Nördnytt! 🤓Maybe you should learn something
- frankie_t - 22844 sekunder sedanIt's a very common thing to blame the lack of time and "finding" the extra time by suggesting to give up phone or some other form of procrastination. But in my experience, time is almost never a problem. It's usually:
- 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.
- mordechai9000 - 40497 sekunder sedanThe 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
- HexPhantom - 39830 sekunder sedanOne thing I wish this emphasized more is that adults often confuse learning with consuming material about learning, which is why my useful rule has become: if I'm not producing errors, I'm probably not practicing yet
- gkcnlr - 4604 sekunder sedanLearning process must be accompanied with enough space for an individual to realistically challenge himself to actually acquire that knowledge with foreseeable success of doing it. A person must believe s/he can really learn something. But in this status quo of AI hypeism (believing that knowing refined set of know-hows would be enough) people gradually begin losing that optimistic "a priori" belief to learn things.
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...
- korzinka - 1741 sekunder sedanSo you need to stop watching netflix or check your phone and instead you should learn through an unrewarding process and become a mediocre intermediate for the sake of it or for becoming better at conversations!
I'm not against learning, but that surely doesn't sound fun, does it?
- Fraterkes - 30212 sekunder sedanI’ll chime in. I started learning to draw in my early twenties, couple hours a week. What helps a lot is joining a club, I’ve got a group in my town that just goes to a bar one night a week and draws and chats for 3 hours. Great way to ensure that you get at least a few hours of drawing in, even if your week is too busy for “practice”.
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.
- forgotusername6 - 26939 sekunder sedanThere's really a feeling now pushing back against learning in general. The feeling is that it is pointless since technology would just do it for you. When I started learning Chinese a friend just wouldn't stop talking about how the latest airpods will just be able to translate for you. It was really rather demoralising. But there is still something incredibly rewarding about having that knowledge in your own head and not having to go find someone or something to ask. I push on regardless.
- softwaredoug - 13103 sekunder sedanThis is why I don’t get the perverse pleasure people get when they say they don’t look at code anymore
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...
- ChrisMarshallNY - 32031 sekunder sedanAs someone who has done “self-directed” learning, for my entire life (high school dropout, with a GED), I can certainly relate.
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.
- khurs - 24198 sekunder sedanThe education system is to blame.
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.
- aguacaterojo - 18819 sekunder sedanI started playing video games in Spanish about a year ago. I've finished about 20 now. I had a base of course & was doing little courses etc. But I've sunk 100s of hours now focusing on text and voice heavy games and it went from very tiring and looking up the dictionary constantly to fun and fluid. I can finally watch a lot of stuff without subtitles now. Someone catalogues which games have been dubbed (focused on Spanish of Spain) at this site https://www.doblajevideojuegos.es/ the quality of most new dubs I've seen has been very high
- ronbenton - 25653 sekunder sedanOne “trick” nowadays is to just do a thing for the sake of doing the thing. I draw. Not to post my drawings to social media, not to try to get income from paid commissions, but rather just to enjoy the act of drawing. It’s very liberating in a world where it feels like almost everything has to be in service of some kind of larger scheme.
- connerpocket - 9895 sekunder sedanThis resonated with me, although my experience has been a little different.
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.
- noisy_boy - 9128 sekunder sedanBecause this seems like an appropriate topic/place to ask, are there say 20 books on a variety of topics that one can say are very useful to build a foundation of our world, in the physical and metaphorical sense? Literature probably shouldn't be in that list because literature is just a universe of its own and a lot of it is just not that accessible. E.g. I am not knowledgeable enough to be able to read Mahabharata or Odyssey in the original language.
- ubj - 6443 sekunder sedan> and/or have infants ricocheting around your home like screaming DVD logos
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.
- CalRobert - 44388 sekunder sedan"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.
- jschveibinz - 14364 sekunder sedanI went back to school in my 50's to learn how to teach. Two of the most important takeaways from that experience were:
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.
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- wavemode - 9494 sekunder sedanThe key is to find something that you enjoy sucking at. I recently picked up quad rollerskating and the process of getting steadier and smoother at it (while just enjoying the vibes, music and community at my local rink) has become an obsession. It's my new third-favorite hobby (after programming and competitive cornhole).
- yetkin - 34000 sekunder sedanI cannot deny the value of learning but there is a fact that learning can be a way of procrastination. This happens when the joy of learning overtake and diverge you from a goal. Nothing wrong about it, it is a time well spent. But I think there must be a balance as well
- Ugvx - 34059 sekunder sedanI came to a similar conclusion last weekend. My 20 year old car was having some issues and instead of taking g it to the mechanic to be charged $1,000, thought I would give it a try myself. 3 hours later and the problem was fixed. And I learned a lot in the process.
- absoluteunit1 - 17983 sekunder sedanLearning something new often can take as little 10-15 minutes a day of focused time. If you do it consistently, it becomes easier and easier to maintain, and it starts to require less and less mental capacity to start
> 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
- cwiz - 16017 sekunder sedanI learned a lot myself, but lately I just can't make it on stable regime because you don't get much positive feedback you you're learning something yourself. There's no grades, no exams and all of your motivation is internal. In that case you need to work on a motivation and goals. Why would you learn something that doesn't pays off then?
