Ask HN: Cons of loving to learn new things and how to work around it?

[samh748]

Fellow lifelong learners and anyone who loves to learn new things: What would you say are some of the downsides of wanting to learn new things all the time? And how did you work around or improve on those things?

For context I've been realizing how little I have achieved in any particular area because of my inability to stick to a topic of focus and it's kinda getting to me.

[surprisetalk]

I started feeling this exact same way a year or two ago, and made two important rules for myself.

1. All consumption must result in creation.

First, I started making creative routines around all my existing consumption habits. For example, I now synthesize all my readings into book reviews. This practice makes me more intentional about my media habits.

If I'm curious about something, I write an essay about the topic. The essay format helps limit the scope and narrow down exactly what I'm curious about or trying to argue. I end up publishing about 5-15% of my essays.

2. Keep a project-based timeline.

To truly learn something, you must apply your knowledge.

I create 3-4 day "projects" for everything I want to do, and throw them on a public timeline.

This helps me prioritize and stick to "one big thing" at a time. When I make a long-term plan, I'm less likely to get distracted by shiny things and rabbit-holes.

3. Restrict your media intake.

Wikipedia and Youtube offer great content, but rarely give the active learning experience needed to feel accomplished.

If you get off the internet and start making things, you'll feel less tempted by new topics and have more time for creating things that last.

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[1] https://taylor.town/books

[2] https://taylor.town/now

[monroewalker]

As a serial hobbyist and jack of all trades, I can relate. There's always a million things I want to do and little time to ever do them. I often find myself jumping into whatever thing interests me the most in a given moment, usually meaning I spend a lot of time chasing the novelty of a new interest rather than pushing through the next level of an existing one.

In the course "Time Management for Mortals" by Oliver Burkeman, he asks "What AREN'T you going to do with your life?". You're going to die someday and you only have a limited amount of time before that happens. The trick isn't finding out how to fit all the things you want to do into your life, it's realizing that not everything fits and deciding which of the things you want to do aren't going to make the cut.

That question and the associated lesson have helped me focus more on my core set of interests rather than frequently investing time into new or lower priority ones. Maybe that could help you as well. Don't just ask yourself whether you want to learn something, but ask if it's something you want to learn badly enough that you're OK with it taking the place of anything else you could be doing with your time

[h2odragon]

"Not Invented Here" syndrome gets bad. The foreign solution is often better, its already there, etc; but I wanna make my own to see how it works inside. I often do that anyway, in some sketchy prototype form, just to get a better handle on what the popular, polished solution is doing before I use that.

Wasted capital in the form of tooling and parts to do things I did once, and have yet to be called on to do again. I've got a great soldering iron I pull out once every couple of years to do a job that could've been done by a much cheaper tool. Makes for a fun junkpile and I get to be the guy that has that obscure part on hand a lot; but (for example) who needs a 50 to 80 pin SCSI adapter today?

[PaulHoule]

Try grad school.

[cratermoon]

I tried that. I washed out after one year, because I couldn't sustain the laser-focused interest on the single area I was supposed to be studying in grad school. At an entire large state university of tens of thousands of students and classes on every subject, I was only supposed to take ones the advisors deemed "in my field".

There might be universities out there with "a la carte" grad programs, but I'm not aware of any.

[samh748]

I'm the exact same. Tried grad school and dropped out after a year, for a messy mix of reasons.

[mattbgates]

Learning new things and ADHD go so well together. I was working on a project and then ChatGPT came out.. and so I started to learn all about it, then I wanted to code with it and make projects with it, and that's exactly what I did.

The cons are the fact that I still haven't gotten back to the original project I was working on, as working on these things allowed me to get new ideas for other incomplete projects I had, so I can now finish those up, while still trying to get back to the original project.

There are pros, however, and that's basically: working on the ChatGPT projects helped me understand how to finish those other projects or gave me ideas for the direction I wanted them to go, whereas I was stuck before and now I know how to complete them.

I'd tell you the best way to overcome it is to focus on one thing at a time, but most likely, it's just not going to be possible... especially for those of us who have that undiagnosed ADHD, where we see something else, or some new technology that catches our attention and we really don't "want to miss out" on the next big thing.

I've just turned it into productivity. I used to be a gamer... and don't get me wrong: I still am a gamer at heart. I miss it like all hell, but the issue is that it isn't bringing me any money or making me any richer. Its a distraction. So I use my love of building web apps and learning new things as a sort of game. Someday, maybe, I'll be able to return to my fantasy world as a vampire in Skyrim. I even had somehow managed to become a vampire-werewolf hybrid in Oblivion long ago, and it probably started then: I was focused on video games til I realized that it wasn't helping me in my everyday life, and I started focusing on things that I believed were more productive in helping me in my everyday life.

Is building web apps helping me? I do use what I build to make my workday/worklife/everyday life a bit more productive, and I try to share those with the world.. sometimes for free, sometimes with monetization so I can have people support the project so I can keep working on it.

I'm also one who works on a project -- once I finish that project, other than upkeep, I'm usually done with it. I wrote a very massive book several years ago and other than market it for a week or so once a year, my mind has moved on to other things.

So my advice: make sure whatever you're learning is productive.

As PaulHoule wrote below, "try grad school." Good advice but I had a friend who did that... three masters degrees in something like literature, history, and world culture. He was aiming to be a professor and teach... one day he's headed down to the basement in his apartment, which doesn't have a railing, to do his laundry, and he falls down the stairs and fractures his back. After many surgeries and a lawsuit, he has his insane debt forgiven and he now lives in constant pain, and his dreams of being a professor are now gone. The guy loved to learn... but learning at the institution level certainly comes with a price, and he would've been on the hook for the cost of a mortgage. So make sure what you are learning is actually going to pay the bills.