HN Explorer

Ask HN: How do you find motivation to teach yourself?

11 points by argonaut ↗ HN
I tend to have really serious problems getting motivated to teach myself new technologies and new things in general, even if the technology interests me. I've started MOOCs before but I've never finished. I similarly have trouble teaching myself new web/mobile technologies. This gets so bad that I've considered paying for in-person classes. What tips do you have for self-motivation?

12 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 40.1 ms ] thread
glimcat
The problem with "learn x" from a motivational standpoint is that it is extremely open-ended. Say I want to learn more JavaScript. How do I know when I've met my goal? If the goal is indefinite, how do I measure progress? This is very demotivating.

Instead, try to find something completable which requires the skill you want to get better with. Build something, even if it's mostly frivolous. You need a destination, a path from here to there, and the ability to measure progress along the path.

zgohr
To add to this point, I personally find the smaller the goal the better. The quicker I can get gratification the more willing I am to continue working at it.
xijuan
Omg. You made an extremely good point. I need to rethink about my goals based on what you said.
codegeek
Try and apply the S.M.A.R.T rule. Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time bound. Any learning objective should have most of not all of the SMART attributes. For example, if you want to learn a technology, figure out how you will measure whether you succeeded or not. How long ? Are you being realistic ? For example, "learn to code" is very abstract while "learn to code website in python in 6 months" is a lot more relevant.
twunde
I myself have the same problem with MOOCs. I've found that it helps to chunk things up. So start off with the basic information and then look for online tutorials to complete. And of course the best way to learn is to use what you're learning in a project, whether personal or professional
shkabazi
Decide why you wanna learn it. I consider this to be very important, because learning a new technology/language(or whatever) just because it's name is nice, wont take you far.
mrbarrett84
Agreed. There are lots of technologies and tools you can learn. It helps to step back, take a deep breath and ask yourself a few questions.

Do you want to work with the Web, with distributed systems, with software, or none of the above?

Once you narrow it down, it becomes easier to prioritize and pick your tools accordingly. I learned this the hard way, as I aimlessly spent a summer trying to learn Ruby, Python, and Java all at the same time, just so I could say I "knew" them.

It hurt my brain and my motivation suffered.

revorad
I hear you. Can you be a bit more specific and say what you are currently trying to learn? I'd like to help if possible.
mrbarrett84
Given my slightly advanced age, my motivation seems to come from the desire to feed and clothe myself and those I care about.

Initially, I was motivated by the idea that learning certain technologies could make me valuable to employers in many industries and regions. Having previously studied business and foreign languages, it took my breath away to search for tech jobs and find hundreds of job openings across multiple continents.

I guess it can be summed up as motivation by a lingering fear of failure with a desire for freedom thrown into the mix. Classes can help, but if you hate what you are learning, why not find something equally valuable that you love?

argonaut
To add more details to my question: Right now I'm trying to learn web development (having previously done mobile development). The way I'm starting off is by learning Django using online tutorials.

I guess my problem is exacerbated by two things: 1) the field of web development is huge, and becoming proficient in it requires knowing a little about databases, a back-end framework, front-end development (JS, jQuery, HTML,CSS), and eventually some devops stuff for when I move off Heroku; and 2) Django itself is fairly complex (i.e. takes a while to get running at full speed).

I try to approach this systematically, with my goal right now of groking Django/the back-end before moving on to learning front-end development and exploring databases (SQL, NoSQL) and devops. HN has definitely given me a good idea of where to start, but it's still a daunting task.

My eventual goal is to write mobile/web applications with a back-end. I want to learn all this because I have a long list of all kinds of ideas for services/apps I want to write.

[dead] aerowong
Read The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

You'll find the answer.

You'll know willpower is really overrated.

You can't motivate yourself to accomplish a thing, but building a solid system around [your achievement] will do the course.