self-education

[boreal cryptid]

anyone doing self-education?

doesn't have to be super-complex-scientific-university-level-stuff (but might be! :P)
by education i mean learning anything, but also having a structure, discipline, plan, etc. basically, ways to set up your own pace with it, i guess.

if you do... please share about it! maybe you have any advice? how did you find your own pace? what do you use for it? maybe useful software?

i personally struggle with pace a lot. sometimes i do too much, other days - too little. :/
i usually don't have problems with self-discipline, but it often has negative motivation, which is...... not healthy at all! a bad habit from my school years, i think. trying to build my discipline on positive & reasonably challenging motivation now...

[nobo]

I spent about 5-6 years no lifing technology. I learned Python, Javascript, Django, React, Linux, Docker, Nginx, Postgres, etc etc etc. I'm basically a full stack developer that never uses anything I learned anymore because I don't work in software. Junior dev jobs were hard to get during the time I was taking it seriously. Once AI came out, no one has use for someone of my experience level. It's not an issue of skill. It's work experience.

Anyway I'm pretty okay with it but I do feel like I spent a lot of time and sacrificed more important things to learn a skill I basically don't need.

Lately I've been learning theology and the history of the church at different time periods. I've been reading old chronicles from middle ages written by monks, like the Chronicles of Matthew Paris and Ecclesiastical History of the English People and I listen to seminary lectures. I love the style of writing that the monks do. Part of me wishes I could be a monk. Self education was their main past time aside from work and prayer.

It's funny: "Yeah I used to be a technology guy, now I spend my time learning actually valuable things like church history."

    

[arcus]

I study anything that catches my interest. The main things I study are art, kanji, and agriculture.

To keep track of habits I use a simple habit tracker I scripted in Bash. It loads habits from a plain text file.

For archiving, I use Hister and download plain text copies using lynx with

Code

lynx -dump

or

Code

lynx -dump -nolist

depending on the page. I use Hister to search through big collections of pages, while I use the plain text copies for direct reference. I use a keybinding with my feed reader to archive to Hister. I'm thinking of finding something to replace Hister though. It does more than what I need it to do.

Note taking and navigation of my text archives is done in Vim without plugins. I add file paths to the files so I can quickly move to what files I need ("gf" opens text files and "gx" opens other files and links). I used to use Zim (similar to Obsidian) but I find it easier to focus and write with Vim.

For art I screenshot diagrams in books and paste them into Beeref. Picture reference in general goes into Beeref, while I keep notes in plain text. Improving at art is one of the reasons I study it, but a major part is that I'm interested in how light and perspective works. Aside from illustration specific resources, I study from photography, 3D rendering, and physics resources, for they cover the more technical aspects that aren't usually covered in materials for artists.

Anki and the 3DS game KanKen 2 are what I use for studying kanji. I'm studying in hopes to be able to eventually pass Kanji Kentei level 3 (roughly 1,600 characters). Currently, I can write roughly 642 (level 7) characters from memory. This isn't something a Japanese learner should bother with unless they are a masochist. I edited the deck I use (JavaScript required) to show the definition of the character on the front without the character. I close my eyes and mentally write out the character, and answer correct if I managed visualise it. I do a 10~15 minute quiz daily in KanKen 2 which involves writing out the characters.

Agriculture I study using books and various web feeds. It has a huge impact on society, and it's compelling how bad things are. I have some links to interesting articles on it in the cultivated meat thread and on my site.

Lately I've been learning theology and the history of the church at different time periods.

What draws you to religion? I remember SA being rather antitheistic.

[mayaclars]

I really think that self-education is important, when you have an enthusiasm to learn something individually, you will probably dive deep into the topic in order to learn every small detail. I love to learn how to draw, also learning languages is very interesting. Gosh, there are so many interesting topics, I find it hard to have time for everything.

[Senkusha]

I spent about 5-6 years no lifing technology. I learned Python, Javascript, Django, React, Linux, Docker, Nginx, Postgres, etc etc etc. I'm basically a full stack developer that never uses anything I learned anymore because I don't work in software. Junior dev jobs were hard to get during the time I was taking it seriously. Once AI came out, no one has use for someone of my experience level. It's not an issue of skill. It's work experience.

Anyway I'm pretty okay with it but I do feel like I spent a lot of time and sacrificed more important things to learn a skill I basically don't need.

I feel this pain.  I started my career back in the mid-1990's, first with the Air Force, then working Software Support.  I was in the process of learning .NET when the 2008 crash happened, and quickly found out how useless all that self-learning turned out to be.  No college degree, despite years of study, including all the stuff I learned on my own (Linux, Javascript, Visual C, PHP, XML, SQL, etc...)  It didn't matter.  To them (employers), and that was back in before 2010!  You know where I found I was useful and wanted?  Warehouse.  Food Service.  Retail.  Basically, all the crap jobs that nobody wants were really happy to have my body.

But, I still self-studied.  But not for anybody else.  I'm learning for me.  I've put the skills I've learned to use building stuff that I want and need.  Sure, it'd be nice if I could make a living doing it, but I guess that's not how the world works anymore.

Anyway I've learned about various religions, mythologies, and someday, I'll learn about drawing again-- hopefully before my body completely craps out on me.

[Tiffany]

I feel like there is a lot of ways to continue education, self paced courses, reading, practicing, etc. I have courses on udemy for many things from lenormand, to writing. I have a lot of books on astrology, tarot, writing, etc. Then sometimes I read wikipedia for fun.

[Seechain]

I simply learn things and then forget them. So what I do now is make tutorials and guides for myself.