In late April, I left the workforce to finish a master’s. More importantly, I wanted to spend time on side projects, get better at dissecting research papers, and study topics that otherwise wouldn't show up in my coursework. To make my progress measurable, I gave myself an 8-month time horizon to:
Given it’s such a short time period, I want to make sure I have the right systems in place to make the most of this experience.
This sounds like an obvious thing to say, but one can get by in school without truly understanding the concepts taught and why they work. I’ve read enough click-bait articles and books on memory to know that the following techniques help:
Feynman technique: Explaining what you’re learning to someone helps you internalize the subject matter.
Luckily, I live with someone that doesn’t mind me babbling about math concepts every evening — by now, my girlfriend knows as much about machine learning as I do. Her favorite phrase is simulated annealing.
Write it out: Since I’m mostly studying algorithms and programming concepts, I can usually implement my own version to help me understand the underlying mechanisms.
Whenever I review a book chapter, read a paper, or learn a concept, I create a Jupyter notebook for it. I often implement my own version and try to visualize the concept.
Spaced repetition: Revisiting ideas every so often helps cement them in your long-term memory.
When creating a new notebook, I try to link concepts to existing notebooks. To do that, I have to physically go the other notebook and view its content to copy the link. This helps me recall the work I’ve already done in the past.
What makes habits stick? Personally, I find that a combination of tracking and accountability helps me get things done. For example, bouldering is an especially motivating sport because my improvement can be tracked by an increase in “grade” (i.e. the ability to climb a V4 one month and a V5 the next). It’s also much easier to step away from my codebase and go bouldering when I know there’s someone waiting for me at the climbing gym (i.e. a friend or that guy at the front desk who makes a point to say “haven’t seen ya in a while” when I’ve gone a week without climbing).
If it works for exercise, why wouldn’t it work for productivity? With that in mind, I’ve started tracking the time I spend doing focused work. I break up my work day into 25-minute distraction-free intervals called pomodoros.
I’ve also started tracking all the topics that I cover in my Jupyter notebooks and how they're related to each other.
I realize that making these things public is a bit strange, but in a way, the one person who sees this site every three months is helping to keep me accountable.
I won’t let you down,
Gustavo