The Rule of 20 Links
Tags: education, management, beginners
Published: 2020-06-17 23:25:20

_Note, the article originally published on my blog: https://oganisyan.com/blog/the-rule-of-20-links/_


At the time when I was a CS student, I had a problem with understanding the topics from the first attempt during the lesson. So almost always I needed to work hard after the class to be okay with the material. I spend a lot of nights trying to cope with the topics by reading different articles (in parallel I was blaming myself for not being so smart 🤟).

All these difficulties make me realize that I need to explore how the system called the brain learns and interprets materials. After some sleepless nights I get acquired with the ideas of spaced repetition, chunking, and the illusion of competence that I covered in the previous article<sup>[1](#additional-literature-)</sup>.

This researches brought me to the idea that we should understand the way that our brain works instead of blaming ourselves. Some might argue that there're a lot of people who're learning faster and smoother than another, but for this time let's not dig that deeper and just accept that if you're not that kind of a person, you should continue to read instead of self-blaming and seeking the ways to become next genius.

The understanding of the basics of neuroscience gives me patterns on how to work so at the time I started teaching programming and I was able to notice that most of my students facing the same issues as me. So I decided to come up with applicable idea/analog that might help them to understand and start learning instead of self-devouring. Yet another sleepless nights presented me "the rule of 20 links".

> "The Rule of 20 Link" says that understanding of the topic taking a study of around 15-20 links and resources.

The only thing that I ask is just to try to find and work with those 20 links after the session of self-devouring. Below you can find my table based vision of working with those links.

_Note, the number of links you need to achieve the same level may vary depends on your previous skills but on average it takes 20 links/resources._

| Stages of mastering&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;                              | Knowledge|
|---------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Link&nbsp; 0 - 1                                      | Getting familiar with the topic: (in the best case understanding the main concepts)                                                                                                                                   |
| Link&nbsp; 1 - 6                                      | Solving template problems tasks                                                                                                                               |
| Link&nbsp; 6 - 10                                     | Solving applicable tasks and basic vision of big picture                                                                                         |
| Link&nbsp; 10 - 15                                    | Acquiring with the underlying ideas and why's. Understanding the theoretical. and practical use of the topic |
| Link&nbsp; 15 - 20                                    | Ability to have a conversation about the topic or even to explain it to the complete beginners                                                                                    |

My point with the rule is to prevent you from giving up until you really tried to work with the content the way that your brain expects you to work.

### Additional Literature 📖

* [Management and Learning tips](https://oganisyan.com/blog/self-management-tips/)
* [Spaced Repetition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition)

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