The funny thing about knowledge work is that it sits somewhere between additive and compounding.

Additive like: Let's say you shovel sand into a pit and you shovel 1% more than your peers every day for a year. By end of year, you will have shoveled 1% more.

Compounding like: You're a derivatives trader and make 1% more returns every day for a year than your peers. By end of year you will have made 3780% more.

Knowledge isn't perfectly compounding, but it must necessarily build upon previous knowledge. Abnormal levels of investment and dedication in learning definitely pay off in the long run and compound faster than you would think.

Handy people can truly appreciate how true that statement is.

If you fix enough things, you build a collection of tools and techniques that let you fix just about anything. You also build a lot of confidence in your own repair skills.

Two years ago, I bought my first motorcycle. I was afraid to change the oil on it. I'm currently rebuilding a motorcycle engine. A lot of that knowledge carries to bicycles and cars, so in a sense, it compounds.

Great idea. As a beginner i struggle with this. Since you have thought about this, Any tips on how to achieve the compounding? Thank You.

What I've found is that the real challenge for a beginner is making continuous and sustained progress. The key number in the (1.01)^365 equation is the ^365 part. Do something difficult every single day.

Beyond just sticking with it, you also need to continually challenge yourself. Avoid staying into the comfort zones that fear and ego will shunt you into.

These are very difficult to do as a beginner because you're going to encounter so many demoralizing roadblocks. I still remember when I first started writing code. It was incredibly painful. Things that now take me minutes would take days.

The real key here isn't some technique that will make the learning easier, it's in getting the emotional fortitude to push through these struggles. Your struggles will be unique and it's impossible for me to prepare you with solutions for every novel challenge you face. "Ask not for lighter burdens, ask for stronger backs" and all that jazz. There's a lot of resources online, esp. on Youtube, about increasing mental discipline. Cold showers, fasting, mental discipline, stoicism, etc. I recommend investing some time into trying these techniques for improving pain tolerance.

Every fact worth learning will be useful in the application of some particular skill, and will be of little use outside that context. Skills are the part of this equation that compound with each other, and sometimes in unintuitive ways; the more and varied mental skills you’re able to acquire, the easier it gets to learn new ones.

Spend time looking for absolutely well curated, well reviewed learning texts regarding a topic that interests you, often in the form of a university course or a blog on a specific topic. Then dedicate time every day to go through it, really be present, make notes and finish. Try learning approaches like spaced repetition learning.

If you want to solidify your knowledge, make a 30-min talk for your peers about the topic. Commit to make it perfect and be prepared for their questions.

And remember that friendship must be actively maintained.

Make more mistakes. I learned to cook by messing up dishes. I've messed up enough dishes to know how not to mess up.

You have to be comfortable with making mistakes and being bad at things, because it happens a lot when you're just getting started.

> I got a late start and I need to catch up.

I've found this mindset has led to some of my least healthy and least-disciplined decisions.

Then again, I think of "discipline" as doing the work to tend to the garden that feeds you. Maybe in your life-situation, you need to pass up the opportunity to play with a child.

I'm curious about the timing. Many people seem to find it more difficult to maintain this level of dedication after they have kids. What made things different in your case?

I'm sorry about this, I only now realized how many people responded to this post. I kind of which that Hacker News had notifications so you would know that I am replying to you. At this point replying seems like sort of a lost cause but if you do happen to get this I thought this question was important enough to warrant answering.

That level of dedication came to me because I was not very disciplined when I was younger and hadn't developed any marketable skills. I grew up poor and I didn't want her to grow up poor. So I threw myself into something I had an aptitude for and I started working my ass off at getting better at it. Though, one could say that any effort is considerably more than I had put in before.

I really want what is best for my daughter. I have to give her a better life. So because it has become so important, that's why I work so hard. She interferes sometimes, but I'm not going to let that stop me from giving her a better life.

Not OP, but I've had friends in similar situations. When infants, they're pretty easy to keep an eye on while cramming / self-teaching. It's when they start running around more that it becomes harder, especially if you have a significant other who is also busy with work.

Usually it is partner that does all the nighttime waking up during baby time. And the partner that deals with all the interruptions the toddler produces and the partner that generally does all childcare.

And then partner leaves you from anger at your self-centered approach to existence.

Not speaking from experience - I just have three kids, do what I can to take care of them despite being the primary breadwinner, and can't imagine the resentment that must stack up if you just drop all the sleepless nights and weekends of kid-juggling on your partner.

Never mind that you'll lose 7/8ths of the whole point of having kids with this approach, too.

In IT you need to average a few hours per week learning new things just to keep up, since the half life of what you already know is probably about 5 to 10 years. Other professionals also need continuing education, such as doctors, veterinarians, and lawyers, but IT probably requires more than other professions.

You can also learn the new technologies on the job. It requires some active career manenourving and perhaps can't always be done, but I have spent very little amount of time learning outside of work hours in the past 7 years, and am making top rates (and working with latest in-vogue tech).

Curious about what you're doing. I also dedicate a good amount of time each day to learning, but am still pretty skeptical about the ROI for some of the things I'm doing. I spend a lot of time on Coursera, reading eng. blogs, watching WWDC videos (since I do iOS).

Lots and lots of practice in programming projects that I personally find interesting. I read a lot of tutorials when she was born, but found no tangible rewards. It was only when I begun to put theory into practice that I started to see results.

But the biggest thing I did was get a job in IT. Then I went back to college. In college I think I work harder than most of my peers, who seem to struggle with something as simple as appending to a list in Python, or understanding a while loop in Java.

Meanwhile I am working on a portfolio so I can get a job as a programmer. Here's one of the sites I made recently: http://pichart.com It's not much, but it's a start.

Doing that will make you more better in the iOS space, so it's definitely worth doing; there is a LOT to learn in that area.

What has been my personal compounding interest kinda thing has been architectural design, data modeling and databases (SQL), loads of things that are not exclusive to one language or environment.

> Hours of dedication, every day, is not normal

It's not the average but perfectly fine.