Ideas so far:
- chunking: works sorta well, requires upfront cost to learn the concept, another cognitive cost to use the concept properly, and remember to do so in-context.
- DNB: not much, if any.
- spaced repetition: I said "working" memory.
- writing things down: helpful, has time and depth costs, unclear how useful it is for learning new things.
- whiteboards, notebooks, etc: Somewhat helpful, but has similar problems as writing, plus it doesn't help as much when trying to grok a concept / know when to apply it.
- just-in-time knowledge systems: I'm trying to build an incredibly-hokey "concept database" to do a bit of this. The main problem is still usually "knowing which thing applies to a given problem", plus the above problems with writing things down.
As usual with my threads on this sort of topic, this is looking for wacky/anti-inductive/risky methods only.
I benefited a lot from re-practicing my handwriting, so that I could take notes as I read the sequences for the first time (which you can only do once).
Taking notes via handwriting is absolutely necessary to learn new things. In school they taught us that we lose 50% if we don't take notes but we ignored that along with all the other lame propaganda that it was mixed in with, even though it's very, very true. Writing to paper is like a computer writing to memory instead of RAM.
And if you're in the habit of trying to think about things worth thinking about, then that means you'll tend to come across things worth writing down.
If exercising arm and core muscles strengthens the body, then exercising hand/wrist muscles (while practicing handwriting) strengthens the mind.