How to Learn About Everything
http://metamodern.com/2009/05/27/how-to-learn-about-everything/

Weird. This was my advice to undergrads, although not in science...

Approach to getting broad understanding of topics you don't understand that well

Blog post/article on how to set your self up to be able to improve your learning ability.

yeah, amen in so many ways. It's harder and takes longer (the biggest problem), but immersion (in combination with good memory) is by far the only way to learn things. It's how I learnt to spell (and that's now slipping: the other aphorism is "use it or lose it")

Note that the title above isn’t “how to learn everything”, but “how to learn about everything”. The distinction I have in mind is between knowing the inside of a topic in deep detail — many facts and problem-solving skills — and knowing the structure and context of a topic: essential facts, what problems can be solved by the skilled, and how the topic fits with others. This knowledge isn’t superficial in a survey-course sense: It is about both deep structure and practical applications. Knowing about, in this sense, is crucial to understanding a new problem and what must be learned in more depth in order to solve it. The cross-disciplinary reach of nanotechnology almost demands this as a condition of competence.