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
HexPhantom 3 hours ago [-]
Wanna say that this is a much better argument for learning than productivity or "becoming a more interesting person". Sometimes it is simply a way to keep the mind pointed outward
n4bz0r 30 minutes ago [-]
> Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never <...> be tortured by
Right.
globalnode 1 hours ago [-]
that is beautiful, its something i believe as well but never seen it written so eloquenty. when everythings gone to hell and your backed into a corner, learning something interesting is always there for you.
ChrisMarshallNY 54 minutes ago [-]
As 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.
One 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
Fraterkes 24 minutes ago [-]
I’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.
yetkin 1 hours ago [-]
I 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
raincole 1 hours ago [-]
"Sometimes I feel like I'm an athlete who trained all day for years, then before my first professional match, I retired and went off to teach PE."
CalRobert 4 hours 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.
asp_hornet 40 minutes ago [-]
Don’t be fooled, the first few years you get spoiled with “the first moments” of things. Then suddenly the “last moments” start creeping in, “the last nappy”, “the last car seat”, at first they seem like a god send but then they accumulate like an avalanche.
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.
hahahaa 3 hours 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.
HexPhantom 3 hours ago [-]
That's probably the sweet spot
HexPhantom 3 hours ago [-]
There's something useful about time that is already spoken for. You're on the train, you can't do much else, so learning some Dutch feels easy. At home the same half hour somehow gets fragmented into six different things
ElProlactin 3 hours 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.
HexPhantom 3 hours ago [-]
I think there's a middle group too: people who like having learned something, but don't really enjoy those first few sessions. For them, just knowing that the initial frustration is normal can help a lot
Ugvx 1 hours ago [-]
I 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.
bartvk 53 minutes ago [-]
I had the same with my motorcycle. Every time I brought it to the dealer, they came up enthusiastically with things to spend money on. Your tires are done! Your break pads are gone! With the help of a friend, I got into doing (very) basic maintenance myself. I just replaced the tires. I fixed a problem with the electrical system. And next will be the chain and sprocket.
zerobees 4 hours ago [-]
I'll get my agent on it right away.
tylerdane 7 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 5 hours 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.
3 hours ago [-]
bluefirebrand 4 hours 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.
human305893 2 hours ago [-]
why not both. limit yourself to 1 tutorial/book (i prefer books). then build something. For any creative hobby i think the biggest issue is not having something you want to build.
armchairhacker 1 hours ago [-]
> For any creative hobby i think the biggest issue is not having something you want to build.
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.
atoav 1 hours ago [-]
What does wonders for me is to go out into nature, a beach, a lake or a park, or even a longer train ride, with nothing but a pen and notebook, while keeping the phone in my bag. When I return usually I have a few pages of ideas.
Sometimes distraction is the main issue when it comes to having ideas.
atoav 1 hours ago [-]
Tutorials are fine, especially if you know nothing doing the motion is often better than fooling around. Just like with languages there are passive skilla (your capability to understand a certain thing) and active skills (you capability to use a thing practically when the situation demands it). It is natural to understand more than you can apply.
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.
bebe9494i4 4 hours 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 3 hours ago [-]
>especially with modern AI agents
Do you people have to mention AI in every single subject.
bebe9494i4 2 hours ago [-]
Yes? It is a tool I use (like computers)
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.
stavros 2 hours ago [-]
I agree with you, AI agents are fantastic for learning.
slekker 4 hours ago [-]
Why the alt account?
dominex 6 hours ago [-]
Do you have any interest in trying a new language? If you have, there is a language.
hallucinate 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
casey2 4 hours 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.
kruffalon 2 hours ago [-]
Maybe other people, besides you; obviously, like doing, knowing or learning things without the need to be the most efficient at it.
Like, in a just having a life kind of way.
But what do I know?
Rendered at 10:09:07 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
- T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Right.
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.
[0] https://vimeo.com/85040589
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Like, in a just having a life kind of way.
But what do I know?