Ask HN: How do you stop screwing around and focus?

Every time I try to start learning something I end up giving up. There are various reasons for this. A lot of the times, due to a very weak background in anything, there are a lot of prerequisites to learn. Often this is some math. I know what I want to make, what problem I want to solve, etc. but I have to learn some mathematics before I can be productive. Even worse I often need to go back and supplement my terrible math education and relearn concepts prerequisite to the math. Eventually I feel so far away from the actual thing I want to make and feel like it will be forever till I get to actually work on what I was originally going to. This is common among almost anything I’ve tried to make recently. I also hate reading. I don’t know why, but I can’t read more than a few paragraphs without my brain kinda swapping over to me just seeing disconnected words and quickly losing interest. I end up wasting my free time on unproductive things instead because I feel so disinterested being so abstracted away from my actual goals.

1. I often struggle to really focus and learn/get something done when I have a concrete objective to complete. I have many half-completed ideas on my personal laptop that all taught me something, but never amounted to much because there was no ultimate objective for them. They weren't intended to be released, they weren't intended to get me a job, they weren't intended to make me money. Many were duplicating existing software to satisfy curiosity, but, eventually, if I wanted to get things done, then using the existing software just made more sense. The more successful projects have had the clearest objectives for executing them (this includes learning objectives).

2. In general, establishing intermediate goals is a good way to get past the hurdle of completing an apparently large goal. If you have to learn trig, linear algebra, calculus, a bit of classical mechanics, and a few other things to get to the goal of making some hot new piece of software, then create goals along the way that exercise those learning objectives. This way you can build more deliberately to the final goal, and get some emotional wins along the way (the 6-12 months of effort aren't waiting for a result at the end, but get results throughout).

I do this until I’m interested enough to take action.