Maybe you should learn something

Maybe you should learn something(marginalia.nu)

27 points by tylerdane 3 hours ago | 13 comments

The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.

- T.H. White, The Once and Future King

ElProlactin 14 minutes ago |

> While you practice the thing you want to learn, you will not feel good, especially not starting out. This honestly is a bit of an understatement, it really sucks and depending on the task, odds are you may want to lie down for a bit when you’re done with your first practice session. You’ll also almost certainly perform significantly worse toward the end of the session. All this is your brain and muscles getting tired. It’s a good meta-skill to learn to self-assess and pick up on this.

> Learning something completely new from scratch is really awful, and at this point most people are very disheartened and want to give up, which is unfortunate, because if they got back to it the next day, they’d find it’s actually gotten tangibly easier.

This certainly applies to some people, but not all people, and I suspect that the people who actually take the time to "learn new things" are those who enjoy the process. People tend to avoid things they don't enjoy, especially when those things are discretionary, so telling the people who don't enjoy the process of learning new things to do so anyway is preaching to the wrong audience.

CalRobert 1 hour ago |

"have infants ricocheting around your home like screaming DVD logos, then you may want to put this ambition aside for now and deal with that instead"

Even older kids... my 6 year old is jumping on the couch as I type this..

I like remote work but when I had to commute it was really nice to have that downtime built in to the day. I learned a lot of Dutch vocabulary on the train.

hahahaa 12 minutes ago | |

The hobby can be with the kid! E.g. go out on a kayak with them (safety first etc.) or learn to coach sport.

dominex 2 hours ago |

Do you have any interest in trying a new language? If you have, there is a language.

zerobees 1 hour ago |

I'll get my agent on it right away.

tylerdane 3 hours ago |

"Learning anything is a long term project, and long term projects are necessary for building a sense of control over your circumstances. Almost nothing can be deliberately and meaningfully changed within the scope of a day, but in months, certainly years, a lot of things can be made to happen."

atoav 1 hour ago | |

Nothing is as sad as seeing some young motivated student losing patience if the task doesn't turn out to be a quick, easy win. The saddest however are students so eager for the quick, easy win that throughout their academic career they repeat the pattern and never really dive deep into any topic.

I had a student come to me with essentially the same problem over two years and each time I helped her she was in refusal to listen as she stressed herself to just make it work now. Her problem was that she never took the time to do the basics and rejected any learning opportunity as it stared her in the face.

You get results over time if you dedicate yourself to just doing the thing. For many subjects there is no shortcut, no way to walk the path without actually walking it. Every time you encounter an issue there is a learning opportunity. Use it.

bulatb 13 minutes ago | | |

There's nothing wrong with someone having your intrinsic goals as instrumental goals. Especially when Goodhart's law has wrung the joy from everything as inefficiency, and everybody knows that no one cares about the measure but you will be punished if you miss the target.

People are just treading water in a system that will suck them to the bottom as soon as they pause for a breath. They know there's no reward for personal growth, or enrichment, or whatever they're supposed to choose instead of quick and easy wins. The easy win is all they can afford.

bluefirebrand 1 hour ago | | |

Something I find myself struggling with is the "tutorial trap"

You follow a tutorial to do something, feel happy about it. Then you start a new project to put your new skills to good use and... Blank. No idea where to start, no idea how to proceed.

It's so important to build stuff, using references is fine, but following tutorials is not the way forward! You have to work on your own without the training wheels.

bebe9494i4 26 minutes ago | |

I hate this attitude "it takes years of hard work and dedication..."

You absulutely CAN meaningfully pickup things in a day or two, especially with modern AI agents. 3D modeling is a good example, it is not that difficult! It takes some preparation not to be blocked, and good hardware, but when you actually start it goes fast.

You need a concrete goals, not some nebulous plan to learm one hour a day for years.

tonyedgecombe 2 minutes ago | | |

[delayed]

slekker 18 minutes ago | | |

Why the alt account?

casey2 1 hour ago |

Maybe, but unless you are unusually talented I'd advise against it. For every consumer there is a producer and vice versa. Most people are better off as consumers and this give more eyeballs and resources to the few talented producers.