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That's actually bad advise. Nothing worth learning will be finished learning before you run out of joy for it. The best example from my experience is learning
by erikb 9y ago
That's actually bad advise. Nothing worth learning will be finished learning before you run out of joy for it.
The best example from my experience is learning songs in a foreign language I'm studying. First you listen to a song you really enjoy and partly understand. Then you sit down and translate it. For most songs this will not just be tedious work, but also take out some of the joy of this song, because if you understand it you realize some of the text is outright stupid. That's normal.
Then you go and learn the song. That's not hollywood romantic stuff, with exciting background music and action heavy cutscenes. That is sitting down and repeating line 1 until you hate it. Then repeat it a few times more. Then do the same with line 2. Then do the same with the combination of lines 1 and 2. Then line 3. Then line 1+2+3. Then line 4. Then line 1+2+3+4, [...] then repeating line 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8 but sadly by doing that you completely forgot line 2 and you always reorder line 5 according to your mother language's grammar instead of the one used in the lyrics.
In the end, you really hate the song. And you sing it quite badly if you just spend time learning the lyrics and no time on the melody and composition of the whole thing. When you can really sing it for other people to enjoy listening, even the slightest bit of magic for it will be gone for you.
And only after you done this multiple times and you start to have a collection of songs, ready to apply to different circumenstances, able to apply the feelings of the moment for a unique interpretation of your own, then you will find joy in it again.
And I can promise you, if you can get to that point it doesn't really matter anymore if in the beginning it was something you enjoyed or not. You made it your own, and that is what is much more enjoyable.
- anon1253 9y agoI'm sorry you had such a bad experience learning things. Really, that's probably the worst way to learn a language. Ideally language is acquired, not learned. It's a passive process governed by exposure, rather than repetition. http://www.utesinternationallounge.com/language-acquisition-versus-language-learning/ http://www.utesinternationallounge.com/language-acquisition-... But even with skills that do require solid spaced-repetition (like factoids, and probably only factoids) if you run out of joy: what even is the point. Maximize misery in life?
- erikb 9y agoPlease stop talking. It really hurts.
- anon1253 9y agoI'm sorry I hurt your feelings. I do feel "Nothing worth learning will be finished learning before you run out of joy for it." is terrible advice and reinforces a believe that's non-congruent with my life experience. But that's my life, and your life is yours. I am trying to let your knee-jerk offensiveness slide, because you obviously feel strongly about the topic; but out of context it almost reads like a threat which I do not appreciate.
- erikb 9y agoIf you watch a dog happily run in front of a car it's empathy that hurts not your emotions.
- anon1253 9y agoAgain with the offensiveness. I'm not sure why you're like this because you have not given any argument to your strong reactions, and are apparently judging me on a myriad of things (even equating me to a dog ffs) without even a shred of explanation. Fyi I live a happy life and am successful at what I do. I'm seriously beginning to doubt that for you; if so I do really hope you'll find happier times. That's what empathy is.
- dang 9y agoPersonal attacks will get you banned on Hacker News. Please do not do this again, regardless of how annoyed you are by another comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- textor 9y agoI agree in principle that learning things can be tedious at times, but... learning, memory retention and reward system are very tightly integrated. It's almost laughably ineffective to learn despite pain, relative to learning with joy. You know there are people who could complete your song-memorizing ordeal in 1/10th of the time, not feeling any major frustration? Because most of the work is happening effortlessly, the song being sung in their heads on autopilot, reconstructing and optimizing? I won't claim that toughing it out isn't worthy or that there always is a better way, however it seems clear that top performers in every field tend not to have to tough it out very much. This is unfair but not smart to ignore.
- erikb 9y agoFor an expert in the language I would agree with your statement. But language is a complex task, like juggling. And you don't start with throwing three balls up. You start with one, and then when you can handle it you add the second, etc. It's way more boring that way, but it greatly reduces the time needed to get to the more complex topics. I would argue that someone around A2 level in a language (where most hobby learners are) will take 10x longer in learning a song, when applying the method proposed by you. And many people won't ever finish learning one song, because before they finish other topics, songs, activities become more interesting.