Ask HN: How do I stay motivated to learn?
There are a lot of great things I want to learn but I often drop the intensive learning process after a few days. How have you found ways to actually learn things through? How do you stay motivated?
26 comments
Plato said, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
The etymology of invention is “to find out, discovery”.
There is your answer.
When your life must necessarily depend on learning the thing, you will learn it.
Convince yourself that your life depends upon it.
Don’t treat it as a trivial thing.
Fully integrate the goal of learning with survival, with maintaining your well being.
Whenever I feel that my life depends on knowing and understanding a thing, I am fully absorbed, engaged, consumed with focused attention.
This takes some psychological work. It requires imagining your death, physical or ego death, imagining the shame, imagining the failure of embarrassment of not knowing this thing.
It takes practice, but once you learn to integrate the goal of learning with this feeling of existential annihilation, you can tap into endless sustained energy for motivated focus.
See Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on learning, specifically flow states.
With the right resistance, with the right existential threat, the right challenge, your entire faculties will rise to the occasion and learn the thing.
The etymology of invention is “to find out, discovery”.
There is your answer.
When your life must necessarily depend on learning the thing, you will learn it.
Convince yourself that your life depends upon it.
Don’t treat it as a trivial thing.
Fully integrate the goal of learning with survival, with maintaining your well being.
Whenever I feel that my life depends on knowing and understanding a thing, I am fully absorbed, engaged, consumed with focused attention.
This takes some psychological work. It requires imagining your death, physical or ego death, imagining the shame, imagining the failure of embarrassment of not knowing this thing.
It takes practice, but once you learn to integrate the goal of learning with this feeling of existential annihilation, you can tap into endless sustained energy for motivated focus.
See Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on learning, specifically flow states.
With the right resistance, with the right existential threat, the right challenge, your entire faculties will rise to the occasion and learn the thing.
This is precisely what I'm doing right now.
I want to get into one of the FAANG/Unicorns (financially motivated). I do LC everyday, been doing this for a year for now, still not at FAANG/Unicorns. I'm getting sick of doing just LC but hey, I need the money (have some people I need to support), so here I am slaving over LC lol.
I want to get into one of the FAANG/Unicorns (financially motivated). I do LC everyday, been doing this for a year for now, still not at FAANG/Unicorns. I'm getting sick of doing just LC but hey, I need the money (have some people I need to support), so here I am slaving over LC lol.
Take what you want to learn and break it apart into core components. Break those up. Break those up. Get to a granularity where it doesn't make sense to reduce concepts further. Prioritize these bite-sized items. You don't have a single thing you want to learn, you have a list of things you want to learn. This refinement process shouldn't take more than a few days, and each individual item shouldn't take more than a few days. As you begin crossing things off your list, the "few days" will turn into a week. Then a couple weeks. Then a month. Soon, you'll be seamlessly transitioning from one concept to another without realizing, as it will come naturally since the list was already ordered in an intuitive manner (and you're far more motivated and seasoned at this point). When you're done with that list, start a new one. Follow the same process, but it will ramp up far more quickly. Repeat until you no longer need the process (but if you enjoy the process there's nothing wrong with it)!
Great advice, especially in times where (seemingly?) many people are satisfied with pre-made answers from the internet they just copy and paste without understanding.
I just remind myself that this world has 7.5 billion people on it, and as a programmer I have a better income than the VAST majority of them.
So, there are billions of people who would love to out-compete me and take my job. I need to make sure I'm always ahead of the curve so that the legions of CS grads being pumped out of universities don't replace me.
So, there are billions of people who would love to out-compete me and take my job. I need to make sure I'm always ahead of the curve so that the legions of CS grads being pumped out of universities don't replace me.
> I just remind myself that this world has 7.5 billion people on it, and as a programmer I have a better income than the VAST majority of them.
That's just not true.
That's just not true.
