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.
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
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.
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.
There'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.
One “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.
I retired a few years ago and now do a slew of things (photography, robotics, 3D printing, etc.) entirely for myself. I'll start a project, have a blast learning/building, then simply move on to the next thing.
Learning for the sake of learning is one of my favorite things in life.
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
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Children are not god for peace of mind and a life of liberty. I do not recommend anyone to have children, becaues of how negatively it affects your life, cost of living etc. It is basically just tying yourself down to the wheel of consumption, and in order to jutsify everything, all the struggle, push your hopes and aspirations to the next generation, and then letting them deal with it.
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.
This comment actually triggered something in me and I wanted to write a dismissive and condescending response but in the spirit of HN I’d like to try a different approach.
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?
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
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
> 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.
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
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Right.
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.
Learning for the sake of learning is one of my favorite things in life.
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
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.
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'd say most of the learning is done by actually doing.
> 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.
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.
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?