Table of contents
when I first started to learn to code it was kind of pitched as something achievable you can do it in two months so when I started to learn to code I thought that maybe it was not going to be so hard I spent hours watching YouTube videos reading blog posts and following road maps that I'd found online but what I realized was when I turned to try and do the project myself I would get completely stuck and dejected I was disappointed in myself I thought this isn't working when I realized that it wasn't working I decided to turn to science and see what learning theories were there that could help me learn to code. I want to share them with you so you can do the same if you're interested in hanging around and learning these techniques do stick around to the end of this blog where I'm going to share with you one technique that single-handedly doubled my learning speed.
Repetition
So Point number one is to use repetition and you might be thinking everybody knows that you need to do repetitive work to remember things but what I wanted to consider is if you've ever tried to learn a foreign language me for example I've been learning Portuguese and I know when I first encounter a new word it I'm never going to remember that word I mean I might be able to associate it I might be able to recognize it maybe if it's similar to English I can remember it but realistically I need to repeat and encounter that word many many times and just reading the same words over and over isn't necessarily the best approach if we think about learning to code what we need to do is repetition by the application if you're just sitting there reading and watching the same tutorials over and over it's not necessarily going to help you but what will help is applying what you've just learned in a new project. so what I recommend is to follow along with a project follows along a tutorial we all do that and it is helpful to expose us to new things but when you've followed the tutorial what I want you to consider doing is taking a break and walking away and then try and build something new if you can build something similar using the techniques that you've just learned you're going to ingrain that stuff in your head what the problem is is when we watch a tutorial and we see the same thing again and then we see the same thing again we think that that's repetition but realistically it's not applying the knowledge and therein lies the problem so once you've got repetition down and you're actually building projects with the stuff that you've learned what I want you to think about.
Study Less
The point number two which is to study less now I know this sounds a little bit crazy but hear me out because the reality is our minds have been molded by big media to binge watch content we are watching Netflix shows one episode after another without even a chance to pause the video we've got Tick Tock reels Instagram reels all back to back to back to back we've got YouTube recommended videos we are conditioned to digest huge amounts of content one after another and we think when we're learning to code oh I want to go fast I want to get it all done that's not the answer okay you can't just binge watch a udemy course or YouTube tutorials and think that it's actually going to stick in your head because I've been there you've probably been there too and it doesn't really work it doesn't stick to really drive this point home what I want you to think about is any of those times where you did a cramming session an all-nighter you had a work presentation the next day you were in college and you have to do a project or maybe you had a big exam coming up for school how much of that stuff did you actually remember the next day you know you spent eight hours back to back reading studying trying to memorize everything and then now how much of that do you actually remember if you're anything like me you don't remember pretty much anything and the same thing can happen when you're learning to code you follow along a 20-hour tutorial free code Camp really really good you feel like you're learning as you go but the reality is at the end of the day you've forgotten most of it .
Spaced learning
so how can we use studying less to our advantage well there's a thing called spaced learning and it's what universities try to implement by having one to two hours a week of the same subject but it's spaced out the idea is to have short focused sessions which allow people to actually digest and understand the content before moving on and trying to apply it themselves you see the real key is to do small effort consistently to avoid burnout and burnout in Tech is a huge problem as people who love to learn we can get sidetracked by Concepts that are new and exciting for us to learn and we think that we can digest it all but actually it's just a distraction. if you work extremely hard that can be helpful but if you work too hard and burn out you're not going to do any work at all the difference between doing a small and consistent effort every single day versus doing a lot and then nothing for long extended periods is massive so what I suggest is that you do very short and intentional study sessions.I was talking about at the start you need to be applying the knowledge yourself you you can get stuck in a trap of just watching constant tutorials and feeling like you're learning but what I call this is lazy learning this is where you are consuming content but you're not actually really learning you're being exposed to things but you're not learning the best way to avoid tutorial how is to seek out very very good resources thankfully the internet is full of great interactive resources that we can take advantage of what you want to find is some kind of an integrated coding environment so an example of this would be W3 School where you can actually see some problems learn about some Concepts and then get your hands on the keyboard get your hands on the keyboard and actually practice those concepts with real problems this in my opinion is the fastest way to improve your skills two of the resources I always like to reference when I'm giving people advice are free code camp and the Odin project now both of these sites offer you an opportunity to get your hands on the keyboard and actually practice in a coding environment so do take a look at those resources .
You don't need to know
Point number four you don't need to know everything when it comes to technology especially learning to code there is so much out there there's so many different Avenues you can go then say for example you want to learn CSS well then you've got different Frameworks of CSS you've got Tailwind you've got SAS these are all areas of the same thing so do you need to know them all at once in my opinion you don't what you need to focus on is utility-based learning there's a thing called the forgetting curve and what it talks about is you have a strong understanding at the start but as the days go by that understanding starts to Fall Away what is the point of spending hours learning the depth of the details of stuff that you don't really need right now the utility-based learning approach means learn and understand the basics of something for example SAS is a really powerful way of doing CSS sasco is quite deep I mean you can learn about the Ampersand and things like nesting which are really really helpful when you start working but unless you're working on a project that's actually using SAS there's no point in following a tutorial or reading it in depth about how to use SAS for things like mix-ins unless you actually need a mixing with utility-based learning you want to just learn exactly what you need for that project at that time and no more when you need to use a mix-in just learn how to use a mix-in forget about going too deep on anything any topic that you're thinking about learning learn the basics and that's it understand the concept and then when you need it go deeper so how about that Hack That doubled my productivity and made me learn twice as fast it's utility-based learning utility-based learning allowed me to just cut off all that extra advanced stuff that I just didn't need to know and allowed me to focus on the key fundamental things that were going to actually benefit me as a freelance developer I just got out there and I started freelancing and whenever I need something I learned that thing right now . I don't know everything about anything that's not necessary. you name it I didn't need to know everything about everything I just needed to be able to deliver what that client wanted .
so focus on utility-based learning as much as possible and I guarantee you your learning is going to be more enjoyable and you're going to start earning sooner now that you've learned how to hack your brain into learning to code way faster.