- energy: learning requires much more than the other "bad" activities like phone
- correct psychological state: procrastination is typically triggered as a response to anxiety for me, so any learning I do instead of the phone will also have this poisonous quality of guilt and fear.
- uninterrupted time
I have a problem that I take any learning way too seriously, such that it would require deliberate focused practice. Sometimes it kills all the fun, and sometimes I give up just because it takes too much energy.
Still, it's extremely rewarding for me to learn stuff, even at this age when intelligence is becoming less useful, or at least harder to monetize.
For energy, it both requires and pays dividends. It's a bit like working out in that sense.
I think my intended takeaway was that you really don't need to have make the thing you're studying take a lot of time, that daily consistency matters more than pouring hours into practice and obsessing about it.
Though in general, I do still think it's the phones and media diet that is the problem with the sense of lacking time.
Few years ago I had a full time job I felt like I had no time. Then I had a part time job, and I still had no time. Now I'm self employed, with nobody to answer to, and I still often feel like I have no time. Like damn, to get more time than I actually already have I'd need to move in next door to a black hole. Though when I unplug, then holy crap do I suddenly end up with a lot of time.
But, some things like doomscrolling and procrastination are both huge energy sinks as well as timesinks. However, targeting them is very hard (again, for me), as it is usually not the root problem but a symptom of anxiety and uncertainty, which I often cannot deal with. If the root of the problem is boredom, it should be much easier to unplug and occupy the brain with something more wholesome.
Another thing is obsessive optimization, "am I studying/practicing the best way possible?". "Is it worth it with so little progress?". I keep falling to such traps. Writing this, I found that I feel that I lack an example of people doing stuff in a suboptimal, slacky, yolo way, deriving fun and still achieving some results in the end.
Though I think that insight is also probably the first step toward working on the issue. The phone habit masks the problem, but when you take the phone away it can also reveal the truth of how bad it's gotten. Like why are you having these anxiety issues? Is it a lack of sleep, too much caffeine, something to see a therapist about, maybe go on meds? Questions worth asking at least. Self-medicating with doom scrolling isn't going to make things better that's for damn sure.
2 months later I was finished and the sleep deprivation hit me like a brick.
Being mentally worn out just kinda makes you feel like shit. It's a terrible state to be in, you don't want to do anything, but doing nothing also feels bad.
When I work, my brain is fried from work. On the weekends I need a long period of idleness to recover before I can read a chapter of a novel.
An hour of study every day is unrealistic for me right now.
I have a feeling you are a young person :)
Still occasionally get interrupted because of life, of course, but marking off an hour and a half and closing a door and putting all chores/calls on silent during that time is very helpful. And I understand that for many it is simply not possible. Private space is a luxury in much of the world.
A sense of play and no obligation also helps. For more on this I recommend Rubin’s The Creative Act.
If you can replace five hours of doom scrolling with an hour of doing nothing in particular, an hour more of sleep, some time staring at a book page or soduku, some more work on chorse, you'll most likely gain an hour or so to use on something that takes mental energy.
It's never been the phone for me, particularly. I just don't pick mine up very often.
To have much more time to learn things I had to learn one key skill: systematically lose interest in syndicated American television. Other people can watch Lost, Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother etc.; I will use my time elsewhere.
(OK so I picked three that are widely recognised as having a major letdown as an ending, but you see my point I guess.)
Once I stopped sharing an interest in watching every episode of some show that a friend or the general zeitgeist was obsessed with, that is hundreds of hours (per show!) for a hobby.
And these days it's hobby-enabling money, because in many cases these shows are the only reason to pick up an extra streaming subscription. You can buy a good 3D printer and some filament, or an electric guitar and a little amp or headphone effects unit for less than a year's premium plan for an American streaming service, and a fully playable guitar alone costs about as much as a year's standard Netflix.
I learned this long enough ago that I have gone without a television for decades now. I had to re-learn it in the era of streaming TV. If you think you want to see one of these shows, they will be around forever so you can watch them from a hospital bed one day.
But phone is still the worst offender, of course. It doesn't just steal time and energy, it also reinforces its usage by producing more anxiety
Basically, I have windows of 5 minutes when I can do almost anything, then she calls me to do something for her that takes 15 minutes, then I have another 5 minutes of work. Instead of coding, my writing efforts have transitioned to writing fiction.
I mostly put aside music and any physical artform that required getting out and putting stuff away each session. Instead, I did a lot more writing, programming, and making stuff on my laptop since pausing and resuming was only a Ctrl-S away.
It also required learning the meta-skill of being able to break a large project into tiny pieces. I got a lot better at leaving notes to myself, not having too many projects going on in parallel, and thinking about problems when I was otherwise idle.
