Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#1

Post by robinrheem » Thu, May 12, 2022, 6:29 PM UTC

I find myself studying too much in order to make something that I want. For example, I want to make a dashboard of some sort. So I start learning about the history of dashboards, state of the art dashboard components, best information to show on dashboards, whether to implement them as a native, mobile, web application, and it keeps on getting deeper and deeper. I just need to build a dashboard! I sort of don't know when to stop because I like studying too much. Feels like I'm in a never ending recursive rabbit hole of rabbit holes.

I do tell myself to just "study enough to produce" but I just can't get the right criteria for "enough".

I wonder whether this type of behavior is called anything so I could study about it.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#2

Post by bckr » Thu, May 12, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

Might call it analysis paralysis.

You might also call it research.

Consider putting your studies together as blog posts or videos so that your research becomes art in its own right. "Process is art".

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#3

Post by robinrheem » Thu, May 12, 2022, 6:39 PM UTC

bckr wrote: post #2

Might call it analysis paralysis. You might also call it research. Consider putting your studies together as blog posts or videos so that your research becomes art in its own right. "Process is art".

Mighty thanks for clearing out on what problem I'm having! Do you have your own system for not getting into analysis paralysis?

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#4

Post by mindcrime » Thu, May 12, 2022, 6:39 PM UTC

I've always just called it "rabbit holing" and I'm guilty of having a problem with this as well. That said, I do still manage to get stuff done, so clearly I manage to break out of the recursive rabbit hole process at some point. What I can't do is tell you that I have any kind of definite / deterministic / repeatable process for managing this tendency. I usually just reach a point where I'm like "OK, enough is enough, time to start building." Maybe it's just that my innate tendency to build balances out with my innate tendency to research at some point, and when they hit equilibrium, I'm able to shift gears? I honestly don't know.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#5

Post by loquor » Thu, May 12, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

Exploration vs Exploitation in ML. It seems you explore a lot to find whats 'best', but it keeps you from implementing (in this case Exploiting) a set of ideas. There is an optimum between the two. You could read up on this.

My 2 cents: Learn by need. Figure out your needs (e.g. required feature) and go get just that knowledge from the internet, and put it to practice.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#6

Post by robinrheem » Thu, May 12, 2022, 6:53 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #4

I've always just called it "rabbit holing" and I'm guilty of having a problem with this as well. That said, I do still manage to get stuff done, so clearly I manage to break out of the recursive rabbit hole process at some point. What I can't do is tell you that I have any kind of definite / deterministic / repeatable process for managing this tendency. I usually just reach a point where I'm like "OK, enough is enoug…

Going too deep in the rabbit hole feels like procrastinating sometimes. I also do get stuff done but mostly when a hard deadline is set. So I tend to go into the rabbit hole until I only have a few days left. I also have good feelings since I love studying about things.

I did an experiment on myself where I just design a project and start implementing it right away without any research. When I get trapped, I just did a quick Google search and solved the problem right away instead of trying to study about other solutions or other variables about the problem. I got the project done rather quickly but code quality, solutions that came from the top of my head weren't that impressive. I know iterating will enhance quality, but before I iterate I need to study better solutions or at least research to get ideas for better solutions in order to iterate.

The result of that experiment was just that I was able to get things done a bit quicker if I just did things without studying and only "find solutions" when I encounter problems. Going deeper needs knowledge, but when to start building again when I acquire "enough"?

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#7

Post by robinrheem » Thu, May 12, 2022, 6:59 PM UTC

loquor wrote: post #5

Exploration vs Exploitation in ML. It seems you explore a lot to find whats 'best', but it keeps you from implementing (in this case Exploiting) a set of ideas. There is an optimum between the two. You could read up on this. My 2 cents: Learn by need. Figure out your needs (e.g. required feature) and go get just that knowledge from the internet, and put it to practice.

I did try to do the way as you said in your 2 cents but the more I solve problems like that I tend to feel empty. It feels that I don't know anything and I just know some exceptions or just some solutions to some problems. I don't feel I have a fundamental knowledge base that lets me think from my own neural networks.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#8

Post by PaulHoule » Thu, May 12, 2022, 7:02 PM UTC

It depends on what I am doing.

For almost 2 years I have had some art projects that involve doing something every day so that gets me learning gradually.

I want to start blogging again though to write up what I've been doing and when I start setting up a 2022-technology blog system I find myself getting stuck in the weeds (this Hugo template example looks good but put some real text in there and there is just no room...) or generally dissatisfied (like Hugo is great for anything that doesn't involve art or math except that's what I'm writing about.)

I'm not going to be happy blogging unless I can understand the whole graphic design system and I just haven't gotten my head around it but writing about my art project just now I start thinking I'm going to have to attack CSS the same way I attacked printing.

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#9

Post by robinrheem » Thu, May 12, 2022, 7:10 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #8

It depends on what I am doing. For almost 2 years I have had some art projects that involve doing something every day so that gets me learning gradually. I want to start blogging again though to write up what I've been doing and when I start setting up a 2022-technology blog system I find myself getting stuck in the weeds (this Hugo template example looks good but put some real text in there and there is just no room…

If I were in your situation I would be studying about all the static site generators, onpremise self-served blog services, any type of new blog service that are good for writing about art and math. Okay, then what theme would be best? Survey them on each platform. What markup language would be best to write about art and math? Find about LaTeX, org-mode, Markdown, etc. I pretty much tend to do this kind of thing for anything I do!

PS. Good luck with the blog! Hope I get to read your entries some day :)

Re: Ask HN: How much do you study in order to do/make something?

#10

Post by drakonka » Thu, May 12, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

I usually just get started hacking out a prototype of what's in my head, and then Google for information as questions, ideas, or uncertainties come up. I still end up diving into best practices, existing approaches, etc, but more incrementally as I build as opposed to all at once in the beginning.