I struggled for many years to finish things and stay motivated. The last 2 years I've shipped several services and side projects. My high level suggestions are 1) work on what interests you (duh) 2) work on solving actual problems you personally have. 3) get a job that lets you learn at work or doesn't take all your energy so you're still motivated on your own time. Might require a pay cut. 4) be patient with yourself through burnout. My worst burnout took a couple years to get through.
I also struggle with staying motivated. For me paying for classes (by enrolling in a master's program) was the best way to continue learning after undergrad. Any time I'm enrolled in a class there'll be nights when I'm reading/working on coursework thinking "man, I really don't feel like doing this." That's actually proof that the class is working, because there's no way I would be doing that much work if it wasn't for the class.
I love learning new things, but I have to take a special approach to doing deep-dive learning recreationally.
First, I keep it recreational -- this means I don't go through an intensive learning process unless I'm enjoying doing so. The minute that it becomes unenjoyable, the intense study comes to an end.
I tend to learn things all the way through by incorporating that learning into a hobby project of some sort. I learn best by doing, so this is very effective for me both in terms of maximizing understanding and in terms of keeping the interest up.
First, I keep it recreational -- this means I don't go through an intensive learning process unless I'm enjoying doing so. The minute that it becomes unenjoyable, the intense study comes to an end.
I tend to learn things all the way through by incorporating that learning into a hobby project of some sort. I learn best by doing, so this is very effective for me both in terms of maximizing understanding and in terms of keeping the interest up.
Be fascinated with it. The normal advice is "do what you love", but quite often you can hate a lot of things. You can still be fascinated with something you hate.
You can look up Pirsig's Brick - if a city is boring, look for a specific building, and write about the building, starting with the top left brick. Reality has a surprising amount of detail: http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...
Most of those little details are quite interesting. The big picture may be interesting too. It's the stuff in between that's boring. Try to narrow down your scope until you find an interesting thing to start with.
But besides boredom, it could be fear. We have a fight, flight, freeze response. The physiological response is exactly the same; it's the mental response that changes according to the situation. What this means is that we can just mentally swap out the flight response with fight.
If you find yourself procrastinating, fight for your goals! Make that goal important, to yourself, your society, your values. Stand your ground and move forward.
You can look up Pirsig's Brick - if a city is boring, look for a specific building, and write about the building, starting with the top left brick. Reality has a surprising amount of detail: http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...
Most of those little details are quite interesting. The big picture may be interesting too. It's the stuff in between that's boring. Try to narrow down your scope until you find an interesting thing to start with.
But besides boredom, it could be fear. We have a fight, flight, freeze response. The physiological response is exactly the same; it's the mental response that changes according to the situation. What this means is that we can just mentally swap out the flight response with fight.
If you find yourself procrastinating, fight for your goals! Make that goal important, to yourself, your society, your values. Stand your ground and move forward.
Do you have something you can point to that you didn't drop so quickly? Meditate on that and think about what circumstances were different compared to now when you try to learn something new. And if you do have such a thing, and you can make money from it, hey it's ok to slow down and not feel bad about not "learning something new every day" or whatever life hackers champion. Compound interest on things you learned long ago can afford quite a bit of laurel-resting, depending on how intense that initial learning was.
That said, a reliable way to force learning is to be paid/required to learn as a means to complete a job. When your internal motivation is broken, until you can repair it (very mysterious how/when that happens) the only alternative is being in real sink-or-swim situations.
That said, a reliable way to force learning is to be paid/required to learn as a means to complete a job. When your internal motivation is broken, until you can repair it (very mysterious how/when that happens) the only alternative is being in real sink-or-swim situations.
I think programmers tend get fixated on learning "new stuff(insert new framework here)" or generally stressing when not learning some new big thing. One should be learning everyday, trying to improve skills in the language they are working with. Becoming an expert in a language is not easy. Plus, you also learn business, interviewing skills, life skills and so on.
If one feels their job no longer forces them to learn, they should seek a different position within a company or switch companies maybe in a different type of business. However, one could stay at the same job for a long time, and then maintain legacy systems, which can also be quite lucrative.