- andrew_lettuce - 19493 sekunder sedanIt's great to be an amateur learner, but if you want to get better (or just make learning more effective) I really liked the (very easy read) Little Book of Talent. It focuses on how to get good, but that's really about how we learn and practice. Highly motivational and some interesting counterintuitive ideas:
- ElProlactin - 41181 sekunder sedan> 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.
- russfink - 14741 sekunder sedanI’m attempting to learn to use a slide rule. It’s quite a history lesson - we take for granted the large precision we get on calculators. But the learning is taking repeated visits, about 30 minutes at a time. I’m slowly getting it.
- rrgok - 8689 sekunder sedanI honestly don't feel rewarding learning anymore. I might be depressed, because I feel all human experiences are overrated. And such, learning is such futile exercise in postponing the reality of life.
- i_am_a_peasant - 22614 sekunder sedanFor me the biggest learning investment outside work I put is learning Chinese and Vietnamese. I tried music but I gave it up after a year. And I can just do it on my commute to work as well. I also like reading about 19 century comparative history. Gives me a lot of relevant talking points in a lot of conversation.
- zerobees - 44519 sekunder sedanI'll get my agent on it right away.
- kruffalon - 25922 sekunder sedanI really like how the article focuses on rest and not doing the thing as a core part of learning.
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.
- Waterluvian - 9660 sekunder sedanI need a benevolent alien to force me out of my rut when I’m in one. I had no problems as a kid because I had little choice at times, like the weekends where I was going to learn how to put siding on a cottage or plumb a bathroom, even though I wanted to play Zelda more than anything. I hated those summers and now that I’m a homeowner, I am deeply thankful for them.
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.
- jdw64 - 4503 sekunder sedanI've been running my own website lately (www.makonea.com), and writing out my knowledge as articles made me realize just how much I was lacking. Running your own website is something I'd recommend trying.
- AFF87 - 11838 sekunder sedanLifelong learning as the ultimate skill
- DaveZale - 3389 sekunder sedana couple of decades ago there was viral advice going around about "the 1000 hour rule" saying that's how long it would take to master something new. Maybe it's time to refresh that?
- insane_dreamer - 2227 sekunder sedanI like learning new things, and have done so my whole life. But thinking about our AI future, I think that learning as a goal will be greatly diminished, when the reward of learning many things is essentially zero other than your own personal satisfaction. I can see this already to some degree in my kids. I taught my older daughter, when she was young (8~12) how to build websites (html/js), code games (ruby), build 3D models (lightwave), etc. It was a great experience plus she now has a degree from a great college in engineering and has been gainfully employed since college at a good tech company (not using the exact things I taught her but tangentially related). I now have kids that are preteen/teen and I struggle with 1) "why bother", and 2) convincing them how these or similar skills might be of use to them. My teen boy is like "why do I need to learn this when I can just ask Claude" etc. I'm frankly at a bit of a loss.
- dominex - 48935 sekunder sedanDo you have any interest in trying a new language? If you have, there is a language.
- threethirtytwo - 6715 sekunder sedanIn the future we will just have our agentic assistant learn it for us.
- nonameiguess - 1911 sekunder sedanI'm not the world's most productive person in terms of getting any kind of tangible economic benefit from my activities, but I probably am the most dedicated learner I've ever known. I'm sure there are people on the Internet who learn even more, but I'm a sponge for information. Every weekend in the late 80s, I rode my bicycle down to the Norwalk branch of the LA public library, spent the entire day reading, then checked out the maximum number of books they allowed, which was 6 as far as I remember. Every week, another 6 books. Never fiction, not biographies or light reading. I was heavily interested in the SDI or "Star Wars" proposals Reagan had and read about particle beams, lasers, satellite communications, all public information about how missile defense worked. I was nationally ranked at NTN in the early 90s and won a television quiz show when I was 12. I came in 2nd in the California state spelling bee at one point. Got a perfect SAT score. I also came in 3rd in a statewide art competition and won my high school district's annual art show 3 of 4 years I was in high school. I've never had even an ounce of focus and master nothing, but get reasonably good at everything. Lettered in four different sports. Ended up with (so far) 4 bachelor's degrees and 3 master's. I'm the last person I know who still never uses an LLM for anything, in part because I don't feel I need to because I have answers and know how to do what I need to do without assistance, but also because I want that to continue to be the case. I'm willing to struggle and practice and devote more time to learning and less time to sleep or anything else because there is nothing in the world that gratifies me more and strokes my egoistic self-image than always having the answer, not because I'm asking the web but because I actually have the answer in my own mind.
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.
- tylerdane - 52359 sekunder sedan"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."
- tayo42 - 9449 sekunder sedanThe idea overall is fine. Do adults have success learning art? Like actually getting good at it? I've been kind of overwhelmed by how much time is expected of students to learn art to get good. Like its treated like a full time job? I see people online casually throw out spending 8-10 hours a day on things.
- ur-whale - 16441 sekunder sedanCouldn't find a mention of age in the article.
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.
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- casey2 - 44101 sekunder sedanMaybe, 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.