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Ask HN: Do you get impatient when learning new things?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you get impatient when learning new things?

#61

I have this trouble with mathematical topics in isolation. It bit me in school as I was very good in most of my classes, but when I had to learn (for example) trig identities, and various rules in calculus in order to slog through problem sets, free of visualizations or some kind of real-world problem, my eyes would tend to glaze over. It has hit me in Haskell because I have tried very hard to understand some of the…

I struggle with this as well. I have difficulty maintaining high arousal and curiosity with mathematical topics in isolation. I think it is harder because I can't always see a path to applying the concepts to interesting problems.

Re: Ask HN: Do you get impatient when learning new things?

#62
The trick that helps me is to do a iterative deepening learning. For example when you are reading a long book on a complicated topic, don't try to study every chapter perfectly before you move on to the next chapter. Things will fall off your head pretty quickly anyway. Instead, I would quickly skim through the book, get familiar with the main ideas and concepts (but not too deep into the details). Then on the next iteration I'd go deeper. You'll find that some chapters will require more iterations and some not. Also try to identify the important parts of knowledge that you need to learn and focus on that.

Re: Ask HN: Do you get impatient when learning new things?

#63
post #62

The trick that helps me is to do a iterative deepening learning. For example when you are reading a long book on a complicated topic, don't try to study every chapter perfectly before you move on to the next chapter. Things will fall off your head pretty quickly anyway. Instead, I would quickly skim through the book, get familiar with the main ideas and concepts (but not too deep into the details). Then on the next i…

I don't know, this somehow seems to ignore the case when chapters rely on something that should be clear from previous chapters. It happened to me a lot when I was at University that I'd think to just skim over a chapter, poorly understand the following one and that would snowball as soon as I reached the end of the book.

Re: Ask HN: Do you get impatient when learning new things?

#64

TL;DR: Just start. I've this too. When I learn something new like a language I often want to do it right, like be "pythonic" when learning Python. It can take long for me to write some simple piece of code because I'm constantly doubting if my code is pythonic. And when it takes to long I lose focus and I stop. The same thing applies when I started a little Go web app, Go was rather new for me. I decided to use Docke…

Keep focus: Learn or do one thing at a time (apply your iterative philosophy on top).

Re: Ask HN: Do you get impatient when learning new things?

#65

TL;DR: Just start. I've this too. When I learn something new like a language I often want to do it right, like be "pythonic" when learning Python. It can take long for me to write some simple piece of code because I'm constantly doubting if my code is pythonic. And when it takes to long I lose focus and I stop. The same thing applies when I started a little Go web app, Go was rather new for me. I decided to use Docke…

Agreed wholeheartedly.

There are times when you should read and learn every detail before actually starting a new activity. (e.g. ground school before flying) This is usually when the cost of failure is unacceptably high.

However, this is usually not the case, especially with things like programming, if that's what OP is talking about.

Advice to "just do it" may seem simple, but it is surprisingly effective. When you learn by doing, you setup a feedback loop where you try something, see if it works or not, and if it does not, find out why/where it went wrong and retry it. For most people, this is mentally stimulating and provides the necessary psychological rewards to keep you going. If you get stuck/frustrated, this is when you should take a break and perhaps go back to reading/researching after a while.

Don't worry about whether you're doing it the absolutely correct way, or whether what you've done is worthwhile to others. (What is "absolutely correct" is often subjective, anyways) Focus on the knowledge you gain, and take notes.

For example, I've also been recently learning Golang. I wrote a simple Golang game server (using a SockJS library) to serve as a backend for a simple, multiplayer online game. Looking back, the initial code I wrote was horrible and needs to be refactored; but that in and of itself will be another learning exercise. Did I need to use Golang for this, or is this the best use of Golang? Probably not - I could have written it using Java or Node.js much faster, but wouldn't learned as much.

Re: Ask HN: Do you get impatient when learning new things?

