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Ask HN: How do you focus on study without drilling deep into each topic?
Hi friends, I have been picking up a Udemy RedHat system admin course recently. But I found my curiosity the bane of myself as I couldn't help drilling deep into each topic.
This is probably related to my interest to system programming and my recent (less recent) experience programming a shell and some command line tools such as cp, cd, ls and others. So whenever the Udemy course goes through some Linux stuffs I had the impulse to dig into some old Linux code and figure out how that was implemented in the first few versions.
(I decided to pause this interest for more career-related stuffs (RHSA exam is one of them). Once I launch myself on a sustainable career path, such as a DevOps/Sys Admin/whatever I would come back and drill deeper into system programming. I don't expect work to be fun and I just need to pass a couple of exams to give me a small boost.)
With that said, how can I prevent myself from drilling deeper into each topic and just learn whatever is enough for the exam? I don't think this is ADHD as I can focus on things I'm more interested. But now I need to focus on things that are less fun but more important. I think throughout my previous 40 years of life I have been haunted by this inability of focusing on important things.
- KelexBawz 3y ago[dead]
- wadd1e 3y agoFunnily enough your description of your issues makes me think you're more likely to have ADHD than you think. >don't think this is ADHD as I can focus on things I'm more interested. But now I need to focus on things that are less fun but more important. I think throughout my previous 40 years of life I have been haunted by this inability of focusing on important things. Being able to focus on things one finds interesting and losing that focus for important, less interesting things is indeed the problem one faces with ADHD. Although I digress, as someone with ADHD I struggle with a similar problem and I think the best thing you can do is to pursue those little impulses, but tell yourself that you'll pursue them once you've completed your task that you're engaged in at that moment(basically procrastinate following your curiosity). Whenever you get that impulse to get on a side quest, tell yourself "I definitely will get on that side quest as soon as I finish the main one", that way either you may be more motivated to finish your course and you get to dive into things you find interesting too, or sometimes I personally end up losing that impulse if I spend too long without pursuing it, which might work out for you as well.
- Matthew911 3y ago[dead]