Learning to Learn

This is something I have personally struggled with, so I wish the author elaborated more. If you are a novice, how do you quickly identify what the foundational knowledge is? How do you know what makes you an expert and not an "expert beginner" as the author says to the extent that you can build a personal curriculum about it?

This is something that can be tricky for sure. Depending on the subject you might not need to start diving deep into every topic. Sometimes you'll have to first ask some high level questions like how do I get this data from this table and convert it to this format. Once you identify what problem you're trying to solve go and learn what's needed to solve it.

You won't always have an optimal solution but that's okay. The most important is to try and use the thing you're learning in some real way or with practice.