School is a schizophrenic endeavor by design, all the more so when you are passionate about learning. Once you graduate and commit to a project, the project's needs will dictate where you must spend your attention. Relax. This will resolve itself soon.
Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
71–80 of 224 posts
Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#72There's a more generic term for what you're experiencing, which is "lack of motivation." On some level you don't care much about what you're doing; if you did, I guarantee you wouldn't be paralyzed. When you're motivated, things tend to fall into place. That's not an indictment of you. Contrary to popular belief, motivation doesn't much come from within. For almost everybody, long-term motivation is about other peopl…
I think you're on to something in recognizing the impact of other people. It's very difficult to just learn something in a sustained way in a vacuum, even if you deem it important. Eventually, you'll either get bored or find something more interesting. Social bonds and the need to be accountable to others provide the sort of glue to keep you going when you hit a wall. Having a job is a sort of concrete example of that.
Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#73I can relate to this. A friend once described me as a vector with infinite magnitude and randomly changing direction. At various points in life I have occupied myself with studying everything from Biology and functional programming to Indian Philosophy and Sanskrit. But I never stick to any one project for long. A few months into my study program, I shift to the next shiny thing that catches my attention.
There is a saving grace though: the set of things that I'm interested in remains constant, so that I am not endlessly moving into newer and newer areas, but cycling between a fixed set of subjects. Right now I have come back to functional programming and doing courses from Coursera. I am at the moment quite determined to see this through, but knowing myself as well as I do, I fully expect to jump to something else in a couple of month's time.
My current strategy to tackle this syndrome is as follows:
* Accept that you are interested in multiple subjects and that you may never be a world-class expert in any of them. However, you can be a competent generalist who has sufficient familiarity with a bunch of fields and this can be valuable. It's also a probably more interesting way to lead your life than specializing in one field.
* Keep a journal of your learning activities so that you can learn more about yourself over time. I have been writing every day since 2010 and its fascinating when I look back at what I was doing this time of the year a few years back.
* When you start a study project, focus on short sprints instead of the long marathon. Try to accumulate concrete achievements and most importantly, aim for a closure to your sprint. For example, if you start a book, declare victory once you have studied 80% of the chapters. If you start on a Mathematical topic, upload your notes and problems you solve somewhere where you can look them up later, and declare your sprint complete once you have dome some 100-120 non-routine problems.
* Realize that your effort is not completely wasted. I first flirted with Haskell in November 2012 but later dropped it and moved on to something else. The next time I took up Haskell again was about a year later in November 2013. I had forgotten most of what I had learned, BUT the second time it was much, much easier to cover the same ground again and I went further in my learning that time. Ditto for Sanskrit. I first tried to learn Sanskrit in August 2013, but later dropped out of my study program. The next time I took it up was in June 2014, and I stuck with it long enough to complete the first part of a correspondence course - a concrete achievement!
I am still struggling with the random-vector syndrome, but I am much better at coping with it. I "know" that the solution is to focus on just one thing, but that strikes me as a supremely uninteresting way to lead my life.
Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Needs some work, but you're basically proposing an Edx/Udemy/(etc)/Wikipedia/PersonalBrain mashup? Sounds interesting...
Yeah, I thought about some "wiki" structure, initially. It could collect information, but what the quality will it be? This model doesn't help. And hierarchy of editors like in wiki will not help neither. Knowledges and bonds between them are very subjective. For example, three knowledges: HTML, PHP, JS. Are they bonded? Of course, they are! But how? Which one is the parental knowldge? Which one is child? I think abo…
I feel like you're describing a way to visualize wiki articles as a mind-map, where the mind-map's links are weighted by the links in the wiki's page.
Wikipedia categorizes articles in such a way where you actually can tell which one is parental and which one is child.
php and js would be bonded beneath a "scripting language" category, which would be beneath a more general "programming languages" category, which would be beneath an even more general "computer languages" category, comprising "markup languages", comprising html
all the way back to philosophy ;)
Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#75I had the same "problem" that you have in the past. I created a company wile studying engineering, while traveling the world and learning languages. I solved it... well I did not solve it at all. For creating a company alone you need marketing, sales, hiring people,self management, handling money and planning skills. It felt I was not doing nothing at all. It was hell. But somewhat it worked really well in the end. I…
>I use open source(vlc, handbrake, command line tools) programs for most of it(everything but speech recognition).
What do you use for speech recognition?
Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#76I wrote about this recently: http://blog.higg.im/2015/01/02/2014-the-year-of-feeling-burn...
We are awash in information. Douglas Rushkoff documents this recent phenomenon very well. His book Present Shock articulates the problem / dilemma really well. Worth a read - if you haven't already added it to your Amazon wishlist and is not another book in your digital bucket list.
My personal solution was to let go. Tech and computers are now the apex predator. Just swim in the ocean, don't resist it. In terms of your path - who am I to judge? I dropped out of a C.S course because tech was moving too fast and the course material was out of sync with how fast tech was moving. Enjoy tech on your own terms.
Note: 'Letting go' also has the paradoxical effect of getting more done with tech. When you get out of your own way, tech works for you, rather than against you. I learned this from the raw data. It's up to you to experience this for yourself.
Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#77"The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes." -- Tony Blair You are saying yes to waaayyyy too much.
This is the first time I run into a quote I like so much from a speaker I dislike so much... I don't think I'll be able to quote him.
Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#78I recommend 2 books: "The War of Art" and "Do The Work", both from Steven Pressfield. In short, this is Resistance. Do The Work.
"The War of Art"? This book? http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RWWMMSWYRYY10/ref=cm_cr_pr_pe... Really?
It's an awesome book. Based on the 1-star review you chose I wouldn't read it, but it's not an accurate representation of what's in the book.
Another (more straightforward and simple) method of wanting to do everything is to just have a "not to do list" http://blog.close.io/not-to-do-list
Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#79Treat each thing you want to learn as a project, get some free project management software like asana or trello and carve it up into goals...schedule your time, map it out in the software...stick to the schedule....treat it like a job, create to do lists and calendars etc. then just follow thru!
Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#80Stop whatever you're doing now and read this book: "The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life - Master Any Skill or Challenge by Learning to Love the Process" by Thomas M. Sterner.