Learn In Public

Background

Recently, I decided to push myself harder and try new ways to maximize my learning. As a Software Engineer, you have so many things to learn and study which, sometimes, gives me anxiety. Thus, my studies need to be organized and continuous.

Previously, my study method was using Notion (notes platform). I used to write the content that I was studying at the moment into Notion.

There's one Brazilian teacher called Pierluigi Piazzi, he was a teacher and a Neuroscientist. He said that writing by hand is more effective than typing. The action of drawing the letters cause your brain to reflect more on what you are writing and generates a wider neural activation, consolidating the memory.

When you write, you learn. When you type, you only copy.

After listening to 1 hour long video of Pierluigi Piazzi about Maximize your Intelligence, I was convinced to take notes in a notebook rather than just typing it. Surprisingly, the results were very good.

Therefore, I bought an iPad to replace my usual notebook, as the notebook has a finite amount of pages and you have to buy new notebooks every time when you finish all the pages. These things were annoying me. Additionally, you need to have a shelf to organize all these notebooks in order to make it easier to find one note later, otherwise, it'll be harder to find your notes (I don't have any notes from my High School, it's very likely that my mom put all of my notes in the trash 😂). You have so many drawbacks writing them on an actual paper. Due to these reasons mentioned before, I bought an iPad to be my main source of learning.

In summary, an iPad is beneficial, because:

I'm writing instead of typing. (you're "drawing" the letters in your brain)
Infinite amount of papers
Organization (you can divide between subjects)

Learn In Public

I already wrote some articles on Medium and this helped me a lot, because when you're teaching someone you want to make sure that you're teaching something right, so you'll triple-check all the information and analyze that carefully.

Moreover, if you don't know how to explain it, probably, you don't know 100% the subject.

As Albert Einstein said once:

If you can't explain it to a six year old, then you don't understand it yourself

One other beneficial part is, you're putting down the information inside your brain onto a paper, thereby making it real. Consequently, that makes you reflect even more on a subject.

You can "Learn In Public" by doing many things such as:

Creating a YouTube video
Being a Podcast/Meetup Host
Writing newsletters/articles

I read a Twitter post that had encouraged me to Learn In Public and after reflecting on it, I decided to give it a chance. So, I'll "Learn In Public" by writing; maybe someday I can create a YouTube channel and spread my findings there as well, but for now, I'll only be here 😁.

I have defined clear goals for this journey and here are some of them:

Maximize my understanding in some subjects
Improve my English grammar
Improve my criticism

I have created this Learn In Public series to demonstrate my findings and discoveries. So, I'll try to explain to the reader (you), what I'm currently studying and explain it in a more friendly way.

TL;DR

It's important to mention that I'm a Software Engineer, a tech person, so, in the beginning, this series will only feature tech content.

I hope you guys enjoy this new journey. Let's go!

Sources

https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public