Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How do I stay motivated to learn?

news.ycombinator.com

61–70 of 70 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do I stay motivated to learn?

#61
Motivation (and discipline) comes and goes, even for successful people that are truly passionate about the things they do. (There are studies that self-discipline is actually quite similar to a muscle that gets increasingly tired over the course of the day. Thus, it's easier to get something done in the morning than in the evening when you have probably already forced yourself to do multiple things.) That's why you need to make the things you want to do continuously – in your case: learning – a habit, i.e. a daily or weekly routine. If you make it a habit, you won't need motivation anymore and you won't even question whether you should learn right now or rather do something else. You will simply do it. If not, the habit will actually make you feel bad by depriving you from various hormones that make you feel happy. So, in this sense, a habit is quite similar to an addiction – but in a good way.

For further reading you might want to look into Charles Duhigg's "The Power of Habit". If you're a procrastinator, "The Now Habit" by Neil Fiore might also be of value to you.

Update: Several other suggestions made here (such as getting rid of the internet or using a buddy system) can be interpreted in terms of getting rid of a bad habit or as to how to implement (i.e. learn) this learning habit exactly (a buddy system is one way).

Re: Ask HN: How do I stay motivated to learn?

#62

Buddy system? I need a buddy. Anyone need a buddy? I've been coding deep for a couple of days straight. I've gotten to the point where I'm just filing github issues and stackoverflow questions for everything. I just started picking on my package manager. I could really use a buddy.

To add some context to this. Surround yourself with successful people, if you have to listen everyday to people who are making things and making progress It might help motivate, or not. Just a thought.

Re: Ask HN: How do I stay motivated to learn?

#63

Buddy system? I need a buddy. Anyone need a buddy? I've been coding deep for a couple of days straight. I've gotten to the point where I'm just filing github issues and stackoverflow questions for everything. I just started picking on my package manager. I could really use a buddy.

To add some context to this. Surround yourself with successful people, if you have to listen everyday to people who are making things and making progress It might help motivate, or not. Just a thought.

And by successful people I mean, whatever that means to you. Not saying i'm necessarily successful.

Re: Ask HN: How do I stay motivated to learn?

#65
if something isn't interesting, there better be a reward that's worth my time. if it is interesting, then usually that itself is enough to stay motivated.

for example, it's really tough to tolerate all this angularjs, reactjs stuff because I've always built my web apps using jQuery, it's hard to justify being more verbose for the sake of keeping up with a trend when it is counter productive for me. Even more harder So a good reward here is money or an established project that is interesting and front end framework was a requirement.

Re: Ask HN: How do I stay motivated to learn?

#66
post #33
post #21

Mark Cuban's advice may be relevant: http://blogmaverick.com/2012/03/18/dont-follow-your-passion-...

Why do people take advice from him? He had one successful business that seemed to be all lucky timing (selling before the bust). At this point he just gets attention because he has money. He doesn't have any useful skills anymore because he hasn't done anything for years.

Mark Cuban is actually a rare example of someone who bootstrapped from smaller successful businesses into larger ones.

His success with Microsolutions led him towards creating AudioNet -> Broadcast.com .

Sure, he benefited from nice timing, but also he was quite smart about protecting his windfall(that infamous Yahoo collar trade:http://investmentxyz.blogspot.com/2006/05/cubans-collar-anat...).

I really can't speak about his activities since 2000, but most of it has seemed quite sane and sensible.

Re: Ask HN: How do I stay motivated to learn?

#67

For me it has always been having a project to apply it to. In college that was always my problem. All thought/review/quizzing, never 'building a thing'. Figure out WHY you want to learn what you think you want to learn and contemplate until you have something you could build (even if its a 'pointless' toy application or library) and do it. An example: I wanted to learn more about the innards of git. So I built Gkv (…

This is completely OT but just FYI, the "Contributor Covenant" link at the end of your README.md is broken.

Woopsy. Thanks! I switched it off the code of conduct stuff to just be all DWTFYWPL. Will fix today.

Re: Ask HN: How do I stay motivated to learn?

#68
The motivation comes when you understand that effective, efficient and continuous learning improves the memory capacity, it keeps the mind sharp and alert and, it will help you stay focused on the most important things in life. Build the habit of learning often so as to maintain an active mind in order to avoid the embarrassment of lost of memory.

http://ayietim.wordpress.com

Re: Ask HN: How do I stay motivated to learn?

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good suggestion. If you just do nothing, there must come a point when you feel so guilty wasting your time that motivation will come naturally. If it doesn't, so be it. What's the point of anything, anyway?

Don't do nothing! Do anything but that!

Why not?

Re: Ask HN: How do I stay motivated to learn?

#70

I'd say get rid of the Internet at home. That's the number one distraction. Personally, I can't read more than a paragraph online without jumping to another page...so just kill that beast. Here's an example...I have all the documentation I could ever want right on my hard drive, but I might spend a few frustrating hours surfing the web trying to figure out something out instead of looking at what I already have. Some…

> Id say get rid of the Internet at home.

So brave, don't think I can ever do that, I just use browser extensions like Leechblock to block certain website after a period of time to fight procrastination

Post reply on HN