I am starting my learning journey and I often feel overwhelmed by the amount of things to learn. What advice would you give to a complete beginner about choosing what to learn and staying consistent?
You’re trying to learn… everything?
Deadline is in 2 weeks.
What is the context of zero? What are you trying to learn?
Is it math? English? Social skills? Household maintenance? Sports trivia? A bachelor’s degree in a specific field?
It would make it easier to know how to answer if we knew more about you and your reasons for asking this. The advice for a 16-year old American boy heading out into “the real world” for the first time would be different from a 30-year old German woman who escaped a bad marriage where she was confined to the home.
What are your goals? That’ll decide what people would recommend you learn.
I think OP might be an alien
I really liked that show the first season but they would always have tear jerking arcs every episode that left me feeling empty inside
Yeah it was good when it was awkward comedy
" Imagine you are a Martian " -Richard Feynman
You’ll never get anywhere in life or achieve anything by being vague like this.
Be specific. “i want to run fast” is a fairly meaningless statement. Saying “I want to be able to run a 7 minute mile.” is a reasonable goal you can likely achieve, if you can already run one in 8-10 minutes.
If you want to learn something, you have to approach it with a plan/road map, and be realistic of how much effort and time it will take to achieve and persevere when it gets difficult or unrewarding.
And don’t be dissuaded by people’s weird and negative feedback to your own personal goals. I have been studying Russian for two years and anyone I tell someone about it they feel the need to inform me how stupid it is or ask me if I’m a communist.
But if you’re having a miserable time all the time, it’s OK to give up and it’s probably not for you. That’s how I felt about programming, despite all the pressure for years I felt to ‘become a programmer’.
Be specific with what you want that’d be a start.
@[email protected]: are you a bot?
TBH that’s not a nice question unless you have specific non-vibe evidence
The account is 2 weeks old, no comments, and this is the only post. I’d say there’s a fair chance of OP being a bot unless they decide to respond to anyone.
Also a random number at the end of the username, and it targets AskLemmy. Bots asking questions could be some way to train AI I guess.
I would say whatever you are trying to learn be kind for yourself. Learning is a journey, be consistent but not too hard for yourself.
Learning is like building a structure. You can’t erect a skyscraper without creating the basic, solid foundation. Learn the basics first to allow you to build higher more complex knowledge. And as others have said, have a goal, a plan and break it all into small, manageable parts.
Your entire life is your learning journey. It takes a while.
Despite the lack of details, A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell is a great start for any intellectual journey. It brought me to the most fascinating places.
a great start for any intellectual journey
What’s at the start of any intellectual journey, no matter the destination? Learning how to think. Right?
Fun story.
My first day in my first class in an undergraduate Chem Eng course. Professor was 70+ years old, craggy face and his voice sounded like he had been smoking a pack a day for decades.
First day of class. Room of ~15 students. He walks in, introduces himself and says,
“In this class I’m going to teach you how to think. Until you understand the world enough to predict it precisely with science and mathematics, you do not know how to think”
It’s not though. it’s a terrible book. His takes are incredibly biased and inaccurate, especially in light of modern scholarship.
Is it better than nothing? Yeah, but don’t take anything he says seriously, he basically gives shitty crib notes and mocks every philosopher because he’s so high on his own supply. And his whole intellectual project, historically, is a bit of a joke and got destroyed by Wittgenstein, which he admitted later in life. Then he turned against Wittgenstein when he started exploring natural language philosophy.
The book prompted me to read what I found interesting during the read. I never went back and compare my thought to his, might be fun to do!
It is okay and natural to be overwhelmed. Ask for someone with the skill you are learning for beginner resources.
Break thnigs down into bitesized pieces, dumb it down, until you get it.
I am a big fan of writing down how to do certain things when learning new software. Not only does it help in understanding and remembering, but it’s also always there for you when you need to look it up.
Start with basic life skills. If you find yourself needing to do something, and it’s something other people routinely do, learn how. It is not only useful, it will help you build a better understanding of the world.
Academically, study areas that look interesting to you. Try different things. Some won’t be that exciting, but will still broaden your range of knowledge. Others you will want to dig into and learn more.
Add to your general knowledge by watching social trends, following the news, and reading books. Academics are just one source of information. Knowledge is everywhere you look. You just have to pay attention to what you’re looking at.
All knowledge is interconnected. You don’t just add to it incrementally. Everything you learn can eventually connect to something else you’ve learned to form a larger piece of the puzzle. The interconnections are sometimes more valuable than the individual bits of knowledge that make them up.
We are all trying to understand the world we live in. We start out knowing only about our immediate surroundings. Seeing a bigger picture of the world, and knowing more about other cultures, helps us better anticipate things that are likely to affect us. It helps us make all kinds of decisions, from the personal to the political and social.
Also, keep in mind that understanding is not just useful. Learning can be a fun, all by itself. Some things are worth doing just because we enjoy doing them.
study areas that look interesting to you
Came here to day this.
Study what is interesting to you. That is what you will be motivated to focus on, to invest time and effort to become expert.
