How to teach yourself anything

I didn't study computer science or something like that. Everything I know about programming, data science, and machine learning I taught myself (besides 1 or 2 introductory uni courses). And honestly, that skill of being able to learn things on your own has been more valuable than any single thing I actually learned.

Because the reality is: the world moves fast. Nobody is going to hand you a perfectly designed map for the exact thing you need to know right now. You have to figure it out yourself. And the good news is: there is a system for that. Here are the three things that actually work for me:

This is the mistake I see most people make. They want to learn something new and immediately start writing down theorems or watching random tutorials. No structure. No direction. Just vibes. What actually works is finding or building a structured study plan first. Something that lays out the foundations before going deep. For big topics like machine learning or data science, these plans already exist online. For more niche or smaller topics where no one has made a perfect roadmap yet, you can build one yourself using AI. I've done this multiple times. You describe what you want to learn, what you already know, and how much time you have, and tools like Claude can map out a week-by-week plan that actually makes sense.

Reading a textbook or watching a lecture feels productive. But if that's all you do, almost nothing sticks (at least it always felt like that for me). What actually makes knowledge stick is active learning. Summaries. Flashcards. Exercises. Quizzes. Anything that forces you to remember the information instead of just consuming it. Again, AI is genuinely amazing for this. Tools like Claude or NotebookLM can quiz you on what you just learned, generate practice problems and create flashcards.

The internet in general is an incredible resource here. For almost any topic there are practice problems, project ideas, and communities where you can apply what you're learning. Use them.

This one is simple but it's the one most people get wrong. Learning one hour per day for a month beats studying ten hours a day for a week. Even though the math says you spent more total hours in the one-week sprint. It doesn't matter. Consistency wins. I experienced this firsthand during my series "1 hour of math a day" where I studied math for 60 days straight, one hour each day. Just one focused hour, every single day. And after two months I had learned more than I ever thought I could from just 60 hours.

The reason is simple: your brain needs time to process and consolidate. So if you're about to start learning something new: don't try to speedrun it. Show up every day, even if it's just for an hour. The compound effect is real.

Here are 2 Videos I really enjoyed on the whole topic of “learning to learn”

Have a great week,

Chris