Strategies

• Look up college course reading lists.

• Find the top performers in the field and study them.

• Take advantage of resources provided by public and university libraries in your area, such as free access to Lynda.com and academic databases.

• Use a service like Beeminder or StickK to commit to putting in the effort.

• Have a public place where you publish regular updates on your progress. (Beemind this, too!)

• Take and publish notes.

Ranking Criteria

Rank potential topics based on criteria

• Practical. Will what I learn be immediately applicable?

• Forward-looking. Will what I learn move me towards the work I want to be doing in the future?

• Valuable. Will people pay me to do what I learn?

• Synergetic. Will what I learn complement what I already know?

Ingredients

• Clear goals

  • What do I want to be able to do by the end of each course of self-study? Make it concrete and measurable.

• Study the experts

  • Most influential books on the topic

  • Material by the most influential experts on the topic

  • Material used in the best courses on the topic

• Capture

  • Take notes on reading

• Accountability

  • Create Beeminder goals specific to the current course of self-study

  • Post updates to a thread on the Beeminder forum

• Deliverables

  • Course outline

  • Reading notes

  • Chapter summaries

  • Book summaries

  • Final project

Tools

​Anki - "Powerful, intelligent flash cards. Remembering things just became much easier."

GitBook

Notion

​RemNote - "Organize your thinking. Master your craft. Grow your knowledge."

Roam

Sources

• ​A Book Apart​

• ​Brilliant - "Math and science done right. Master key ideas in math, science, and computer science through problem solving."

• GoodReads

• ​The Great Courses​

• Lynda.com

• ​MasterClass​

• ​MIT OpenCourseWare​

• ​Project Gutenberg - "Project Gutenberg is a library of over 60,000 free eBooks. Choose among free epub and Kindle eBooks, download them or read them online. You will find the world's great literature here, with focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired. Thousands of volunteers digitized and diligently proofread the eBooks, for enjoyment and education."

• ​SkillShare - "Thousands of classes to fuel your creativity and career."

• ​Zenva Academy - "Trusted by 400,000+ learners and developers, Zenva provides world-class training on in-demand programming skills."

Inbox

​About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design #book

​Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software #book

​The Effective Engineer: How to Leverage Your Efforts In Software Engineering to Make a Disproportionate and Meaningful Impact #book

​Knowt #app #webapp - "An app that uses machine learning to automatically turn your notes into review quizzes." #ios #android

​Mastering Regular Expressions #book

​Programming Pearls #book

​The Feynman Technique - YouTube #video