
Ask HN: How do you deal with Learning Anxiety? - sidcool
I am not sure if that is an actual term.  What I am referring is the crippling anxiety felt when I pick up anything to learn (or read).  I try to mostly learn Technical stuff, a language, a framework, a project etc..<p>The factors that freak me out include:<p>1.  Is this even worth it?  Am I wasting my time?<p>2.  Others are doing so much!  What am I learning this for?<p>3.  There is so much to learn!  I am never getting around any of it!<p>4.  I should just leave learning and do my job.<p>5.  How do they know so much!<p>etc.<p>This has prevented me from learning anything substantial since almost a year now.  Things weren&#x27;t as great before that as well.  Is there anyone else facing this?  How do you deal with it?  I am sorry if this has been asked earlier.  If so, please point me to those posts.<p>Thanks HN.
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Jugurtha
Can you try something please?

\- Clone the repo of any software you respect.

\- Do a `git log --reverse`

You will see the commits from oldest to newest, and the path authors took to
build that beautiful code you admire so much.

Bonus: it's also a way to learn.

~~~
sidcool
Thanks! This is a good idea.

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samuraiseoul
I find that when I have anxiety about things or people are unsure of things,
it's always important to drill down into the 'why'.

"Why am I doing this thing I'm anxious about?"

If its because I have to for adult reasons or some other goal and there's no
better alternative, then I just suck it up and do it, it's not gonna get any
easier.

If its because of societal expectations I ask myself "Do I care about
conforming to this societal expectation? What will it cost me if I don't?" and
then I go from there. If I truly don't care about it, but it will cause issues
later, like flaking on an event and then friends won't invite me if I do it
too much, then I'll decide that the cost outweighs the amount I don't care.

In the end, it all comes down to identifying the 'why' for me and then doing a
cost-benefit analysis of the tradeoffs of: 'how much do I care?', 'what is the
cost of not doing it in terms of money, stress, or societal expectations?',
and 'is there a different option, if so how do the costs compare?'.

In your case, I feel that you are doing this because you think you need to get
better and all these other people know things you don't, and you don't want to
look stupid. You need to decide if you even care on all that.

I had the desire to learn and get better cause I always felt behind before as
well. I don't know if it quite manifested as learning anxiety, but I had some
things that helped me. I knew that while these people knew more about
Mathematics or more classical computer science things, I had other things they
didn't such as knowledge of foreign languages and cultures, or I wrote better
code from a readability/maintenance standpoint. I'm sure you have some other
piece of knowledge they don't even if its something like world history. It may
not seem useful or applicable but every piece of knowledge can be applied in
some other context some way, even if its just realizing that the problems are
similar so you know to look up how it was solved previously in a different
domain.

So step one is stop comparing to them. Step two is to sit back and decide if
you actually want to be learning these things, and why. Step three is deciding
which things are going to be the most immediately applicable, and if you need
to learn something first to learn it, then do so(learning algebra to learn
calculus). Step four is moving on to the next thing after you have that to a
good enough base knowledge.

You don't have to be an expert in any fields here. Just get to a point where
you can easily learn more. I imagine you can most likely do two new tech
domains at once as long as they aren't too similar, but don't bite off too
much. Just do at least a little bit of study a day. Even some more boring
technical books that are 300 or so pages can be tackled in a month at 10 pages
a day! But don't stick too hard and fast to things like that. It might be
easier to do a 5 page chapter now, and then a 15 page chapter the next day.
Stopping points like that help. Also if you read too much you could affect
retention.

Look into some things about learning techniques such as spaced repetition
stuff like Anki or Supermemo. Things like that pay dividends by making you
spend less time overall and you won't need to learn the same thing twice if
you keep up with it. Gaps in studying can be bad cause you don't progress but
you also regress at the same time, you can see that after semester breaks in
school when you go to the next level of class and everyone forgot half the
previous semester. The worst thing than a gap in studying is a longer gap. A
one or two day gap sometimes is no issue really but a month is, and three
months is worse! Habits make perfect. Some analogical advice from my time as a
recovering alcoholic would be this:

"Stumbling and falling down looks dumb in front of everyone and it's
embarrassing and it sucks. No one is denying that. However, not getting up and
just continuing to lie on the floor looks even dumber, and you'll be in
people's way. Get up and keep on walking and eventually you'll learn how to
not stumble anymore, or if nothing else most of your time at least won't be
spent on the floor."

I know this is a lot of stuff to think about and so I'll make a quick little
TL;DR.

1\. Figure out the 'why' and if its worth doing 2\. Figure out if there's a
better way 3\. Figure out the best way to do it

~~~
sidcool
This is a great help. Thanks.

