My approach is:
- take notes
- never look at them again
- only remember the interesting parts
end of list
this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2025
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ADHD
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It's called gestalt learning. It's where you have a need to understand all aspects and angles of a topic before you "get it".
...a need to understand all aspects and angles of a topic before you "get it".
That's exactly me. It drives my wife crazy.
Same. I also find it annoying of myself, because I'm not satisfied that a function does a thing but not the why/how. I need to know what exactly is happening behind the scenes to modify the data, otherwise I don't know if it's the best method to use in that scenario.
I'm just getting a lot of results for language learning but I will research this more later when I have a chance because your description speaks speaks to me as that was often my experience.
This is definitely how I improve my writing. I have a ton of different projects, books I'm reading in different genres, and other media I'm absorbing
Has this method worked for you for other subjects in the past?
My entire IT career.
The problem with music and instruments (and probably some other manual skills) as opposed to information learning is that pretty soon you're going to need steady practice in order to progress and not regress. Half an hour min a day on one instrument is already a fair bit to keep up (almost) every single day. Doing that for e.g. six instruments is three plus hours of intense work every day. And if any of them need your lips or fingers or facial muscles etc, that's multiple times the repetitive strain on them.
Even one physical instrument is hard on many people's physique. Not to mention wallet.
But information, improvising, ear training, theory. That kind of thing will help on all fronts. That works great.
Beginning is easy, but keeping up is hard. If you're ok with that or can cut down later, I'd say go for it. Just try not to get injured.
Physical training is mainly focused on strings (guitar, ukulele, bass, etc), piano and finger drumming. The strings I am focused on are all physically the same instrument, or close enough, to where the skills translate easily. Piano is a necessity for my interest in synths but I am.not gunning for physical proficiency as I am with strings, just enough to play a few scales and chord. I can fix my mistakes in the DAW. The real struggle is with finger drumming. That might take me years.
So no lol
Btw, I do the same. “What book are you reading?” “Books”.
Currently;
- Eisenhorn Warhammer 40k series
- Honor Harrington series
- Stormlight Chronicles
Sounds about right lol :)
Reading:
- Children of Ash and Elm
- re LOTR
- Hyperion series
Eisenhorn rules!
Oooh if you're reading stormlight I hope you've read some of the other cosmere books. There are some awesome cross series plotlines that I totally missed my first time reading.
I don't get it
What’s to be gotten?
I follow a similar metodology, and I like to call it an "additive learning". That helps so I have a minimum base to quickstart specific topics. Been useful with computers and languages.
Exactly. Super useful for infosec and IT in general.
How long will you stay on this before you move on to an entirely different category? E.g. sports or birdwatching
General topics stick for a long time as long as I can jump around subtopics like this.
When I started trying to learn a new language I was learning Spanish in school, and also trying to learn German, Mandarin, and French on my own. Honestly it worked pretty well, I could even keep them separate in my mind easily which was surprising since people told me I’d get them mixed up if I learned them at the same time.
Anyway, it was only for a year or so because I eventually lost the hyper fixation on language and stopped learning all of them, but yeah I kinda did the same thing you described.
When I’d get bored with one language I’d move on to another. Sometimes I’d spend a whole day on just one, sometimes I’d switching between each of them in the same day.
"actively working" it has a nice ring to it ... creative use of vocabulary there
If you have an M8 you don't need the Polyends. Simplify, simplify
I got the Polyend Tracker back when the M8 was impossible to find. I don't know how much use the Polyend Tracker will ever get now, but I do want to tackle the Renoise workflow after I'm comfortable with the M8, and I believe Renoise and the Polyend workflow are similar.
I tend to want to learn the history of anything new I'm learning. It helps me to understand by knowing how it evolved. Or I have to know how it works at a fundamental level and build up from there.
To me those are all practical skills except music theory and are kinda all over the place each requiring time to practice. I'd feel like I was never making progress if I had to split my time 20 ways.
Instead if I were trying to learn music productionI'd probably focus on one thing at a time as you mention a lot of different expensive software and hardware many of which overlap, multiple DAWs and hardware sequencers. As it is it looks like you are learning more interfaces and less music.
I'd start with piano and music theory as they are complimentary and add in one DAW and then add in other hardware or instruments. Once I got a foundation I'd add in redundant hardware and software if I felt the need.
For any fiels having too many options just drains my creativity. Where as if I have to work within limitations I get more creative.
Anyway good luck with all that.