#67
post #63
post #62

The trick that helps me is to do a iterative deepening learning. For example when you are reading a long book on a complicated topic, don't try to study every chapter perfectly before you move on to the next chapter. Things will fall off your head pretty quickly anyway. Instead, I would quickly skim through the book, get familiar with the main ideas and concepts (but not too deep into the details). Then on the next i…

I don't know, this somehow seems to ignore the case when chapters rely on something that should be clear from previous chapters. It happened to me a lot when I was at University that I'd think to just skim over a chapter, poorly understand the following one and that would snowball as soon as I reached the end of the book.

That would mean you went deeper in this chapter than in the previous one. The first fast iteration is really to get familiar with the main ideas and terminology. For example if it's a book on algorithms, you skim through it and understand what is linkedlist, what is tree, what is graph, their running time but not the details of implementation and certainly not exercises. Then on the next one you try to understand basic implementation, but still not doing any exercises. Then on the next one you try to implement them and do some exercises. That's fun, keep you moving, refreshing your memory and it doesn't feel like you've been reading this book forever and still on the 3 chapter.

Re: Ask HN: Do you get impatient when learning new things?

#68
post #63
post #62

The trick that helps me is to do a iterative deepening learning. For example when you are reading a long book on a complicated topic, don't try to study every chapter perfectly before you move on to the next chapter. Things will fall off your head pretty quickly anyway. Instead, I would quickly skim through the book, get familiar with the main ideas and concepts (but not too deep into the details). Then on the next i…

I don't know, this somehow seems to ignore the case when chapters rely on something that should be clear from previous chapters. It happened to me a lot when I was at University that I'd think to just skim over a chapter, poorly understand the following one and that would snowball as soon as I reached the end of the book.

Well, that's when you try to use skimming as a foundation for actually learning the next concept. If I'm just trying to get an outline, all I really have to understand is that -for example- the Jungian and Freudian models of the mind are very different, but were foundational for much of psychology. On the next pass, I learn more about what they are, and I retain it better because I remember the skimmed materials from later lessons that relate to particulars of those psychological models.

Re: Ask HN: Do you get impatient when learning new things?

#69

TL;DR: Just start. I've this too. When I learn something new like a language I often want to do it right, like be "pythonic" when learning Python. It can take long for me to write some simple piece of code because I'm constantly doubting if my code is pythonic. And when it takes to long I lose focus and I stop. The same thing applies when I started a little Go web app, Go was rather new for me. I decided to use Docke…

> I've this too. When I learn something new like a language I often want to do it right, like be "pythonic" when learning Python. It can take long for me to write some simple piece of code because I'm constantly doubting if my code is pythonic. And when it takes to long I lose focus and I stop. Exactly my current situation with Clojure.

Mine as well.

Re: Ask HN: Do you get impatient when learning new things?

#70
I used to be exactly like that. As a consequence I never really picked up any in-depth knowledge through school because hitting the basics was usually enough to "get the grade" and there was precious little "reward" (of whatever form) for pushing it further.

When I was 18 a tutor - who I didn't really know well - said to me in passing, and seemingly pretty randomly, "Your problem is that you want to run before you can walk with everything."

I had an epiphany over that and slowed down my "gets" for small, insignificant objectives and spent the time trying to really understand things.

From that point on I actually learned how to program properly rather than just doing enough to get by, for example.

As I've gotten older I've learned that my chasing the "gets" was a self-imposed restriction because there was always a small but sufficient reward for the accumulating of praise, etc. I've taught myself to very stringently prioritise (recent book suggestion: Procrastinate on Purpose) and categorise the things I "have to" do and instead of doing a hundred things that don't really matter (but they were easy and I get a "thanks") I work out which things I "have to" do will actually add value and make a difference, even if achieving them will take much more effort.

As my career has developed I've moved into being a specialist and now find myself coming back out into being a generalist but the "real" grounding in my skills sets me apart from "career generalists" and "credential whores" that my industry is plagued with nowadays.

EDIT: thinking about it, this "get" behaviour started when I was in junior school. I used to read encyclopaedias for facts and tell people. My parents used to praise me for what I knew, and my friends jokingly called me an "information magnet". I liked my cursory knowledge of "everything" and I guess I became addicted to it.

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