The Big Picture

It is now time to break down each milestone. Create a table of contents for yourself about the subject just as if you were writing a book. Determine how to break down the new skill into small pieces.

Discover pre-requisites, redundant topics, and make choices about what you will focus on. Don’t worry about making everything perfect. You will have several chances to refine your plan.

Do your research from several sources. When it comes to technologies, you can visit the official documentation, check out the table of contents of books, courses, youtube channels, online tutorials, and blogs. You may even find helpful GitHub repositories.

Once you are done gathering information, make sure you organize your information. For instance, a table with the following columns will do:

• Module number
• Description
• Goals / Tasks
• Resources
• Status

Do your best to detect dependencies between the different modules you create for yourself and order them accordingly. Don’t worry if you miss a dependency or two, as your study plan is lean enough to accept future iterations. Step 4 will be all about iterating your plan.

Link accomplishments to most of your modules, otherwise you will have a hard time tracking your progress. The more you use your acquired knowledge in practice, the deeper your understanding will be. If you just read a book, expect to forget 90% of the material. If you take notes, you may forget 80%. If you write an article on it with example code, chances are, you will only forget half of what you learned. As soon as you complete a project in practice, you are likely to remember the fundamentals for years.