How I Study Technical Things (When I’m Not Technical)

An Easy Guide for Learning Complicated Things

Image made by author in PixAI

Is technical talent innate, or can it be taught?

I’m living proof that it can be taught. As someone from a non-tech background who became a self-taught cloud engineer, I felt qualified to answer that question.

But the real question is how?

How do you even begin to learn technical things if you’re not technical?

That is the question I promise to answer in this post.

Information Overload

One problem everyone faces when trying to learn something technical is finding too many resources.

The education market is saturated with courses to the point that knowing where to start feels overwhelming. I faced the same problem in the beginning to the extent that it felt crippling.

I would write notes on all the things I thought I needed to be a part of:

• The courses.
• The certifications.
• The online communities.

But we don’t need all these things. Pick any 5-star course and you will find the information you need. The only thing that matters is starting.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now — Old Proverb

Analogies Are Your Friend

When you struggle to understand technical jargon, the best way to overcome this language barrier is to use analogies.

Take learning to code as an example. If you feel intimidated by coding, think of it as instructions.

You learn to drive a car by following a set of instructions:

1. Put the key in the ignition.
2. Release the handbrake.
3. Put the clutch into first gear.
4. Apply pressure to the pedal.

Coding is the same. You are giving a computer a set of instructions.

It took me many attempts to learn to code before it clicked. But analogies were only part of the solution.

Analogies help our brain understand a foreign concept and can prevent overwhelm. However, making a skill second nature requires practice. I’ll explain the details, but first, let’s address notetaking.

The Correct Way To Take Notes

Watch a course, read a book. Learn the core ideas of whatever you are trying to learn. But don’t spend forever trying to record every detail.

It won’t help in the long run. Learn the detailed parts by doing the project. Our notes are for concepts, theories, and overarching ideas related to our topic of interest.

Write them in your own words so it's easy to understand if you have to.

Sticking with our ‘learning to code’ example, take notes on the high-level concepts. What’s a data structure? What’s a conditional statement? And what’s the relationship between all these things?

This is how to take notes efficiently.

Notes are for theory but projects are for skill acquisition.

Completing a Project

School teaches us to learn through textbooks to prepare for an exam. In the real world, we will learn more from 1 project than from taking 100 courses.

Tutorials get you from zero to one.

But applying something you have just read about or watched in a tutorial is where real learning begins. A project is where your theoretical knowledge comes alive. Think of it as your intellectual playground. It’s a place for you to experiment, make mistakes and iterate.

As soon as you learn something, apply it to a small project.

Pick something you can complete on a weekend. But don’t be paralyzed by the endless list of project choices. Choose something that sounds interesting to you and get started.

If you struggle with ideas, Google data science projects, or whatever field interests you. There are many options to choose from.

But if you struggle with consistency, I have something for you:

How I Study Consistently With A Full-Time Job

Repeating the Cycle

When learning something new, there are many gaps in our knowledge. We have no clue how much we don’t know.

The only way to solve this problem is to practice. The more projects we complete, the more knowledge gaps we fill.

You will stumble into gaps. It cannot be avoided. This is what it means to be a developer, scientist, or engineer. There is no magic pill to solve this problem. Regardless of our experience level, we all have gaps in our knowledge that we can only fill through deliberate practice.

In tech, everyone goes through this, including seasoned pros. Every once in a while at work I stumble upon a ticket referring to a concept I have never seen before. It’s my job to figure it out.

Image made by Author

The Correct Way To Use Tutorials

The objective of any tutorial is to help you reach your goal.

You don’t need to complete every tutorial that you start.

When I learned to code, I took a course named 100 Days of Code. However, I only completed the chapters up to about day 30. My goal was to become a cloud engineer.

Everything you can do with Python wasn’t my objective. Learning Automation was.

It’s okay to skip the parts that don’t align with your goal.

A single resource rarely gives you specifically what you need at that moment.

This is the same way I use tutorials at work. We have a subscription to Pluralsight and Udemy. When I get stuck on my work, I search these sites for the specific thing I need help with in the present moment.

Final Comments

Now that you understand how to learn technical things, it’s time to start building your bridge from beginner to advanced. And to make your bridge, you need to embrace the learning cycle.

The fastest learners follow these steps:

• Pick a topic.
• Build something.
• Break it and fail.
• Fix it.
• Document what you learn.
• Repeat.

The key is starting.