
Ask HN: What is the hardest part of self-learning? - gavribirnbaum
I had to face many challenges as a self-learner. Finding the right things to learn, motivation, etc. What is for you the biggest challenge of being self-taught?
======
emilwallner
Solitude. Then, I'd say acceptance from friends/family, followed by a good
routine.

I've tried learning alone, but after 6 - 12 months it becomes really
difficult. Being around a self-learning community daily makes a world of
difference, I'm about to start my fourth year and I'm loving it.

Being part of a program also reduces societal pressure. Any program really,
just to be able to give a simple answer when people ask you what you are
doing. Otherwise, it's easy to be met with doubt and cynical questions.

Lastly routine, I see self-learning as a day job. You want to clock N hours
per day and don't spend any time procrastinating. I've been building habits
for 5-10 years, and I'm reaching a point where I can be productive, but it
takes time and patience.

~~~
bentona
Would you mind elaborating on “self-learning community”?

~~~
emilwallner
The ones I've found most effective are schools for autodidacts (40-50 around
the world), most of them are part of the 42 school network (I'm at the one in
Paris), but there's also Holberton School and Epitech. Then, I'd say
hackerspaces or playful/collaborative co-working spaces.

------
nmfisher
Knowing when you've actually, deeply learned something.

I've lost count of the number of times I've read a chapter in a book, felt I
understood the material very well, but utterly and completely failed to
reproduce anything when you take the book away and replace it with a blank
piece of paper (or IDE).

Usually you can tell that you've failed to internalize everything when you try
to teach it to someone else. You become aware pretty quickly where the gaps
are. If you're on your own, though, it requires a lot more discipline.

~~~
emilwallner
On average, most forget about 50% of what they've read after 1 hour, and only
remember 2% after a week.

It sounds like your problem has more to do with retrieval. You _learn_
something when you retrieve something from your working memory or long-term
memory (you build myelin, a fatty substance that isolates your synapses, which
enables you to later retrieve the information).

The optimal way to learn is to use spaced repetition. It naturally happens if
you apply the knowledge frequently, or you can use a flashcard app to track
it.

If you struggle to _understand_ something, it often has to do with
overwhelming your working memory. You are connecting several concepts that you
don't understand. On average, most can keep seven items in their working
memory, but after that, you'll start feeling lost.

When you internalize a few concepts by retrieving them, followed by a long
break or sleep, you free your working memory to connect more concepts.

~~~
username90
You don't internalize concepts by retrieving them from memory, you internalize
concepts by reconstructing them without aids like flash cards. Otherwise you
just connect the words and not the concepts.

~~~
jpking
Spaced repetition in form of testing yourself. Anki and other software help
with this.

~~~
username90
The best way to learn concepts is to first forget them and then reconstruct
the facts based on previous knowledge. Spaced repetition actively hinders this
process by trying to ensure that you don't forget. It is great for shallow
knowledge like language, but if you are doing it for maths or programming you
are just hurting yourself. That type of training is how you get people who can
talk like a champ but can't even solve fizzbuzz.

~~~
pixelperfect
It depends. Spaced repetition can be used to mindlessly memorize formulas,
which I agree is not useful. Or it can be used in the way described in this
article ([http://cognitivemedium.com/srs-
mathematics](http://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics)), which can lead to a
deeper understanding.

------
fishingisfun
i think there is too much information out there as far as im concerned. I dont
even know where to begin sometimes because the advice pulls in every
direction. There was an article about prisoners learning coding and some
commenter said that they had come up with their own solutions to popular
libraries just because those libraries were out of reach at the time of
learning. The experience allowed them to learn intricate details and rely more
on intuition rather than online advice exchanges. anyhow, i think i know my
problem and what i need to do but im still stuck in that loop where im always
looking for the BEST resource to learn something new.

~~~
jpking
This used to be me. Now I don’t care, I follow the text set by the lecturer.
Look up a uni you respect and see if they have a course on the topic you are
interested in, then find their recommended reading.

In addition, if you don’t like the text don’t be afraid to change. But if it’s
working don’t worry about something better. Just get the content done, you
will be in a better position to appreciate if something else is better then.

------
Waterluvian
The constant fear that I missed a force multiplier early on.

It's like a stalking mission in LA Noire where I spent hours on a mission
having not realised there was a car for me to use at the very start.

More practically: thank God someone was there to introduce me to an IDE and
code discovery autocomplete when I was just learning programming for the first
time.

