Learning to Learn: My Experience

Recently I took an online course with Zero to Mastery, an online coding bootcamp taught by head instructor Andrei Neagoie. I have taken many of their courses before, and it’s the main place I taught myself how to program. This course is unlike their other courses, however. This course is specifically designed to prepare you to effectively learn a new skill. It is a recommended resource in their bootcamp for any of their learning paths. The course was recommended to me from one of their adjacent courses, ‘How to be Happy’ 😊

Side note: The How to be Happy course is also great and I highly recommend it.

My goal for this blog is to describe my experience going through their Learning to Learn course. I will begin by discussing how the course is structured and why that is important for learning the material. Then I will talk about some of the key lessons that I learned as a result of the material. Finally, I will finish this blog by elaborating how I am applying these lessons to my own life and what goals I will achieve by implementing the material to my own learning 📝

The Course Structure

This course was structured into 5 sections

• Principles
• Lies
• Pillars
• Sciences
• Techniques

Each of these categories had multiple lessons within them, all under 10 minutes ⏱️. This made it easy to complete a few lessons in a short focused amount of time. Andrei specifically designed it this way because focusing for a short amount of time is one of the techniques he was teaching. This is something I will talk about later in this blog.

The lessons were also repeated multiple times throughout the course. One of the reasons for this is some lessons had a reason to belong in multiple categories, and it’s important to see the connection why they belong in multiple categories. Breaking a large subject into smaller categories is something Andrei teaches called ‘chunking’ and is essential for what he calls ‘bottom-up learning’. He also talks deeply about why it is important to relate these chunks of information together and revisit them which is what he calls ‘spaced repetition’ and ‘top-down learning’. I will talk more about this further in this blog.

While all of the lessons in this course are meaningful, I will only talk about a handful of the lessons I learned from the material and I have structured the next section to talk about each lesson in the category where they were organized in the course.

Principles

While all of the sections in this course are important, this section is foundational to the rest. In this section, Andrei uncovers some truths about the world that help shape the rest of the course. Much of this section is dedicated to “reshaping our mind to look at the world in a different way.”

One lesson that I took from this course was called ‘Happiness Factors’. Andrei teaches his students to pick 5-7 factors in their lives that have a direct or indirect correlation to their happiness 😄. In other words, a happiness factor is something that is either in your life you pursue or something you abstain from that increases or decreases your happiness. For example, if I get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep at night 😴 and at roughly the same time every night, this increases my happiness. Andrei asks his students to track their happiness factors at least monthly and on a scale of 1-5 ✏️ 5 meaning they are killing it this month with that area of their happiness 🌟. Then for each factor he asks what needs to improve in that area to make it a 5, or what needs to keep happening for that area to remain a 5.

The reason this is essential to your learning is if you are not happy, you are automatically at a disadvantage in your learning. Information is harder to retain, obstacles are difficult to overcome, and failure feels magnified when you aren’t happy 😰

Lies

In the previous section, Andrei discussed some truths about the world and how they shape your learning. This section he devoted to the lies of the world and how they can shape and hinder your learning.

My favorite lesson from this section was titled ‘Follow Your Passion’. When I was growing up, I always wanted my career to be involved with competitive swimming 🏊 because that is what I am still passionate about to this day. I found out later on exactly what Andrei is teaching in this lesson. Those who follow their passion for their career often lose passion for it. It becomes mundane for them. Andrei teaches that for us to chase a career path we need 3 things within that career.

1. We have a need to be creative with our careers 🎨 Does what you are working on interest you? Does it spark a slight amount of creativity in your brain 🧠? Andrei teaches that is all you need to get started and pursue that career. We don’t need to be overly passionate about something to have a career in it.
2. We need to be allowed to be in control of what we are working on. Are you able to have some autonomy in what you are working on? Can you have an overall say in the work that you do? It is important for us to feel in control of what we are doing in our day-to-day jobs.
3. Finally, we need to be able to generate impact with what we are doing. Is what you are doing creating a lasting impact? Are you leaving a legacy behind you? This is important because it gives us a feeling that what we are doing in our lives is meaningful to others and that drives us forward.

Andrei isn’t the first to have come to this conclusion about our career desires either. In fact, he is quoting famous author Cal Newport from his book titled “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”. Cal is a fantastic author in the productivity space, and I am currently reading the mentioned book by Andrei’s recommendation. Another one of my favorites of his is called “Deep Work” which I’ll be talking about more below.

By having some interest in our chosen careers, we avoid burnout in our passions and we can still drive ourselves forward to pursue greatness in the workforce. I am glad I didn’t choose to involve myself with competitive swimming vocationally. Choosing an alternative career allowed me to still enjoy my passion on my own terms 🏊

Pillars

In this section, Andrei focuses on what he calls the pillars of our learning. My favorite lesson from this section is called ‘The Feynman Technique’. It’s a technique named after scientist Richard Feynman 🧑‍🔬. Andrei explains this concept very well in this quote:

If you want to really understand something well, to really know a topic, you need to be able to teach it 👩‍🏫 Explaining something in a really simple to understand way is the best way to actually learn, but also to test your knowledge. - Andrei Neagoie, Learning to Learn.

