I am the person who asked How do I improve my ability to learn? this question. I forgot my last password and username, so I could not respond there so I am responding to comments here how these comments didn't really work and my problem is still unsolved.
Take notes, reread and annonate just after lecture. The sad thing about this is that most of my lecturers are bad.(I read in low tier university, didn't know this would be this bad).
Ask questions in class. I will try my best to pre read and ask questions in class itself. Most of the times I am in class, I am totally blind. I don't even know what is happening.
Review-: Review isn't my problem. What I understand it sticks in my brain for long time. My issue is understanding from text content and hard to follow video content. I will give example of video content that I find hard to follow-: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts3xbfXm2nI&t=1676s . But if same subject is being taught by another good teacher, I understand it very easily.
Teach to someone else-: This helps me to know what I don't know already including active recall. But issue is with understanding itself. I have tried this as well. I even bought myself a whiteboard just so that I could teach myself.
AppliedAcademic really understood my situation well. I did what he/she said exactly. I used to first watch videos(if there were, the reason why I am asking this question is that slowly as my level of education is increasing, number of videos are decreasing exponentially. In 1st 2nd year, I could depend everything on videos. But on 3rd and 4th year, video content is decreasing exponentially, that is why I got to this point of asking this question. I am having to read from books, articles. And if I want to continue my education I am going to have to learn to learn from research papers and maybe even books as well)
I would read the slides then read the book and everything would be 100% clear to me. But my issue is exactly this. Why can't this happent to me without reading slides? There are lots of things to study where there are no slides available, how will I learn those topics? That worries me. And my future working field is programming where 99% of learning comes through documentation and stackoverflow, so it is really worrying situation for me.
I am willing to work my ass off, but I need to know what works and what doesn't so that atleast I can hustle in right direction.
Spaced repitition-: This is biggest mantra for learning imho. but sad thing about this is that this works but only works when I have already understood the material. My issue as I said is with understanding itself.
Pomodoro-: Actually pomodoro worked for me. Pomodoro+switching between topics every hour did wonders to my learning. So I want to add this here. But still not enough to be able to be like a sponge who can take any information into their brain.
Some video lectures no matter how many times I watch, no matter how many notes I make and no matter how many annonations I make I don't understand at all. Now you might say, come to stackexchange or such forums to ask. The issue is nb in the world owes to help me. And most questions in stackexchange are from people who have understood what is written in book already and are trying to learn more that is not within scope of book. So that is cancelled out.
Practice-: Again, this is wonderful advice. But what do I practice when I don't understand anything at all?
Solve problems-: This is a good advice. I actually read books with a goal in mind. I will first go through 10-20 number of questions for 1 chapter asked in previous year questions and I read books scanning through them to find the answer. But still my issue is that I don't understand what I read that easily. It takes me a lot of time. And many times I don't even get it by just reading the book itself.
I really want to know what is wrong with me? I tried to go to doctor if I had learning disability, docotor didn't examine but denied that it was learning disability/ADHD.
How do I improve my learning overall? Because at this point I have realized that learning to learn is the best investment. I have watched countless videos on "learning how to learn", but none of the people seem to address the problem that I am having.
Few things I learnt from online lectures about learning how to learn-:
Get prior knowledge.
Read same thing first 1 hr, then in 30 min, then in 10 min, then recall actively in 2 min.
Always read big textbooks and then only follow solution manuals.
Study things in chunks.
Encode information to remember it.
etc
