Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

> And video is a more addictive medium.

IMHO it is not about video but about smartphones. They are too optimized for consuming ads instead of sciences. For example, it is way more handy to watch videos while constantly being interrupted by social networks than to silent reading if you are already taking a smartphone in your hands.

> I just want to mention here that "swimming in ideas" does not equal understanding.

> How do you know you are really moving anywhere but not standing?

> OP wants to read "textbooks to learn basic concepts" and "swim in their ideas". That doesn't equal competence.

> The reading/learning you are doing is entertainment. It's not that much better than watching TV - if anything it's worse because you can kid yourself into thinking you are doing work, or that it's important.

> AKA procrastinating.

To clarify, I completely understand these sentiments, and I am fully aware of the distinction between "understanding" vs simply "reading/learning", "swimming in ideas", etc.

I was once a young naive soul celebrating how I was such an honorable keen "learner". But as I matured, I started to become aware that this habit of learning that I (and many others on the internet, including on HN) was so proud of, was (often) mere accumulation of knowledge, without synthesizing or juxtaposing anything together. We consumed "knowledge" like some baby food, instead of actually engaging actively and critically with the material, chewing through it, etc.

Over the past several years, I've spent a very long time thinking through topics just like this, trying to dissect and discern basic concepts like "learning" vs "understanding", as well as a host of other fundamental topics that many people (including intellectuals) seem to misunderstand. The only reason I've been able to do this is because I've jumped from discipline to discipline, getting an overview of how they relate to one another, trying to piece together certain universals, or spotting points of disagreement between disciplines. Of course, I lack actual expertise in any of these topics, but I do understand the nature of complexity that underlies everything (I think my background in ecology and evolutionary biology has trained me well in this regard).

All this was why I specifically used the phrase "swimming in ideas", because I know full well that I am not (currently) doing much to actually understand these concepts and topics. I also stated "moving from ignorance slowly towards understanding" because I am deliberately moving very slowly through topics knowing that my goal is to gradually understand them more, rather than to simply accumulate "knowledge".

This isn't meant to be a hit-piece on people who simply love to learn for learning's sake. It's just my own philosophy and my path in trying to figure things out. Hope this clarifies things. :)

So I need to learn a whole range of tools to be decent in such a position - facilitation, psychology, therapy techniques (not therapy though!), communication, public speaking (which I hate). Few people in software have these skillsets so I'm trying to attack a niche and hopefully make a decent living off it in the future.

I agree with what you say regarding releasing all the other stuff. Two things happened to me:

1) I started a family. Now I don't have the luxury of spending my evenings procrastinating on youtube and half-reading books. I have hard constraints of time and energy and need to be very deliberate with my time.

2) Focus on everything = Focus on nothing. I am the breadwinner in my family and want the best environment for them to flourish. This means earning a decent amount in a job I (hopefully) enjoy that have potential to grow in the future. If I don't focus on 1-2 key areas in my life everyday, I see they do not improve nor progress.

Prior to having a family, I knew and understood the points above. But the constraints and responsibilities now means I no longer have the luxury of waiting around to get to it tomorrow.

My English is not enough eloquent yet, so I share my anecdotal evidence. Some sentences in books is not understandable if reading only once, and we usually do not go to next one if the previous has been not understood. It is OK to read a sentence 5 times and to read another 2 places in previous parts of a book in order to understand that sentence. Going to a special place from previous parts of lecture might be a pain because of needness to re-listen some extra materials.

While watching video it is too easy to skip that hard sentences especially if professor is too charismatic to let us feel the needness to stop his lecture for a moment in order to think. And it is too hard to re-listen only the part is needed for re-listening, like when you can not parse one word (0.5 seconds long), so you press backwards and you realize that you need to relisten extra 4.5 seconds each re-reading.

That circumstances leads us to just keep listening while the pyramid of non-understanding actually grows on.