Stephen King is one of my favorite writers. He has published around 61 novels. Many of these have been adapted into movies and TV series.
When King was asked in an interview "How do you write?", he answered:
One word at a time.
There are no shortcuts or silver bullets to write a good book: you write one word at a time. He writes a book word by word, minute by minute, hour by hour until it's completed.
My preference is to learn from books. Books let me understand the information in silence, at my own pace, allow me to re-read multiple times what is difficult.
If books are your thing, I recommend the following:
- You Don't Know JS Book Series
It's not enough only to read the book. You need a way to retain the information. I use these practices to solidify knowledge while reading.
First, write notes of important ideas in a notebook while reading. That's efficient because when you note the idea, you think more about it and retain better. Repetition is the mother of skill.
Video courses have the benefit of being more interactive than books.
The course author can explain the difficult concepts in a human-understandable way. Plus, guided by the author, you can practice by creating real-world applications.
First, freeCodeCamp is completely free.
Second, the lessons are high quality and at the end of each lesson you can practice exercises to solidify what you've learned.
I know that sometimes, especially around the middle of the book or course, things can become boring. Or you can think that the explained feature isn't needed. Or you might want to skip because it's complicated.
Resists the urge to abandon at the middle, and push yourself to study until the end. It's OK if you don't understand everything, it's OK if you still have questions: done is better than perfect.
Saying is easier than doing. Here's a list of tricks to stay motivated and increase the efficiency of learning.
The morning hours (from 07:00 AM until 12:00 AM) are the most productive in learning.
Sometimes, after a few dozens of chapters or lessons, you may find difficult to motivate yourself to continue learning.
I overcome this by finishing the current session on the most interesting part. This way I have the interest to start next time.