Not only is using The Feynman Technique a way to test ourselves on what we know really well, or don’t, it helps us strengthen our memory recall of a particular subject. If we can recall information well enough and can explain it in simple terms, simple enough for a child, we truly understand the material. It’s also a fantastic flashlight for us to use on the darker spots of material we may not understand. It’s possible that someone can only explain parts of a subject in simple terms, but some parts they aren’t able to explain very well. This is great also! Because now they’ve used The Feynman Technique to see which parts they need to review and spend more time on.

Personally, I am using this blog to exercise The Feynman Technique. By sharing my experiences of what I have learned, I can understand the material better, and I can see where I need to go back to understand more.

Sciences 🧪

In this section, Andrei takes a scientific approach to prove the concepts he is teaching. He explains the science from multiple areas of research on why the information that he has gathered is true, and how it affects our cognitive abilities. One of the sciences he teaches in the section is called Focus vs. Diffuse Mode.

He teaches that there are two types of modes our brains can effectively learn in, and that they are both extremely important. Focus Mode is when we are engaged in one task at a time. 🚫 No distractions 🚫 This activates the part of our brain called the prefrontal cortex which is responsible for logic and reasoning. However, being focused all the time can be a bad thing. Our brains need to rest 😌 which is why the Diffuse Mode of thinking is equally as important. Diffuse Mode can happen in many ways. It can be going for a walk outside 🚶, meditating 🧘, participating in group exercise ⛹️ , or playing a leisurely game 🎮 ; You name it! The point is to get your mind and body doing other engaging activities. This mode of thinking allows your brain to rest and create important strong neural connections 🧠

As I previously mentioned, Deep Work by Cal Newport is a fantastic read, and this is the exact principle he writes about in his book. Cal Newport suggests working in 90 minute blocks of focus time (Deep Work) and 90 minute blocks of diffuse time (Shallow Work). I personally like this way of working. I prefer to work deeply for 90 minutes. That is no distractions from my internet browser or phone, listening to very soft music such as Lo-Fi or Brown Noise, and no excuses to get up from my chair like using the restroom or getting a snack. I make sure I have taken care of all of those before committing to a deep work session.

Alternatively, in a shallow work session I try to work in another area such as my living room or on my deck if it is a nice day ☀ I answer emails and other messages. In a shallow work session I also try to work out problems on paper, if I can, to avoid looking at my screen, then I can take that paper back to my computer and implement my ideas during a deep work session.

Techniques

This is the final section from Andrei’s course and it brings information from many of the previous sections and gives techniques on how to implement them into your own learning. A lesson that really brought all this together was titled Spaced Repetition. You see, many of these sections had a few of the same lessons. Andrei stresses the importance of spaced repetition by doing this.

He teaches that learning some material and then coming back after some time helps strengthen the neural connection that your brain has formed. By doing this you can remember the material better. Continually reviewing a subject teaches your brain that the material is important enough to remember for a long time. Andrei mentions this figure below called The Forgetting Curve.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve

Over time information is forgotten, but by revisiting information multiple times, more of that information is retained. Eventually, the subject doesn’t have to be reviewed as often for the same recall results.

I am practicing this with music 🎵 I keep a notion kanban board full of songs I have to regularly play on my guitar 🎸 On this board I have categories where I can rank my comfortability level with each song and noted with the last time I practiced it. For songs that I am not as comfortable with I play more often and as I grow more comfortable with them I don’t play them as much. But that is not all. About once a month I go to the section that has all the songs I am very comfortable playing and I test myself with them. Some songs get to remain in that section while others need to be practiced more so they are moved down. Below is a figure of this board with the data as it currently stands in January 2025

What am I doing with this information?

As I most recently mentioned, I am using this information to improve my guitar playing; however, that is not the only aspect of my life that I am applying this material to. I love learning new things including foreign languages, programming languages, and most recently I have been brushing my skills up on data structures and algorithms 🧑‍💻

In all of these areas I apply what I have learned from Andrei in this course. Notably, I keep a calendar 📅 for each one so I know what I am learning that day and what I am reviewing. That way I keep myself accountable for challenging myself with new material, and I strengthen what I know through deliberate review. This blog is also where I plan to share what I am learning and doing with my learning. It is my commitment to building in public and strengthening my knowledge using The Feynman Technique 👨‍🏫 I prioritize keeping my happiness factors full so I can support my work the best that I can every day 😊 Finally, I prioritize working both deeply and shallow so I can produce the highest quality work in the quickest time ⏱️

I highly recommend this course from Zero to Mastery as well as many of their other courses. If you do enroll in their academy, you will be prompted to take this optional course. It is well worth taking this course before any others as it will help with any of your learning endeavors inside and out of Zero to Mastery.