Study tips?

I know its maybe a bit off topic, but I'm wondering if anyone has any perspective to offer insofar as studying and learning goes. I've been teaching myself something for about a week, and I'm noticing that my success at it has a certain amount to do with my sensations at the time. For instance, today I was having difficulty, and am/was experiencing an unpleasant feeling tone in my torso that seems to have been playing into the process.

I'm wondering if theres something I can add to my practice to prep me for these specific times of concentrated exertion. I'm noticing that concentration in general is very much the order of the day w/ these things, and that's also something I'm working on in my formal sits more so nowadays.

But I'm wondering if maybe it's valuable to cultivate jhana before and in between study sessions? Or what else, and how to ease into it?

Oh, yeah, Ankis are great. I forgot about them. They have decks for just about anything, from cooking to how to talk with the police to impromptu medical attention, whatever.

But what I'm working on is teaching myself to code. They probably have some for that.

That other one you put up is really good lucking too. I'll check it out tomorrow.

I've been doing the "pomodoro" technique so far, which consists of using a wind up timer, and studying in four blocks of 25 minutes separated by 5 minute breaks, then a longer one. I'm getting better at it, which is real nice. Right now my work seems to be figuring out the working process, and as I get more comfortable sitting there and doing tasks, then I can start adding onto the way I do it.

Yeah, maybe there is a syntax based flash deck that would be good for getting to know the vocab, but actually doing it is definitely the necessary step. Right now I'm copying code from github in python. Eventually I'll have to get into the algorithmic stuff, but that bit seems like its a little ways away at the moment. Any tips along the way would definitely be welcome