Ask HN: How to admit yourself that you cannot learn everything?

8 points by garashovb 3 years ago | 10 comments

Hi there.

I am 24 y.o, living expat life in EU and working for a big corporate bank as SWE.I have enough salary which I can afford the expenses of myself and my family back in home country as well. I did bachelor in my home country, learned english and got master's scholarship so chased my dream of studying abroad. Meanwhile got a job after moving and quite happy with my life.

However, whenever I stumbled upon a problem or an issue on a random work task inner myself starts to torture me and saying "you are a shit, that dude over there could do it in a sec or so". That imposter syndrome forces me to study and study during weekends and evenings no matter how tired I am. Sometimes I think "dude, take it easy. You are just 24, you have many years ahead to learn and get better in this field". But yeah, not always successful I assume.

Any recommendations or thoughts highly welcomed :) Take care.

h2odragon 3 years ago |

You can't learn everything, but you can learn for all the time you have on this earth. That's a constant joy.

May I suggest: you may want to think about for whom you are doing all this self improvement. Are you seeking to be more valuable to others, as they judge your value, or are you serving your own needs? Making yourself useful is great, but then others will use you until you break, if you let them. If you're driving yourself that way, be sure the ends are worth it.

coreyp_1 3 years ago |

1. Realize that it is impossible to become an expert in everything.

2. Realize that it is very possible to become an expert in targeted areas.

3. Pick the targeted area that you enjoy the most and that makes the most $$$.

4. DO SOMETHING with the knowledge. Don't just acquire knowledge, because you will forget it. Build something useful... something that you can show off! THAT is the point at which people will start looking at you as the expert.

Personal note: I decided that I wanted to create a useful, non-trivial programming language, so I built one entirely on video. Github link: https://github.com/coreyp1/Tang Youtube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZqirAnnqaCZ8lT8w7p2P...

Guess what? NOBODY is going to watch the videos, and I know that. But I did it for myself. People look at 2 things: the end result, and the fact that it was me that did it. I'm STILL not an expert at Vim, Flex, Bison, ICU, Make, or programming language design in general, but I absolutely know much, much more than I did starting out, and I learned things that I didn't anticipate. Most of all, though, I found the process personally very rewarding.

I have decided to make peace with the belief that I can master anything that I focus on, generally speaking. With that settled, now I only have to decide where to put that focus, and have the discipline to stick with it long enough to achieve my goal.

garashovb 3 years ago | |

I should say the way you made videos/streams is high quality. Audio, video, placement of yourself, etc. These things might seem trivial, but I kinda enjoy seeing someone put effort on making proper setup. Kudos :)

coreyp_1 3 years ago | | |

Thank you!

gardenhedge 3 years ago | |

A bit of carry over from another thread today. Your point 4:

The purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge. ― Aristotle

n1c00o 3 years ago |

Ohh, I am in the same situation. I just want be able to do whatever I need to do. But as you highlighted in the title, it is possible (learning infinite A in a finite time T with possibly finite brain power B...).

The best thing I do that helped is to say "fuck you" to yourself and spend more time thinking (like a philosopher) about the world and my view on it. I couldn't really explain how but it really helps me.

So I guess I recommend trying to take an external view on your problems instead of studying to fix them as it is, to me, the best self-improvement thing anyone could obtain.

qup 3 years ago |

You have the ability to learn everything, but you don't have enough time, so you need to carefully curate what you're learning.

Become an expert in the thing you want to do, not whatever your peers are doing. Spend your time learning that thing deeply. Master it.

Then you are no longer able to be called impostor, even by yourself.

toast0 3 years ago |

Dear self,

You can learn anything, but not everything. Some things take much longer to learn than others. Pick your battles.

Peace outside,

self

3dsnano 3 years ago |

possess a beginners mind.

every day you reboot with the latest version of CuriosityOS which from the command prompt (daydream.exe) you can explore anything and everything that seems interesting. every day, new insights, knowledge, and observations are saved to the image and integrated with the next day's build.

baremetal 3 years ago | |

wake up, and make every day an adventure.