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

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

#31

Post by from-nibly »

LeafItAlone wrote: post #19
from-nibly wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This is going to sound like an empty promise (it might be), but I think this deserves a whole article, brb.

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

#32

Post by harshreality »

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.…

Have you watched or read anything by people who actually have ADHD? Like the Youtube channel "How To ADHD"? She also has a book coming out soon. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51pOP8-wURk ... an alternative is Rosier's book "Your Brain's Not Broken" (2021), have you tried that one?

If it is ADHD, and you don't want to, or aren't, going to get on medication (which will probably help, but also changes the way you think and your personality), don't try to "fix" yourself and stop with the "I'm lazy", and treat it as a challenge to hack your environment so that your environment works with your ADHD to help you get things done.

Timers. Timers (placed away from you so you can't just shut them off without stopping what you're doing) to tell you when to do things, timers (pomodoro) to tell you went to stop doing things.

Procrastinate by coming up with new schemes to hack your workspace, not by scrolling. Delete or web-block your social media apps, especially infinite scroll ones, or put your phone in a drawer or another room.

One factor in willingness to switch tasks is getting rid of the friction of feeling afraid that you won't be able to restart from where you are. Think about and work on how you can save state (mental stack) by jotting down your current train of thought, so that you're confident you'll be able to return to it later.

Gamify everything (during hours when you want to be productive). How much can you get done before an alarm goes off? How quickly can you find a problem/bug/contradiction/inefficiency/solution in whatever you're working on? How can you solve a problem or finish a task in an unusual but equally workable way?

Don't overthink through all the steps of a task when you're starting one (e.g. when an alarm goes off or you set an alarm for a pomodoro-ish block of time). That'll be demotivating. Identify the first step, and do that, and then you're in the task and it's easier to keep going.

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

#33

Post by to11mtm »

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…

> 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.

I'll be bold and go one step further; Even with nutritional supplements and the like, make sure you have some feedback signals (a doctor, friends, etc.) and -use them-. And even if you're on your own and you think it works, Talk to a professional. I have had friends -and- colleagues who either have crawled along with self-help or switched to self help and wound up losing years of personal progress.

> 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.

Honestly sometimes it's like people treat 'ADHD Diagnosis' the way an impostor architect hears 'Cloud Application' and tries use the exact same pattern they always use for cloud apps, regardless of if it's the right fit for the specific problem.

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

#34

Post by soupfordummies »

joshmanders wrote: post #30
sigilis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in the subway are just people waiting to get somewhere, being on your phone in that situation is no more dystopian than reading a book which may be what’s on some of those screens. Not saying phone use isn’t a distraction, but sometimes distractions are okay.

Yeah I'm frankly getting sick of this whole "The problem is phones". No it's not. Something happened somewhere and now everyone believes that any type of mental stimulation is bad if that stimulation comes from a device with a screen and doesn't matter one bit what they're doing. Screen === bad! No instead you should be reading a book! What if they are reading a book? On their phone? NO! Not like that. How many times…

I'm frankly getting sick of this whole "staring at phones isn't much different than reading a book" argument. Yes it is.

There's a difference between "seeking entertainment/novelty/relief of boredom" and the methods/mediums to attain those feelings.

Our collective brains have been seemingly re-wired by these things. I'm not suggesting that we gotta get rid of smartphones or something, I just think it's a little ignorant to be stuck in denial about it.

EDIT: Just reread my comment and it came across much more snarky and confrontational than I intended. I'm sorry for that.

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

#35

Post by soupfordummies »

2cynykyl wrote: post #11
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).

Yeah, and next time you're driving or in a car, take a look around in a traffic jam or at a red light. It's downright scary when you consider how many people are staring into their phones while operating several ton metal death machines.

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

#36

Post by joshmanders »

soupfordummies wrote: post #34
joshmanders wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm frankly getting sick of this whole "The problem is phones". No it's not. Something happened somewhere and now everyone believes that any type of mental stimulation is bad if that stimulation comes from a device with a screen and doesn't matter one bit what they're doing. Screen === bad! No instead you should be reading a book! What if they are reading a book? On their phone? NO! Not like that. How many times…

I'm frankly getting sick of this whole "staring at phones isn't much different than reading a book" argument. Yes it is. There's a difference between "seeking entertainment/novelty/relief of boredom" and the methods/mediums to attain those feelings. Our collective brains have been seemingly re-wired by these things. I'm not suggesting that we gotta get rid of smartphones or something, I just think it's a little ignor…

How so? I'm sure thousands of years ago when paper was introduced SOMEONE was "the problem with you is that you're reading on paper and not stone!"

If your argument is that staring a screen is bad for your eyes, I'd agree with you there, but that has NOTHING to do with the mental stimulation of reading. You are still reading, stimulating your brain. How those words are presented to you does not change that.

The "rewires your brain" argument is in regards to short form videos and other stuff that is to stimulate low attention spans.

If I read a book be it physical or on a kindle or the kindle app on my phone does not change anything.

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

#37

Post by cwillu »

gniv wrote: post #20

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…

My usual line for encouraging people frustrated by something: “frustration is what learning feels like.”

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

#38

Post by tgittos »

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.…

Sibling comments are mentioning undiagnosed ADD (or ADHD), I'd like to float the possibility of undiagnosed depression. The "I can't get disciplined and I'm desperate. It's hurting my job, it's hurting my home life." comment drives it home for me.

Has it always been this way for you? Do you also have problems focusing on things you enjoy?

I've experienced many of the symptoms you list for almost my entire life. I started seeing a therapist about 5 years ago and I've come to realize much of my "laziness" was actually depression. It's hard to be motivated to do the responsible things you need to do to live a life if you can't even be motivated to do fun things you actually enjoy.

You can't "fix" this alone - you're too close to the problem (and there is one, it's affecting your work and home life) to see what's wrong.

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

#39

Post by koube »

tgittos wrote: post #38
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.…

Sibling comments are mentioning undiagnosed ADD (or ADHD), I'd like to float the possibility of undiagnosed depression. The "I can't get disciplined and I'm desperate. It's hurting my job, it's hurting my home life." comment drives it home for me. Has it always been this way for you? Do you also have problems focusing on things you enjoy? I've experienced many of the symptoms you list for almost my entire life. I sta…

It has always been this way. Actually most of my teachers through elementary and middle school have asked that I be evaluated for ADD (before the H was added), although we didn't really see a point to it since I would just be going back to the same doctor who had already ruled out ADD.

I can play video games for 12 hours straight and forget to eat, so I guess I don't have problems focusing on things I enjoy, at the same time I feel like I hear about depressed people playing video games 12 hours a day.

I also start learning a new programming language or framework every month it seems, without retaining anything about the previous month's language/framework, but for the first couple of weeks it really holds my attention.

Seeing a therapist has been on my todo list for a while (but have been having trouble actually getting to it). I'll try to get that in soon.

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

#40

Post by noonething »

astrange wrote: post #26
noonething wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing can 'make' you do anything. Moral Purpose overcomes itself. Don't make lifestyle changes because of something external. Find your inner energy. Seek nothing outside yourself.

> Nothing can 'make' you do anything. Sounds like someone who's never taken modafinil.

Modafinil does not overcome your moral purpose.
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