I 100% agree with this. If I want to fully commit to learning something, physically writing it down with my hand makes it stick better, for reasons that I don't really understand.<p>I actually started to think about it as a kind of cheat code. Like, how, in a video game you can type in a cheat code and you get special powers. That's how big of a difference it made for me.<p>My strategy looks like this:<p>* If there's a good book, buy the book. Like when I wanted to learn C, I picked up K&R's C. A physical copy isn't required and can even get in the way, but can be useful if the Kindle version looks bad. If there isn't a good book, open up the official documentation on a web browser. Third-party tutorials tend to suck, IMO; official documentation is much better.<p>* Sit down at a desk with my laptop, book, and my notebook. Start at the beginning of the book/documentation. Read every line. If there's a word that doesn't make sense, look up the word. Talk to myself, out loud: Summarize and re-phrase what I'm reading.<p>* Write down a summary of the large important details of what I'm reading, in snippets of prose, on paper with a pen. It's important to not use the same words that the author(s) used. And of course, be much pithier than the author. As Kevin from the office taught us, why use lot word when small word do trick?<p>* The act of summarizing and re-phrasing, first verbally and then manually, seems to really do the trick in terms of making my brain remember things.<p>* If there's anything that can be tested with code, test it. If you're learning C or Lua or whatever, you obviously want to set up a little environment and test everything you're reading. This is harder for something like system design, though.<p>* Repeat every day until the book or documentation is consumed, or I feel I've had enough to accomplish whatever goals I had. Repetition every day seems to be important.<p>* Talk to other people about what I'm learning. One time I even reached out to the author of the book: I thought I found a mistake in his book; I was wrong! But talking with co-workers, or even salespeople if learning something like Snowflake can be helpful, or my partner. Anyone who will listen.<p>I will admit to not using the notebook strategy in recent years. I'll use a Google doc or sheet instead. But I think the notebook strategy is better! Especially when I was starting out, and the concepts of programming were new and strange.