------
zengid
Finding good sources. I constantly have to do my best to figure out if a
source is credible when learning something in an unfamiliar field. Has this
statement been disproven? Is this an opinion or a fact? Will following this
idea bear fruit?

~~~
chias
Relatedly: knowing what it is that you don't know.

If you're self-learning, you need to pick what you're going to learn from.
Which means, ultimately, you need to pick what you will learn. If you don't
know what it is (or what it's called), that can be very difficult.

Anecdote: I have zero background in graphics, but found myself needing to do
some image processing. I spent about a couple days learning what I could about
the problem space and deriving then writing an algorithm. It worked pretty
well and I felt very clever about myself. A few days later I ended up googling
part of the algorithm I wrote to try to better understand some edge cases. I
ended up on Wikipedia staring at the algorithm I had written, only better, and
simpler, and faster, and followed by a few paragraphs entitled "how to derive
this algorithm from first principles". It was amazing, but I felt decidedly
less clever about myself.

People say that in the age of the Internet, being taught this stuff isn't
terribly important because you can just look things up. A caveat is you need
to know what something is called to look it up. I've come to the opinion that
a big portion of the value of higher education comes from being familiarized
with solved problems and their names by someone who (hopefully) knows what
you'll most likely want to use at some point.

~~~
jpking
Excellent points. For more established fields this is where textbooks are
really useful. Plus, university course syllabi/recommended reading can be a
nice way to find useful content in the field.

For less established fields I’d be looking for review articles.

------
rwnspace
\- too many poorly-formed opinions providing hard and fast rules about what
other people should do without any consideration of the spectrum of situations
and abilities

\- knowing what there is to learn within any topic and what order you should
tackle things

\- whether advice about what to learn in some topic, how, and in what order is
any good or not

\- when to quit or stick when a certain approach doesn't seem to work

\- how to test your learning, and how to assess your efficiency

\- how to sustain motivation while playing the 'teacher' (i.e. co-ordinator)
role when you'd rather learn, and the 'learner' role when you'd rather teach.

\- how not to make certain important things be associated with pain and
boredom, when approaching them in a free, open, playful mode would make them
stick much better

\- how to avoid or undo damaging perfectionism about resources and approach
and personal standards for outcome and ability

\---

Self-learning is extremely difficult and I don't advise it to anyone, although
I wouldn't discourage trying it either.

The traditional didactic models you already know are the best. The problem is
getting the right people to teach the right subjects, and ensuring free and
open access for all people of all ages.

Ultimately effective self-teaching tends to mean you implement the classical
methods but in non-traditional formats.

I find it's usually only those with top percentile proclivity or motivation
for a given subject can sit down with a textbook and notebook/repl and absorb
information as effectively as the rest of us would with a good teacher and
engaged classmates.

If you're like me and you're unable to go to Uni but want to self-teach
programming/CS, learn the minimum required to get into a related
apprenticeship-style position and throw yourself into it.

------
nikivi
As few others have said, for me it is structuring my learning to get to the
end goal. Say I want to build a website or any other idea, I need to
destructure things I need to learn in order to build this idea.

Currently I use Trello for this:
[https://trello.com/b/cu32qF3q](https://trello.com/b/cu32qF3q)

In future I want to build a website ala Goodreads/Google/Roadmap that lets you
craft optimized learning paths for creating any idea. Sad this doesn't exist
yet.

[https://docs.learn-anything.org/roadmap](https://docs.learn-
anything.org/roadmap)

[https://roadmap.sh](https://roadmap.sh)

~~~
gavribirnbaum
I don't mean to sell you anything, but we are actually building exactly a
website to let you organize and set goals on learning paths. If you want you
can check it out at [https://barbra.io](https://barbra.io)

~~~
dns_snek
Clicking on "Get early access" doesn't do anything in Firefox 72.0.2 on
Windows 10. The following is printed to the console instead: "TypeError:
window.VL is undefined"

I also tried signing up in Chrome (v79) and while the pop-up opens, the signup
request fails with with "Access to XMLHttpRequest at '[https://app.viral-
loops.com/api/v2/events'](https://app.viral-loops.com/api/v2/events') from
origin '[https://barbra.io'](https://barbra.io') has been blocked by CORS
policy: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested
resource."

Hope you can get those issues sorted out, I'd really like to give it a try :)

~~~
gavribirnbaum
Hi, thanks for letting me know. I wonder why that is. Can you shoot me an
email to gabriel@barbra.io? I'll make sure to move you up the line :) sorry
for the trouble. Would love to have your feedback.

~~~
dns_snek
Unfortunately I don't really have anything constructive to add at this point
because the signup isn't working on any browser or device I've tried so far
(all combinations of FF/Chrome on Linux/Windows/Android)

------
muzani
80% of the things that can be learned by a mentor is invisible to the mentor.
It doesn't show up in books, videos, tutorials, etc. It's in subtle unspoken
habits.

A lot of my mentors are sloppy. They don't look for the best tools. When I ask
them for the best site to train programming skills, they point me to Project
Euler, not a more fancy new thing. Some will measure progress by lines of
code. Some, when stressed out, move faster or choose to pass out on the
keyboard, as opposed to relaxing. Many seem dismissive of planning and insist
that you have to get lucky.

80% of people are in the bottom 80%. Communities like HN are likely well in
the top 20%, in terms of success, and have to look at the top 10% to improve.

What this means is that advice you get from 80% of people will be bad. There
might be some viral article on Forbes about how you need to wake up at 4 AM or
have a solid breakfast to be successful. When most people you meet give you
consistent advice, it seems like it's true.

