6 ms·

All this blog post highlights is that you should have a strong and clear learning goal, because if you’re learning Mandarin because it might seem useful on vaca

• khuey 7y ago
  "My hobby is X and I want to be better at it" seems like a pretty strong and clear goal to me.
  • jm__87 7y ago
    Not really, though. I build software for a living. If I told my boss "we should make X better" they would probably want to know in what way will X be better, how much better do I want it to be, what will we gain from these improvements and approximately how long will it take me to make the improvements. That is, there should be a clear goal in mind that fits in to the bigger picture with a rough estimate of cost associated to determine if this task is worth undertaking. For my hobby, I don't do any of this analysis. I attend a class every week and outside of class, I practice daily. I don't ask myself if it is time and money well spent, I don't have an end goal in mind (aside from the vague goal of "learning another language") or any idea how this fits in to some bigger picture. I just do it because I enjoy it. If I did all the same sort of analysis that I do at work in the context of my broader life goals, my bet is that I probably would come to the conclusion that learning this language is a waste of my time. But, what is the point of living if you spend 100% of your time achieving goals and none of your time enjoying your life. Thus, I spend time on hobbies outside of work.
    • jodrellblank 7y ago
      If you went down that route, wouldn’t you include “enjoyment” as a goal, as a way your life would be “better”, and so that would get taken into account in your analysis?
      • jm__87 7y ago
        Usually most people set goals that require some level of effort and/or self discipline over a longer period of time. I suppose you don't have to do this, but this is usually the standard reason for setting goals - so you can accomplish something you otherwise wouldn't if you didn't give it some special attention. Most people do things they enjoy by default - you only need to make some time for it, you don't really need to set a goal to do it.
        • spaced-out 7y ago
          >Usually most people set goals that require some level of effort and/or self discipline over a longer period of time. You mean like attending a class every week and practicing daily?
          • jm__87 7y ago
            Yeah, so this is kind of my point, actually. I like my hobbies, so they don't really require much effort and self discipline to engage in daily. If I don't have time to study one day, I don't beat myself up over it. It is just sort of my default thing to do when I have free time. As another example, I also read fiction. I don't set goals like "I want to read X number of chapters this week" or "I want to read for X hours this week", nor do I track how much time I spend on it. It is purely for enjoyment, it doesn't matter.
    • Chyzwar 7y ago
      In general learning foreign languages is useful for getting better in programming. It is possible that as a programmer you would get naturally attracted to such hobby.
  • ordu 7y ago
    It reminds me a discussion with a group of students claiming that Max Weber was right saying that maximizing profits could explain human behaviour. I kept inventing more and more examples of behaviour that couldn't be explained by a pursuit of profit, and students replied on each with widening of their definition of a profit. Finally we came to a such definition that allowed any behaviour and explained nothing. I suspect that the same could be done with your idea of a strong and clear goal.
• mettamage 7y ago
  > What if you just wanted to learn a language because you find learning a new language enjoyable? Yep, awesome but according to the post they shouldn’t. They should learn math because it is more useful. That is my issue with the post. Math is not more useful necessarily, because it depends on how you perceive life. One’s perspective on life tells how useful things are.