r/MachineLearning - [D] How do you study from textbooks?

I am by no means a particularly good example of study habits, but generally I tend to read what I need and go from there... Basically this in practice often means starting somewhere relevant to whatever work/assignment/project I'm trying to do, and then going backwards building a recursive stack of readings that seem important to understanding the previous thing until I reach a point where I am familiar with the material already. Then I work through the stack until I'm back to wherever I started. Essentially this is the backward chaining algorithm. I also, if I need to learn a lot from a book for some reason (i.e. a course) or have no particular goal in mind but find my self with a text that piques my interest, then I tend to skim from cover to cover everything that actually attracts my attention, occasionally flipping back to something that I realize is important for understanding later stuff. If it seems especially critical and I can't understand it, then I'll look through exercises and maybe do them if it seems worthwhile.