But you have to pay attention to who's doing this. If none of the people in
top 20% are following popular logic, it could well be misguided. e.g. maybe
lines of code are an important metric after all.

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
Sticking with it. A lot of this other stuff is about doing it at all, which
isn't toooo easy, but however you do it, self learning is way harder than
organized learning if you want to do more than like a week of it. If you want
to reeeeally learn something for like 100+ hurs worth of learning, it's damned
harder than spending 5-20 hours of "ooh exciting!" diving in.

------
gshdg
Structure: figuring out which of dozens to thousands of resources to consume,
and in what order. Consistently devoting time to it.

~~~
obviyus
Definitely agree. Finding a good starting point is equally difficult.

------
WizardofLeads
Having the right resources available in a structured manner, and as a novice
knowing which source or information is reliable.

There have been countless times where I've come to resent my initial source
after a few months of digging deeper on the subject just because they've
positioned themselves as an authority without the ability to properly teach.

------
hellofunk
No one to easily ask questions about the materials you are reading.

------
chongli
Motivation for sure. It’s easy to self-learn on topics that really interest
you. The hard part is to learn those topics that don’t interest you (and may
be very tedious and/or frustrating) but are crucial as a foundation for the
topics that do.

~~~
jpking
I found by going back to uni I have been forced to learn a lot of things which
I wouldn’t have taken the time to look at before. And they are actually really
interesting and useful!

------
Shalle135
I didn’t see many challenges, except for a steep learning curve. Got hired as
a junior, while having less knowledge in various subjects than uni graduates,
I faster learnt and became productive in the tasks that we manage. Some even
failed to meet the requirements since they focused too much on the theory and
never got to the stage to actually apply it.

It may have been to my advantage that my senior peers quit & went on parental
leave for months leaving me alone within the environments that I’m responsible
for after only 8 months. Making it even steeper but also forcing me to apply
the changes that I saw correct

------
bbody
For me it is getting distracted with other cool things I would like to learn.

------
duxup
Not being able to ask abstract conceptual questions of a book or website or
etc.

Personally I'm a more visual learner and often while a book is busy with text
syntax or misc details I will think I'm putting together a better
understanding of what is happening / how things work....but the book goes on
with details and I lose focus / get frustrated.

I so badly want to ask "Wait if a does b does that mean x is acting like this
or that!?!?"

------
avionicsguy
For me, it is knowing (or more accurately recognizing) when I'm going down the
wrong path. Sometimes this is, of course, part of learning and sometimes it is
a waste of time.

One thing great about the Internet and places like S.O. or H.N. or search
engines, as well as other subject specific sites is it is much easier to find
subject matter experts when you get stuck.

------
nscalf
For me, it’s not knowing how far off the beginning is from an actionable
amount of knowledge. Robotics is interesting, drones seem cool, neurology is
fascinating, I’d love to get into biotech, etc. but do I have 3 years of self
study before I can do or understand any of the interesting parts? Not really.

------
j45
Depending on the material, understanding root concepts and knowledge must come
before using it is needed more than just starting to play around and hoping it
comes to you.

Self directed learning requires enough patience to recognize the best approach
to learning it for you.

------
seek3r00
I did take a gap year to improve myself and my technical skills.

I rewrote my study plan at least 10 times.

Other than the self-discipline needed to sit down and study, it is hard to
ignore the noise of contrasting opinions from Reddit, Hacker News and the rest
of the Internet.

------
lurker2
For me, actually practicing what I read is more difficult than understanding
the content.

~~~
jpking
I find practicing is key to truly understanding the content. When I find the
practicing difficult, it means I don’t fully appreciate what I read. The
process of practice and reading other sources to try and wrap my head around a
concept is where I really learn.

------
mesaframe
Lack of mentorship.

I'm still a self learner and going forward without proper guidance doesn't
really help.

Things go much faster whenever there is someone there to help if not much but
just to show a way.

------
konstevich
Cost of new books. I usually need to see a tiny passage in a new book (I
constantly monitor the internet for new releases) and am not willing to buy a
book just for that.

~~~
psv1
Which field are you looking at? On the topics that I've been interested in -
programming, math, statistics, ML - there many really good books that are
completely free.

------
ladyprestor
Not having someone to ask questions related to what you're learning.

------
Scarbutt
Recalling, make sure to do lots of practice for the theory.

------
pantabell
Observing oneself without distortion

------
e12e
Unknown unknowns.

~~~
gavribirnbaum
What do you mean?

~~~
djaychela
I think it means not knowing what you don't know - i.e. Not just being unaware
of a particular bit of knowledge, but actually that that area even exists at
all. I've had a few moments when this kind of thing had become apparent, and
then there's a whole new area that you never knew existed to be aware of.

~~~
e12e
Right. This is where a teacher or mentor can really speed things along by
being able to hear you want to achieve X, and suggest you study the fields of
Y and Z.

Ed: and beyond simply pointing out areas the student isn't aware of, also
suggesting connections between fields - like linguistics and computer science,
for example.

------
julien421
Self discipline

