how did you learn all this stuff?
Hi Rob... I know ( or am pretty sure ) that is just a rhetorical complement of sorts... but I see that asked of myself and others a lot and in some cases I think they actually are asking that question and not complementing the person... So for those few that are really asking how to learn something...
First to actually answer the question directly as if it is just about me... It's my job ... literally. I started working for a PC wholesaler back in the mid-late 80's and have owned a PC company since 2001 thru the present. I learned it for the most part out of interest in diagnosing the issues I've come across. Any of the rest of it was just typical rote learning. Personally my specialization, if there is one, is in diagnosing problems in the systems I work with. I'm not an expert in any one area except perhaps pc parts/hardware... but I usually know the basics of how each of the areas should work so I should be able to work out where a problem exists and then be able to research for an answer or ask someone that is more experienced for a possible solution.
Learning, well that's also easy to explain, not always easy to do. Let's exclude the genius' in the world since they seem to be exceptions. The number one way people learn is just rote learning. It's probably how most of us learned our multiplications tables and similar things. We just repeatedly went over the info over and over and over until, one day, we just remembered what we did. The next type I'll call "being a natural" to whatever subject it is we'd be discussing. This is sort of what I did with diagnosing systems and not just PC's, but also telephone lines and cars ( old school, didn't learn the new stuff ) to an extent, I just didn't do those as long so didn't learn as much about them. This is just where we "just get it" on whatever subject we are talking about and learning new stuff about "it" just comes naturally and fairly easy when compared to rote learning. The last is simply a combination of both of the last two, we may be interested in something so we are more driven to learn it by rote even if we aren't completely a natural learner to that subject.
In all of the ways to learn, there also has to be a certain amount of drive and probably more importantly, focus to learn that subject and to stick to it when we come across something we may not be a natural at learning. If a subject is complex and made up of a lot of smaller bits each with their own complexity, we then must choose which interests us the most and focus on that one part before we move onto the next part of interest for us. If we loose focus, then we jump from subject to subject and will likely never learn anything or at least it would take "forever" to learn since we didn't show a little control over ourselves and focus on a single part of the whole at a time.
I know there are a lot of folks with ADHD and have trouble learning because they don't naturally focus on a single subject, instead they jump from subject to subject too easily. If you are one of these, you must learn to first recognize that you have it ( of course ) and then do something about it and not let it control you. It will take more work since there may be a tendency to jump to another subject but take the time to recognize that it happened and get back on the topic at hand. These people will have to put in added effort to control it ( ADHD ) instead of letting it control them and there is no easy answer for that. In fact, if anyone has some type of learning disability, it's the same answer ( although not an easy one ), you can't let that issue control you if you have realized it exists and instead take the extra steps to control it instead.