I do notice however, in myself as well as in others, that given an amount of uninterrupted time, we quickly get bored and pick up our phones to break it.
I recall that when Covid hit, I suddenly had a lot of interrupted time on my hands. It quite felt like the times from when we were kids, when he had these vast swathes of time in the afternoon and before bedtime.
I think for a lot of adults, besides the chores and errands that keep life busy, it's become a habit for us to fill up what little uninterrupted time we get with distractions.
Some people feel good about making mistakes. Though necessary for long-term success, this is a completely foreign mindset to me. I have no idea how a person can do such a thing. I tend to overreact instead.
It's not any wonder I would turn to doomscrolling in response, it seems the stakes in my mind are too high and effort invariably leads to depression (speaking from experience). It's too important to me to fail at. Maladaptive phone usage is for escaping that anxiety. I'm most likely burnt out from other attempts in the past. I don't get this feeling at all with work since I'm only doing it for money.
I would feel bad if I couldn't learn the things I really wanted to in life because the emotional toll is too high to pay, after putting in all the work to have a stable income. I still have to manage the rest of my life on top of optional things.
Jung has a great quote to the effect of, "we don't solve our problems, but rather outgrow them." Life is going to feel like mostly-imperfect circumstances for any venture, and your brain can be too good at rationalizing any [lack of] behavior.
- T.H. White, The Once and Future King
I'm still angry and upset that there are so many entities which prey upon this natural human tendency and twist it toward fruitless, bizarre ends.
Right.
If you think of the world as everything it is possible to see and experience, learning about the world won't bring torture, it will bring freedom from it.
I ended up thinking of it extremely fondly - way more fondly than I would’ve expected when halfway through. It’s one of my favorite books in spite of itself. I’d recommend it.
People are less frustrated with the actually meme if it's insightful and not some pedantry.
Language learning, for example is a huge category. You can get completely mired trying to sort out "grammar translation" versus "direct method" or "comprehensible input" approaches, the pros and cons of spaced repetition vs extensive/intensive reading, phonology & minimal pairs, picking a textbook/grammar/dictionary -- it's a lot. I imagine there are some people who are broadly interested in language learning, and don't actually use that information to actually learn a language. It might be more fun to prepare to learn a language than to get into the challenging and less fun work of actually doing it. I see the parallels with "Gear Acquisition Syndrome".
True, and even more insidious than that can be consuming the actual learning material (e.g. textbooks), but not doing the required work to integrate it. I find that I need to do projects to properly learn something. Once I actually start doing things, I quickly identify the parts I knew in theory from reading about them but had never put to the test by solving real problems.
But another side effect of this process is if people stop believing in the accrual of the knowledge which will lead them to nowhere (use cases for those information becoming irrelevant by the time you start using it), justifying this mentally exhausting practice becomes really hard. And I don't mean this on learning static information but also on how to define and build a meta-cognitive framework to systemically learn things.
I don't quite get the "lifelong learning" approach, since lifelong learning must usually be accompanied with organic evolution of the information space. Employers wont pay you because you are a lifelong learner, they'll pay you to actually fix a problem you provide a solution for. And that solution isn't guaranteed by the knowledge you possess and doesn't usually qualify the marginal cost of being a lifelong learner.
One could brain storm on these issues by critiquing the premise of this book: https://www.amazon.com/100-Year-Life-Living-Working-Longevit...
It takes about 2-3 years of mild practice to get good enough that you’ll routinely impress yourself, about 5 years to get good enough that you could do paid commissions.
Seems like a long time, but unless you start in your seventies you’ll have decades left of enjoying being an artist afterwards.
Imagine your perception as a VR headset, and any gadgets and apps are inserting a layer between you and your VR headset, making it worse.
The same goes with any augmenting technology you perceive not the real thing.
Why walk or jog of the car can do it for you?
I've even realised a few things about my own language.
It's easy to think, reading HN, that we're in some "post-knowledge" apocalypse, but that's just not the reality. It is, however, tragic that the irrationality of capitalism can be sustained so long, perhaps longer than some of us can stay solvent.
It’s not like we’ve created a new abstraction layer with coding agents. It’s a leaky factory where every part up and down can break and/or be improved.
The best factories thrive in a learning culture. Where humans grow their knowledge to improve the operation of the factory. From nuts and bolts up to larger systems.
How do you do that without reading code? Without writing code?
I started even replacing my use of specs with exploratory coding to grow my own knowledge and context
https://softwaredoug.com/blog/2026/07/04/write-code-not-spec...
I like to learn new stuff, every day. I have found LLMs to be a godsend, here. Makes it much easier to just barge into unfamiliar territory.
