Learning Through Reading

My favorite way of learning is through one-on-one lessons with a teacher. Chalk it up to years of taking private music lessons. But a good teacher is hard to find, and the private lesson format isn't common for many fields outside music. Thus, my second favorite way of learning has become through reading technical writing.

Technical writing doesn't have to be limited to the MDN docs. It can be any piece of writing you want to derive the most meaning you can from. The only requirements are that it is something you are happy dedicating a significant amount of time to reading and unpacking mentally, and that it is reasonably comprehensive and well-regarded, for the practical purposes of avoiding a malformed understanding in your chosen subject.

One well-written primary source is ideal; a few supplementary materials will come in handy. You are free to research and immerse yourself in the subject, but one or perhaps two books are quite enough to study in depth.

The method itself is simple enough, though practicing it requires the dedication of at least half an hour, and up to several hours, per day:

1. First, read your chosen book(s) all the way through. Don't worry about understanding at this point. Understanding will come later. Read for enjoyment: read as much as you can tolerate. Keep reading the same book over and over as you work through the following points.
2. If your book has any exercises or examples, practice them as you read. If not, think of some. Apply the concepts to your own life or projects. Keep practicing as you work through the following points.
3. Go through your book from the beginning. Choose a single sentence as your subject and spend a session of discursive meditation on it. (Instructions for discursive, or Western-style, meditation can be found readily enough online these days.) Continue meditating on key sentences. Meditating on every sentence is probably overkill, unless your chosen book happens to be particularly meaning-dense. A single sentence should take roughly 1-3 sessions of discursive meditation to unpack meaningfully. For particularly technical subjects, you will want to note down any questions that arise along the way and research the answers outside of meditation. Do not worry if your conclusions in meditation end up being wrong. Keep meditating as you work through the following points.
4. You should have plenty of ideas about what can be done practically with your subject by the time you have been meditating on it for a while. Create one of them as a more serious and extensive project. Don't worry about making mistakes. Begin to use your book as a cross-reference. A searchable reference or a glossary is a helpful aid for quickly looking up terms. If you finish your project quickly, start another as you work through the remaining point.
5. Correct misunderstandings. If anything doesn't yet make sense, look at the actual literal meaning. Do not overthink things. Think carefully. Continue daily practices of reading, short exercises, meditation, and a substantial project. This period is indefinite. At some point, the learning will begin to coalesce. Gradually, the incorrect assumptions and mistakes are smoothed away, and knowledge grows into understanding.

Nothing is revolutionary about this approach, although discursive meditation might be a little unfamiliar outside certain modes of mental training. Still, I've been happy with the results, and it seems a worthy alternative to assailing a topic from many different directions and materials.

Happy learning.