The idea of optimizing the structure of your knowledge is to put the pieces of information in your head that are scattered, outdated, fighting each other, so that they can be drawn out quickly when they need them. I've been doing this for over a decade, and the first five years have been basically "back" and "surveillance," and the next three years have come to learn to "dismantling" and "knit." let's talk about the pits i stepped on and the practical paths i found。
How to optimize the knowledge structure
My first mistake was..Collection equals possessionI don't know. Hundreds of notes on the phone, dozens of g-PDFs on the hard drive, pages in the collection with the word "see later" in it. And then i made myself do one thing: every time i read a subject, put all the material together, and write "i can say three words to people." it's not my knowledge, it's not reading. This step is calledActive extraction" it works more than 10 times over and over again. It's been a long time since you found out that all you remember is "i feel it."。
And don't come up with a knowledge map, a cardbox tool. It'll take three days to study the software. Take a book on the left, "what's this thing?" on the right, "it's about what i know." it says, "i don't get it. Where's the card?" stupid way, but more than any app would make you think. When you save a hundred of these cards, you'll know how they're classified and how sophisticated they are。
What are the pits of optimizing knowledge structures
The biggest pit is "by discipline." you keep your notes on front-end, back-end, database, sort of sort of, and you learn something cross-cutting -- like using probabilistic thinking to design the system wrongly -- you don't know which folder to throw. Then i changed it toBy problemEach folder is not "some sort of knowledge," but "some specific question i've encountered." knowledge is living, drifting, it's used by problems, and by discipline, it's turned into a pile of ash cabinets。
And there's a very hidden pit: the perfect system. It took a month to draw a mind map, set the colours, layers, arrows, and then it was never updated and it was on the computer. The optimal structure of knowledge that really runs, must be."I'll change it" — every time a new problem is resolved, the old one is torn and replaced. The system is growing, not drawing. Don't worry about the picture you made。
At the end of the day, optimizing the knowledge structure is not a one-time project. It's how you throw it and make it up every day. Don't look for a system that's beautiful and complete, but a standard: can you pull that line out of your head in three seconds when you have a problem tomorrow? Yes, it means the structure is helping you; no, it means..It's time to get back togetherI don't know。
