Comment learn how to learn (meta-learning) (Score 1) 247
there is actually something which is far more useful to be able to do, more than any amount of books read, which is only really possible effectively and efficiently now that internet searches are possible (and quick, and accurate), and that is meta-learning. in its crudest most disparaging form one might mistakenly call this cut-and-paste programming but it is actually nothing of the sort.
basically what you do is treat everything as a black box, and use the principles of the 6 different types of knowledge (listed on the wikipedia page for Advaita Vedanta, which is mentioned specifically because the western word Epistemology is woefully inadequate) to basically reverse-engineer the subject matter and in effect teach yourself *on the go* by way of analysing the results achieved, even though you are starting out from quite literally zero knowledge.
it does however take a hell of a lot of balls to do this *whilst being paid* and most employers simply will not believe you when you tell them that this is something that you can do... and be *more effective* at applying this technique than people who have been explicitly trained or quotes have experience quotes in the field.
to be fair to those people who genuinely do have experience, often such people *may* have encountered the circumstances before, such that they *may* have the answer much quicker than you-who-has-no-experience-at-all, *but*, the critical critical thing that you need to tell prospective employers is: what happens when something falls *outside* of the experience of the person who quotes has experience quotes? whom then would the employer rather have (if they had to choose one or the other rather than both people) - the person who will get there in the end, regardless of what they are asked to do, or would they rather have the person who can get there *most* of the time but who does not have the skills or intelligence to work out the all-important remaining last 10% of the job, without which the contract will remain unfulfilled and the company will go bust because of it?
in short: no amount of reading will substitute for learning how to learn and applying that skill *every single moment of your life*. when i hear people say i am too old to learn it makes me cringe, and i feel sad for them - i cannot say anything so i have to remain silent - but i feel sad for them because i know that inside they have given up. the only time to give up learning is when you are actually dead, and not before!!!