Whenever I come across essays like this, I like to post The Gap, by Ira Glass[0]; one of the more encouraging short essays out there.
They do, but the shape of the way LLMs will confidently mislead you is quite different to the way misinformed humans, or even the malevolent and mendacious humans, will mislead you.
I'm not against learning, but that surely doesn't sound fun, does it?
I started playing pool in college around 2017 and, without really intending to, it became something I did at least once a week. I never had a structured practice routine or any goal of getting really good. I just enjoyed playing, and after enough years I realized I'd become a decent player.
I never gambled, but we usually played loser-pays, so every session still cost a bit. I'm unemployed right now, so I've stopped going because it just doesn't fit my budget anymore.
Kids are conditioned to associate learning with a formal course with a tutor culminating in exams.
It's also intentional to segregate skills, if schools taught every child basic plumbing or car mechanics for example instead of spending a month teaching something that won't get used in life, there would be less job in those fields.
We used to have "shop" (or similarly named) classes for this in junior high/middle school. They have mostly been cut, but more for budgetary reasons. A lot of high schools still have a vocational department for the kids who are not college-bound and not complete wasteoids.
Learning for the sake of learning is one of my favorite things in life.
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.
One day you will pick them up and, and most likely neither of you will know it, but it will be the last time you ever do.
Treasure everything, even the insanity.
If you are rich, you can get around this by hiring people to take care of the children, so then it could be possible, but it will still be a huge financial burden.
I’ve honestly never been able to understand this kind of thinking (uniformly ruling children as a negative because of the downsides), but I’d be curious to understand more about your perspective.
How do you weigh the joy and meaning many people find in having a family against the economic and time freedom costs?
Or the fact that societies do need to continue having children in order to: sustain economic growth, service their elderly population (that will be us in a few years to decades), maintain their armed forces, perpetuate their culture and values into the future, invest in scientific research, etc.
Are these not things you value? Or do you just see the tradeoff as not worth it?
I don't understand what the point of hiring people to take care of mine would be. That's the fun part. Makes about as much sense as going to an amusement park and paying someone to take the rides for you.
We did buy a more expensive home to live near better peers, but that's not really a consumption issue; it's a cultural one.
1) learning how to learn; and
2) using projects to learn
Writing about your experience in learning is also a powerful tool. If you can describe it to your journal (or someone else), you really know it.
Did you do a teaching degree or equivalent, or something a bit more theoretical/philosophical?
And who do you now teach?
Slightly off topic, but as a parent I found this hilarious and will now be closely watching to see if any of my own screaming logos ever perfectly hit the corner of a room.
https://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html
(Except, his essay insinuates that there is some kind of brilliance at work here. In my own case, that remains to be seen.)
Never have I ever managed to accomplish anything of merit by just heading straight for it in the plainspoken sense. Some people will say that provides the basic architecture of some kind of "diagnosis", but I think it's just a normal human variance.
I'd say most of the learning is done by actually doing.
Examples: under a sink, there were two 2m-long supply hoses, where 40cm would be enough, convoluted in a double loop together, to spare a visit to a DIY store. Or dowels made to be driven by hammer, for plastic baseboards, used to hang a cupboard (almost fell out). Or a too long corrugated plastic tube making a virage and another, unnecessary, water seal, and impeding outflux -- also to spare a visit to a store.
> You can learn new things. Pixel art, touch typing, 3d modelling, music, calligraphy, wood working, knitting, a language. Whatever is practical and calls to you, you can learn.
shameless plug: if you are interested in learning touch typing, i built a data driven touch typing application:
it started as a side project (combined wanting to learn typing with my desire to build a side business while working at amazon. working on this (almost) full time now
I look up to people who are well-read and try to follow their example. Maybe one day I can inspire somebody else.
> 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.
Literally an hour ago my 7 and 9 year olds came to mom and I and said, “thank you for disabling YouTube. We are having so much fun.” I know this sounds like a fake Donald Trump kind of story but I swear to god it just happened.
How learning and doing aren't exactly the same and that you need to get back to it many times rather than doing a lot at once.
It's ofc nothing new and the same principle as for example spaced repetition.
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.
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.
In my experience most people can do this, if they think about it a bit — identify the thing they want to learn and find a tutorial for it. Which is amazing, really; this sort of meta-knowledge is a remarkable human concept.
For me it is. Even in my domain where I’m an expert and it’s fun, it only is if I’m working on something interesting.
Sometimes distraction is the main issue when it comes to having ideas.
I get stuck into this mentality of "I need to learn and master X, Y and Z before I can even start building my dream"
Would be much better served by just building whatever and learning the skill
Once you're a little more confident (you know a bit, but not much) I suggest to modify the tutorial as you follow along, that makes the tutorial harder and gives you small challenges to overcome while still giving you general guard rails.
