# Learning a new skill often starts from specific places

Date: 2020-07-08 22:42:47 +08:00Date modified: 2022-01-09 11:50:50 +08:00

We often Start with wishful thinking. Thus, most would start learning with the top-bottom approach (i.e., specific to general topics).

A lot of those learning process starts from what you've seen from other people. You want to Look into tutorials with a solid-end goal or Follow the experts in the field. You most likely start from similar types as Examples and stories are more memorable than explanations.

Documenting this process, the core of Skill-building has the following workflow.

- Document your specific example (e.g., a website, a drawing, a 3D scene). You can Refer to advanced resources when skill-building for a solid short-term goal to clear your specific example similar to a final proof-reading before you submit your paper.

- Then, try to learn the specific example. For a start, you can Write down the simplest possible example.

- For every unknown part of the example, try to understand the underlying concepts. If the underlying concept is not yet understood, then dig deeper into understanding the underlying concept of that underlying concept ad infinitum.

- With the tree of to-be-understood underlying concepts, take a peek between each underlying concepts of various depths until you can easily see the connections between them. Be careful of Overlearning.

- Work your way up the knowledge tree you've just created until you can reproduce/create the example with your newfound hierarchical knowledge accurately.

The key idea is to Create roadmaps to stay on track. Normally, we do the above process subconciously but to explicitly write tasks and projects that we want to tackle can lessen the burden.

## Backlinks

- Skill-building
- Examples and stories are more memorable than explanations
- Overlearning