I have this trouble with mathematical topics in isolation. It bit me in school as I was very good in most of my classes, but when I had to learn (for example) t

I have this trouble with mathematical topics in isolation. It bit me in school as I was very good in most of my classes, but when I had to learn (for example) trig identities, and various rules in calculus in order to slog through problem sets, free of visualizations or some kind of real-world problem, my eyes would tend to glaze over. It has hit me in Haskell because I have tried very hard to understand some of the mathematical formalisms associated with monads, etc. but learning those in the abstract, from a page, without actually writing code to solve a specific problem, was very difficult for me. It's frustrating because I'd _like_ to be the kind of guy who can and does work through a pure math textbook on category theory or linear algebra or whatever, just for fun. But apparently I'm not. I learn best by actively beating my head against a real programming problem. If this is a programming thing you're trying to learn, my suggestion is to keep it tied to a real program. If it is really severe, consider being evaluated for adult ADD. I probably have this in mild form and also what might be considered the opposite, obsessive compulsive personality disorder, which results in me veering between wanting to understand _everything_ and working obsessively on _one_ thing trying to get it textbook-perfect and understand it completely. This combination often intersects well with the requirements for my work but sometimes... not so much, as I either insist on solving a problem better that is already working well enough, or considering a whole range of possible approaches when I really just need to complete one, and quickly.