Reflecting on Actions: The Key to Learning
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We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on those experiences.
-John Dewey
Learning is defined as the modification in behavior through experience. So if you approach the same problem differently from your previous attempt, then we can say you have learned something. This is why the quote from John Dewey is resonating with me this morning. We indeed do not learn from experiences, but from the reflection we get from those experiences.
That was the reason why I wrote my daily updates to reflect on my learning, so that i can see gaps and find where I need to focus and where I have satisfactory level of knowledge(at the moment). I was not comfortable with writing my daily updates in a journal format. That reason being why I opted for the bullet style to give me ample room to organize my thought by categorizing them on sub-topics. But this tendency of mine lead to me starting to write the bare minimum about the topic, since it is just a list style.
I gave all of you the direction to “write what you learned today and what questions you had”, so that I could help you with your learning process. But I was not following the instruction to the truest sense myself. I realized that I was not mentioning the current questions I am pursuing because I thought “It does not matter if I write the question or not, as no one except from sir will be able to answer it.” I was looking at this in the wrong way. We ask questions for reflection, for ample learning.
The daily updates from @thanos178 in our discord server, is a really good example. He talks about what he learned. What he struggled with and what questions he is currently pursuing right now. I really do believe this is the right way to do it for better retention on your learning.
However, organizing your thoughts on subtopics and list is also effective for thought organization. Therefore, from today I am going to use this hybrid technique, journal+list style. Good luck everyone on your ML journey.