I learn new stuff all the time. Josh Kaufman, author of the book, "20 Hours" boils the process down to its essentials and talks about how you can grasp a new skill in 20 hours of practice. His rules are:
Watch this Video - Inspiring
- Deconstruct the skill
- Learn enough to self-correct
- Remove practice barriers
- Practice at least 20 hours (in a month)
You won't be a virtuoso, but you will be amazed at how fast you learn. This is what makes me what Josh calls a "learning junkie": when I hit that first plateau after that first amazing learning curve, I get strongly tempted to learn something new so that I can make fast progress again instead of banging my head against the wall.
For what you do after the first 20 hours, check out this highly detailed article by a guy who learned the MIT’s four-year computer science curriculum in one year:
http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/...
The executive summary of the 3500-word article is:
- Take your learning goal, and craft it into a compelling, obsession-worthy mission.
- Find material to learn from, structure it into a flexible curriculum.
- Define feedback mechanisms to constantly direct your future learning efforts and ensure high-intensity, active recall.
- Test and enforce a schedule that is sustainable over the entire lifetime of the project.
- Develop a long-term retention strategy (formal or informal).