Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning Is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy

kirkusreviews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 47 posts

Re: Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning Is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy

#11

Post by 2cynykyl »

koube wrote: post #2

I have a tangential question: How can I know which of these self help things are helpful and which are just snake oil? I can't get disciplined and I'm desperate. It's hurting my job, it's hurting my home life. When I decide to take a shower on the weekend it takes me 30 minutes to an hour to actually get up and walk to the bathroom. Then it might be another 30 minutes of scrolling before I actually hop in the shower.…

You kinda answered your own question: "another 30 minutes of scrolling". Sorry to be so cliche, but we all gotta stop staring at our phones. Side story: I have been taking the subway to work for the past 7 months and Every.Single.Person is staring at their phone the whole time. It's like dystopic sci-fi stuff. So, back to the cliche's, treat the disease (phone addiction) not the symptoms (distraction).

Re: Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning Is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy

#12

Post by WhitneyLand »

koube wrote: post #2

I have a tangential question: How can I know which of these self help things are helpful and which are just snake oil? I can't get disciplined and I'm desperate. It's hurting my job, it's hurting my home life. When I decide to take a shower on the weekend it takes me 30 minutes to an hour to actually get up and walk to the bathroom. Then it might be another 30 minutes of scrolling before I actually hop in the shower.…

Lack discipline in what way? You mean stuff comes up that’s important but you’re not doing it?

What does it feel like? Procrastination or wanting to avoid things? Lack of interest, lack of energy, fear of failure, apathy, other?

There can be more than one thing involved, Check each box that applies and we’ll start to get a picture.

Re: Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning Is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy

#13

Post by [deleted] »

TINJ wrote: post #10
koube wrote: post #2

I have a tangential question: How can I know which of these self help things are helpful and which are just snake oil? I can't get disciplined and I'm desperate. It's hurting my job, it's hurting my home life. When I decide to take a shower on the weekend it takes me 30 minutes to an hour to actually get up and walk to the bathroom. Then it might be another 30 minutes of scrolling before I actually hop in the shower.…

I've found that there is nothing in these books. I've read enough of them that I now have zero curiosity about what they have to say. What works for me is to choose to suffer. You can replace all those books and all their pages with just those three words. There's no mindhack or some new scientific (or spiritual) method to no longer suffer when working. Just choose to suffer and get good at suffering.

[deleted]

Re: Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning Is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy

#14

Post by irjustin »

koube wrote: post #2

I have a tangential question: How can I know which of these self help things are helpful and which are just snake oil? I can't get disciplined and I'm desperate. It's hurting my job, it's hurting my home life. When I decide to take a shower on the weekend it takes me 30 minutes to an hour to actually get up and walk to the bathroom. Then it might be another 30 minutes of scrolling before I actually hop in the shower.…

> It's hurting my job, it's hurting my home life. When I decide to take a shower on the weekend it takes me 30 minutes to an hour to actually get up and walk to the bathroom. Then it might be another 30 minutes of scrolling before I actually hop in the shower.

Have you tried counseling? This sounds like burnout.

Re: Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning Is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy

#15

Post by koube »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #12
koube wrote: post #2

I have a tangential question: How can I know which of these self help things are helpful and which are just snake oil? I can't get disciplined and I'm desperate. It's hurting my job, it's hurting my home life. When I decide to take a shower on the weekend it takes me 30 minutes to an hour to actually get up and walk to the bathroom. Then it might be another 30 minutes of scrolling before I actually hop in the shower.…

Lack discipline in what way? You mean stuff comes up that’s important but you’re not doing it? What does it feel like? Procrastination or wanting to avoid things? Lack of interest, lack of energy, fear of failure, apathy, other? There can be more than one thing involved, Check each box that applies and we’ll start to get a picture.

As in I sit down in the morning ready to work, I write down everything I've accomplished each day, and many times at the end of the day I find that I've only written down one or two minor things that I've finished for that day. I know things are important, I want to get them done, and it gives me terrible anxiety as the clock ticks down to the end of the day and my list of finished tasks is so short.

I have terrible task initiation, for example after any meeting, no matter what it is, I can't get started on anything for 20-30 minutes. Once I get started, sometimes I will be productive but sometimes I will suddenly realize I've been on my phone for another 30 minutes. At the same time, someone else's homework is great fun and I have in the past used other people's homework to procrastinate on my own work.

