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The nature of this comment tells me 2 things: 1) You have keen analytical and writing skills, intelligence is not a lack for what you want to achieve. 2) You
by brandall10 14y ago
The nature of this comment tells me 2 things:
1) You have keen analytical and writing skills, intelligence is not a lack for what you want to achieve.
2) You suffer from victim mentality being too concerned about the abilities of others while easily dismissive of your own. No matter how much/hard you work, without being able to chuck this aside, every failure will be magnified and your successes will be mitigated to an irrational degree.
The fact of the matter is the road to mastery is paved with tons of mistakes, tons of situations where you will feel like an absolute moron. You have to learn to reframe those moments and treasure them, because they are signals that you are encountering moments of true growth. Learn to compete against your own competence and not others. You don't know what they've been through to get where they are.
Whenever something seems unreasonably tough, break it down into simpler problems to digest. Hack the art of learning itself. Don't look at the same problem until you're blue in the face, change it up so that there is a measurable degree of progress.
Your blockage is more emotional than intellectual.
- unoti 14y agoThis is such very sage advice. I salute you. > The fact of the matter is the road to mastery is paved > with tons of mistakes, tons of situations where you will > feel like an absolute moron. This is so true. Feeling like you're stupid is just part of the process. Try to ignore the temptation to worry about how it appears to be so easy for everyone else. You may have to work twice as hard as the next person, but do it. They say it's darkest before the dawn, and that totally applies to learning for me. When I learned Windows SDK programming back with Windows 3.0, I really felt like I was not smart enough for this. When I learned functional programming in Erlang, I really was quite confident that this was too much for me to be able to cope with. I've felt stupid so many times trying to learn things that I finally identified it as a pattern, a sign that I'm about to break through as long as I don't give up.
- darkarmani 14y ago> This is so true. Feeling like you're stupid is just part of the process. Feeling like you are stupid is an attitude. I find it is one of the biggest barriers to learning. If you feel stupid, you are less likely to try "stupid" things that teach you a lot. Also, feeling stupid leads to anger, and anger prevents learning. Aaron Hillegass said this best in the beginning of Cocoa Programing for Mac OS X, and I'll never forget it. You can preview it on Amazon under "How to learn."
- unoti 14y agoReally good advice there. The summary is: 1.) get 10 hours of sleep a night when working on new concepts; this is the key to being able to focus. 2.) Instead of thinking you're stupid, be at peace and accept the fact that the subject matter is hard. Looks like a great book.
- sown 14y agoIf I never quit and I never win, what do you want from me?
- unoti 14y agoIf you honestly never win, then you have an excellent opportunity to develop amazing emotional strength. Here's what I would want from you, if we were friends and you asked me for advice: 1. Don't give up. 2. Never complain. Take the 30 day no complaining challenge[1]. Not complaining is about focusing your mind on positive things, because complaining and thinking about negative things is self-reinforcing and makes you more sad. The only way to go for 30 days straight without complaining is to re-form how you think, and it worked wonders for me. 3. Read Letters from a Stoic. [1] http://www.acomplaintfreeworld.org/ http://www.acomplaintfreeworld.org/
- brandall10 14y agoWinning? How do you define that? If it's one big goal - "I want to be an X" - well guess what, you're going to have to have a thousand smaller victories to get there. And by the time you do get there you're most certainly going to have bigger goals beyond that on the horizon. Otherwise life will get very boring. It's the messy room syndrome, for you only have two hands you can't will the whole thing into becoming clean at once. You have to pick some part of it that you can handle and make it clean, then move onto another part. As you make your way through interesting patterns will emerge that will allow you to clean smarter, so the first act of cleaning will go much slower than the last act. You still only have 2 hands, but you have something else - wisdom.
- circlefavshape 14y agoHacker News, what have you done to this guy? sown - quit. Not everything is possible. Stop beating your head against a wall and try and enjoy your damn life