curious and engaging with people - ask questions, answer questions, spark ideas, etc. Be kind and everything will fall into place.

Another great thing to do is listen to podcasts when going somewhere or reading articles while waiting for something. The point is the more you surround yourself in the topic the easier it will be to connect the dots. As long as you make meaningful connections between questions and answers it will eventually click.

3. Simplify

Nothing is more intimidating and discouraging than a complex problem with no step-by-step plan to create a solution.

For example, if grand goal is to understand x and can achieve this by building a program that does y, incorporating x. What functionality is necessary to build the simplest working version y? Only after you have the first iteration can you continue to expand on it.

When you only focus on the end goal you will burn out because they usually take quite some time to achieve. We need some stimulus to reward us when working towards said end goal. That’s why it’s a must to create small, easy to achieve goals that walk towards the light. Each small goal is a dopamine hit, reenforcing you to do another small task and another and so on. Eventually, you’ll end there in no time as the journey becomes the main focus.

4. Practice

• Consistency
• Hardwork
• Build something (you’ll never truly understand something until you build something)
• Repetition
• Trail and error
• Learn by doing

5. Consistency

• Take breaks to prevent burnout
• Keep challenging yourself
• Small wins compound over time
• Without consistency you’re not efficiently learning
• The more you do something, the easier it becomes - intuition

Final