On the executive function skills listed in Smart but Scattered Guide to Success, I think I'm probably worst at Task Initiation and Sustained Attention.

Re: Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning Is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy

#16

Post by from-nibly »

koube wrote: post #2

I have a tangential question: How can I know which of these self help things are helpful and which are just snake oil? I can't get disciplined and I'm desperate. It's hurting my job, it's hurting my home life. When I decide to take a shower on the weekend it takes me 30 minutes to an hour to actually get up and walk to the bathroom. Then it might be another 30 minutes of scrolling before I actually hop in the shower.…

Fellow ADHD haver. You sound like you have ADHD and burnout. You need to tease those apart and deal with them one at a time. ADHD is going to be easier to get started on.

If you indeed get diagnosed with ADHD.

Do NOT try to do a bunch of weird stuff to "boost" your brain and fix your ADHD. Pills are good and I take them and if your doctor agrees you should then its a good idea to take pills.

But I see people with ADHD thinking that they need to make their brain more reliable. But the ADHD brain just isn't. It's like trying to say you only need 1 replica of this service if you can just get it to be reliable enough.

You don't need 1 reaaaaly reliable replica you need 3 replicas in HA and circuit breaking.

Make your environment; your job, your house, your finances, your routines, ADHD proof. Treat yourself like the chaos you are and make your life resilient to it.

Don't make it so you don't have ADHD (impossible) make it so it doesn't matter.

Re: Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning Is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy

#17

Post by zubairq »

TINJ wrote: post #10
koube wrote: post #2

I have a tangential question: How can I know which of these self help things are helpful and which are just snake oil? I can't get disciplined and I'm desperate. It's hurting my job, it's hurting my home life. When I decide to take a shower on the weekend it takes me 30 minutes to an hour to actually get up and walk to the bathroom. Then it might be another 30 minutes of scrolling before I actually hop in the shower.…

I've found that there is nothing in these books. I've read enough of them that I now have zero curiosity about what they have to say. What works for me is to choose to suffer. You can replace all those books and all their pages with just those three words. There's no mindhack or some new scientific (or spiritual) method to no longer suffer when working. Just choose to suffer and get good at suffering.

Well, there can be some tips in the books, so I would not discount them. After all, we are reading those books to try to learn better. But yes, I agree, often we just have to suffer our way to greatness when learning :)

Re: Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning Is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy

#18

Post by debtor66 »

koube wrote: post #2

I have a tangential question: How can I know which of these self help things are helpful and which are just snake oil? I can't get disciplined and I'm desperate. It's hurting my job, it's hurting my home life. When I decide to take a shower on the weekend it takes me 30 minutes to an hour to actually get up and walk to the bathroom. Then it might be another 30 minutes of scrolling before I actually hop in the shower.…

I can't even describe how much I relate to this :( Especially the Podcast part. I've literally read and listened to every single thing I could on increasing focus / concentration and nothing helped me yet.

Re: Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning Is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy

#19

Post by LeafItAlone »

from-nibly wrote: post #16
koube wrote: post #2

I have a tangential question: How can I know which of these self help things are helpful and which are just snake oil? I can't get disciplined and I'm desperate. It's hurting my job, it's hurting my home life. When I decide to take a shower on the weekend it takes me 30 minutes to an hour to actually get up and walk to the bathroom. Then it might be another 30 minutes of scrolling before I actually hop in the shower.…

Fellow ADHD haver. You sound like you have ADHD and burnout. You need to tease those apart and deal with them one at a time. ADHD is going to be easier to get started on. If you indeed get diagnosed with ADHD. Do NOT try to do a bunch of weird stuff to "boost" your brain and fix your ADHD. Pills are good and I take them and if your doctor agrees you should then its a good idea to take pills. But I see people with ADH…

> Make your environment; your job, your house, your finances, your routines, ADHD proof. Treat yourself like the chaos you are and make your life resilient to it.

Can you expand on this? What suggestions do you have for accomplishing this?

Re: Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning Is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy

#20

Post by gniv »

I still have a tab open with an old article [1] that seems to argue the opposite: that learning must be effortful to happen. I didn't read the book reviewed here so I don't know if there really is a conflict between the two approaches. (I suspect the "you can make it easy" part is just marketing.)

[1] https://giansegato.com/essays/edutainment-is-not-learning (discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36580837)

Post reply on HN