If one feels their job no longer forces them to learn, they should seek a different position within a company or switch companies maybe in a different type of business. However, one could stay at the same job for a long time, and then maintain legacy systems, which can also be quite lucrative.
What motivates you is unique to you.
Find the reason to care.
Sometimes, curiosity itself is motivating enough.
For me, it comes and goes and I find it difficult to get out of the "dips". I hate them. As I grow older, I don't want to be too comfortable in my ways and scornfully ignorant of new things and ideas.
Recently, I started a blog with the goal to eventually get to one post per day. Imposing this discipline upon myself, I then have to learn stuff to write about it.
And, as I write about it and find out how trite and basic my understanding is, it shames me into learning more.
That is only my path, however, and finding yours is on you.
Good luck!
Find the reason to care.
Sometimes, curiosity itself is motivating enough.
For me, it comes and goes and I find it difficult to get out of the "dips". I hate them. As I grow older, I don't want to be too comfortable in my ways and scornfully ignorant of new things and ideas.
Recently, I started a blog with the goal to eventually get to one post per day. Imposing this discipline upon myself, I then have to learn stuff to write about it.
And, as I write about it and find out how trite and basic my understanding is, it shames me into learning more.
That is only my path, however, and finding yours is on you.
Good luck!
Keep it practical. Find the minimum amount needed to be able to use it in practice and then just start using what you learned and improve your knowledge as you move along. From my experience, this has always worked tremendously. To the point that I can't learn any other way.
I practically have to learn new things or improve old skills on a daily basis. This has helped me with both speed and motivation.
I practically have to learn new things or improve old skills on a daily basis. This has helped me with both speed and motivation.
Setting a clear goal. Learning should bring you closer to that goal. It could be too big of a goal maybe 10 years ahead. So break it in actionable sub goals.
Learning, growing, training should be a side effect not the goal itself.
If things don’t bring you closer to that goal or distract you. Skip it. Ignore it. Every single day do something that brings you closer. Don’t skip a day. Don’t become lazy. Just do it.
Learning, growing, training should be a side effect not the goal itself.
If things don’t bring you closer to that goal or distract you. Skip it. Ignore it. Every single day do something that brings you closer. Don’t skip a day. Don’t become lazy. Just do it.
I'd say that problem is located in the intensive learning after which you probably experience a small burnout.
Slow down your learning pace. Try to learn a bit every week on the topic that interests you. Write down notes and see a progress, which should keep you going.
I motivate myself but doing a bit everyday, while I don't do that much daily, monthly it adds up. :)
Hopefully it helps, good luck.
Slow down your learning pace. Try to learn a bit every week on the topic that interests you. Write down notes and see a progress, which should keep you going.
I motivate myself but doing a bit everyday, while I don't do that much daily, monthly it adds up. :)
Hopefully it helps, good luck.
Motivation is like excitement or eagerness, when you have it it's amazing, but when you don't it's hard to do anything.
So stop relying on something so unreliable. Depend on your self discipline.
Write down what you need to accomplish and make yourself do it, every day, even if it's for 5-10 minutes. Eventually it will become second nature.
So stop relying on something so unreliable. Depend on your self discipline.
Write down what you need to accomplish and make yourself do it, every day, even if it's for 5-10 minutes. Eventually it will become second nature.
Perhaps you're trying to force yourself to learn things that you're just not that interested in, and/or that don't have an obvious long-term payoff.
What could you be learning that looks interesting and that you have a strong belief will be useful over the next 25 years?
What could you be learning that looks interesting and that you have a strong belief will be useful over the next 25 years?
Discipline always beats motivation. Always. Ask any bodybuilder or pro athlete. Build a practice and stick to it. I don't care what you're doing, your motivation will wain.
Succeed (big or small) every day.
I follow my curiosity. That usually keeps me interested and moving forward.
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