In the past years I’ve read widely and run a lot of experiments on how to learn effectively. And it seems to me that most struggles boil down to one thing : not having the right feedback loop for what you’re trying to learn.
- Reading programming tutorials doesn’t make you a better programmer, it makes you better at reading tutorials.
- Learning on Duolingo doesn’t make you a fluent speaker, it just makes you better at answering quizzes.
- Reading a lot of books doesn’t make you better at speaking or organizing your thoughts : it just makes you better at reading books.
So the first task when you want to learn something new is to define the right thing that you want to achieve. Then practice it and improve something a little bit after each iteration.