Learning Slowly is Faster than Learning Fast
Lots of courses promise to teach you X or turn you into Y within Z weeks. This learning as fast as possible approach may indeed cover lots of material with you producing interesting final products. You will feel a sense of accomplishment that you’ve quickly reached certain milestones towards X/Y.
In all likelihood, you’ve skipped over certain areas of development in order to reach some final stage. You may find it harder to progress from this point because you’ve taken a narrow path without a complete understanding of the fundamentals. When you enter the real-world, projects demand deep knowledge of a wide array of skills.
You many have to go back and cover these fundamentals that were originally ignored. This might lead you to frustration because you’ll be producing far less interesting results than what was covered in the original course.
This is why I highly recommend a slow approach where material is covered thoroughly without knowledge gaps. Skills are built incrementally, one small step at a time. It will be tempting to reach up high to that shiny project that others are sharing on social media, but you may find yourself falling without that firm understanding of the fundamentals.
All of the courses I teach use this slow, thorough approach without knowledge gaps, where skills are built incrementally. Yes, they may be boring at times, but if your goal is to have deep knowledge in a professional setting then I believe this path is effective.
And as a bonus, I believe this path to be faster in the long run as the knowledge you gain will be retained easier and for a longer period of time compared to skipping around to final results.
True for other learning pursuits
I believe this approach is also best for other learning pursuits — whether it is a new language, playing an instrument, a sport, etc… learning slowly, and thoroughly without knowledge gaps is best.
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