Then as soon as you're dangerous enough to be let loose you should pick your own projects that are slightly above your skill level. Maybe try different approaches if you're unhappy with the first result.
When I wanted to improve my comic drawing skills ca. 2009 I started drawing and publishing a daily webcomic strip for a year. That really helped.
But tutorials remain useful even if you're advanced or a pro. E.g. if you use blender a lot and a new feature comes around watching a tutorial on it is a very efficient way of getting up to speed. Of course you will watch tutorials differently from a beginner, you will pick up on different things etc.
The best way to learn is a serious project with a deadline, but if you have that deadline it will make you wish you had watched some tutorials when you had the time. Source: I teach this kind of stuff at the university level for 6 years now.
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.
Do you people have to mention AI in every single subject.
In the case of 3d modeling, it did initial research, prepared software, prepared a few prototypes to kick start, prepared validation checklist, and found some tutorial videos for me.
I am learning a bit of 3D modeling in Blender so I can mod games that I like (just for private use), I do get stuck sometimes on the silliest things and Blender docs don’t help, but neither did LLMs tbf when I tried to troubleshoot issues with them. I wonder how I can make it a bit less tedious.
My goal was to create 3d shapes out of math curves. LLM wrote bunch of scripts, that generated 3d models for me.
Usual problem with LLM is that it needs good grip and traction on problem, to actually work. It is fine with text and code, and images, not so much with 3d objects.
Not sure whst is your workflow, but perhaps give llm ability to see rendered game without your help. It is a problem with integration and automation.
But I never tout this as some kind of way of being everyone needs to or should try to emulate. As I said at the outset, I can't think of any tangible benefit from doing this. I'm exactly the same upper middle-class, white-collar office worker earning a very good but nowhere near "fuck you" level of money exactly the same as all my peers who are mostly more ordinary people doing ordinary things like watching Love Island and whatever else ordinary people do.
This isn't the automatic golden ticket to a good life. I have no social media accounts. I don't even know where my phone is right now and often don't have it with me. I watch no video on it ever. Most of my entertainment comes from listening to music and even then it's active because I usually listen to songs I can sing and sing along while listening. Even then, I'm still practicing and I'm a very good singer. None of this makes me any happier or any better than anyone else. My mental health is not skyrocketing through the roof because I'm unplugged from the 24 hours news cycle and don't feel the scrutiny of my body and lifestyle not matching an Instagram ideal. In fact, I probably do match that. I've managed to lift at least an hour a day far more days in my adult life than not. I still run even in my mid-40s. I can't get a sub-16 minute 5k like I could as a teenager but I'm in shape. I still sometimes hit 80 miles in a week. My BMI hasn't been over 22 and I haven't had double-digit body fat since being bedridden with spine injuries a decade ago. I look like an underwear model for no reason at all because nobody ever sees it and nobody cares.
It doesn't matter. It's compulsion. I doubt myself and hate myself just as much as anyone else does. I can't sleep because I feel like nothing I ever do is enough and the slightest disturbance in sleep jolts me instantly awake with my mind racing anxious over all the things I believe I need to do, all the ways I'm not living up to my own potential. All those degrees? Shitty schools. No PhDs. Good job. Okay, but I've never made 7 figures in a year. Someday I will but that won't be enough, either. Even Michael Jordan was angry more often than happy, alienated every person he ever knew, and spent his hall of fame induction insulting people and being mad rather than celebrating his own accomplishments. The only real ticket is satisfaction, being able to say good enough is good enough. Spending too much time doomscrolling and not enough learning a second language? So what? Give yourself some grace. People who speak 19 languages are no happier or better than you are. Learning a 20th is every bit as compulsive and pointless as you watching TikTok.
I want more content on the Internet, or anywhere else, telling people all the ways and all the reasons they're already good enough, not constantly pointing out any and all shortcomings of the world and their own personal habits.
It was probably written by a relatively young person.
Nice intent and advice, but in practice, mostly harder and harder to do as time passes by.
As well as not particularly being innate or "god-given", talents tend to emerge only when supported by learned ability. And not even just your own learned ability. Talented violinists exist only in a world that had talented violin makers: you perhaps cannot fully know how society could benefit from things you could learn.
Two of my mini-talents are things I used to think were not just difficult but actually things I would be specifically bad at, like, worse than most people. (Which may for complex reasons be a sign I would not be)
I believe it also misapprehends where the boundary between practice and consumption can sit, too, but that's a longer comment.
No matter which side of the equation you sit, try to unlearn this belief you have, and help others unlearn it.
Like, in a just having a life kind of way.
But what do I know?