How to learn things by yourself

Subdividing your topic

Use a LLM like chatgpt to subdivide your topic, this helps making what you need to learn more clearer and concrete.

Some prompts:

• "Tell me the main topics of X".
• "Subdivide X into as many topics as possible".
• "For everything i say here, make me a list of topics i have to learn with [ ] on each one, be as specific as possible"(my particular one, but you can test each and see what's best).

Then you use the output as a checklist.

Learning resources

• Wikipedia: Surprisingly useful, can give some bad explanations though.
• Libretexts: Very short textbooks.
• Youtube: Often use it when i'm stuck on something. Tip: 2x is a life(time?)-saver.
• Textbooks: You can find them freely by googling "[Thing X] pdf", please don't read them start to finish, just check what you need to learn with good old CTRL-F.

Just googling can get you far.

Anki

Anki is a flashcard(not the storage device kind) program that is my replacement to traditional note taking, here's how i use anki:

I create a deck with a large scope(like physics), then i create a subdeck with a smaller scope(like classical mechanics), when i create a card, i use a Tag with a even smaller scope, like "Laws of Newton".