Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma

Here's one solution for "information paralysis": instead of watching and reading everything that seems interesting, just put that on a list and go back to work. After a week (or more, better more) go to your list and start watching things. You will naturally identify some of those things as not-so-interesting-as-they-seemed-at-first-glance.

Hi Michael,

your kind of distraction is totally normal working and studying in a field where so much exciting stuff is going on every day. So first of all: Don't worry!

From my experience what you can do is prioritize the stuff you have to do in chunks. Use something like the Promodoro-technique (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) to focus on the things you are doing. Don't do anything else but exactly what you want to learn in that moment. Try to track your progress by making little tutorials, summaries, videos for yourself and others.

From my experience more than anything else it takes discipline with yourself and also the understanding that you don't have to know everything in the world right here and right know. You can be rest assured that nobody does.

So just relax and take things one after another and enjoy the progress by connecting dots with each other.

A thought would be, could this be a more general issue in your life, and not just a programming / project problem?

There are many reasons why someone finds it hard to get things done that are not to do with laziness, etc. A tendency towards perfectionism, for instance, can actually be detrimental. You mention feeling scared. Fear is often associated with general anxiety, which is common and often very treatable but has the effect of making work hard.

I don't wish to make any assumptions about you, and what I am saying may not apply in your case at all, but perhaps one thing you could consider here would be some general counselling.

No one can be an expert at everything. Pick exactly one topic to get good at. Learn to ignore other topics, or just dabble in them for fun. It's very rewarding to learn one thing well.

I'd think you have an issue with your own time management (I do too).

One suggestion that kinda worked for me: try to set a specific time (i.e. 1 hour every day at 9AM) to do X (i.e. watch the MOOC lectures and do the exercises), put an alarm clock, setup your computer to forbid browsing facebook/hn/reddit/youtube in the time period etc.

This way you might be able to make it a habit, which helps you avoiding the procrastinate/procrastinate/forget/ah-crap-too-late trap.

I'm a victim of "Information Paralysis" as well. One thing that has helped me was to join a meetup or group or even discussion forums related to a particular field that i want to spend time on for the next few months and frequently catchup with them so that you're always motivated and there's a win-win kind of situation for the group as well.

I struggled with similar problems. So I have three fixed buckets of time now. First bucket is the job. Second bucket is for one side project. Third bucket is for anything under the sun: Linux kernel, Reactjs, Rust, Android, ML... I call the third bucket as the "fish bucket".

Recommended book: "I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was" by Barbara Sher.

Not that it will solve your problem but it will give you some perspective on it.

"Whom the gods wish to destroy, they give unlimited resources."

In your case, educational resources. It's difficult to say because of the details you omitted, but whatever it is you're trying to do is probably the wrong thing. If you need to cover 4 highly technical subjects in 4 months, then you've made a wrong turn somewhere and you need to stop and re-evaluate things. No matter how important it seems, no matter how alluring the opportunity. It just isn't going to happen. If this is a life or death situation then get your affairs in order, because the odds of anyone being able to learn effectively in that context are extremely low.

If you want to learn one or maybe two of those things then pick a practical project. Learning Algorithms from a MOOC is a good start, but you might want to augment that by implementing some of them in an open source library using a language of your choice and putting it on github. You'll learn by doing, you'll hopefully get feedback and you'll have the pressure of doing it publicly. Practical experience is one of the best ways to learn, if not the best. Then repeat some variant of that process for the other things that you feel you need to know. Find a public and real world application and let it light a fire under you.

Best of luck, Michael.

I recommend 2 books: "The War of Art" and "Do The Work", both from Steven Pressfield.

In short, this is Resistance. Do The Work.

Been there, done that (over and over again).

You don't have time for everything. Therefore, you must choose what to do, but also you must choose what not to do. That is the hard part - choosing what to let go. Once you did that, the rest is (comparatively) easy.

Ideally, devote yourself to one subject and immerse yourself in it. Stay focused, refuse to do anything else. You'll have distractions, you'll doubt your choice, but don't start anything else until you finish what you've started.

If you have to do two things at the time, split your day in two. In the morning do one subject, then take a break (have a lunch, go to walk,...) Then, you study the second one. This break is important, don't jump from one subject to the next without it.

In summary, make your choice and stick to it until completion. Ignore everything else.

You need to balance what you need to get done with your natural curiosity. Separate them out and make sure both happen.

1. Work out what material you need to cover on your required studies.

2. Break it down into shorter, manageable bits. A chapter per week, perhaps.

3. Make completion of these bits concrete, so you know you are progressing (and not just reading). Completing the exercises, perhaps.

4. Break down the bits even further, so you can plan them across days.

5. Every day at the same time, start working on these bits.

6. When you finish your bits for a day, stop working. Your reward is the rest of the day to learn about whatever you feel like, guilt-free.

1. Make a dependency chart for all your things, showing which ones depend on which other ones.

2. Mark each node with some notion of what you're getting out of it in the first place. This could range from "for the lulz" to "world domination".

3. Pick the earliest, easiest, most useful/fun thing and do it, as soon as you have the time. Do not do anything else, except possibly the next easiest, most useful/fun thing if you really feel the need to split your time. Keep on coming back to these same one or two things whenever you get the time until they are done.

4. Repeat (3) until entire dependency chart is exhausted.

Hi Michael, I think you need to pick a specific goal that will make you happy and make your life better and work towards that.

We can learn, just to learn, but maybe you would be happier if what you learned had a direct impact on your life.

I studied for a while (got my PhD), but I wasn't happy with what I was doing until I was running my own company and learning what I needed to learn to make money and make my company better and make my life better.

I suffer from the same problem.

MOOCs sometimes help me because they establish a weekly rhythm of homeworks/structure.

It's OK to let things go if they are not interesting enough (I don't finish all MOOCs/books/whatever).

I've read that learning everything at once is actually more efficient than focusing on one thing at a time, even if it is harder and more confusing in the beginning.

Regular times for learning probably help. Getting away, for example to a library or cafe might help.

There is one alternative that rarely gets mentioned: you don't NEED to cover anything. I don't know of your specific circumstances, but you might consider dropping the school completely, and instead exploring anything that you're interested in, if it is viable in your case. Life is too short to spend it on what others think you need; yes, it might take longer to get to a certain level of knowledge, but on the other hand you won't waste time trying to satisfy others, so the two will pretty much cancel out in most cases.

I followed the same route, with great results -- but I never had courage to do it until I was in my forties, spending much too much time on trying to fit into other people's ideas what I can and should do.

If it's any consolation, this type of question, along with the "I start projects and get distracted by more interesting ones before I can finish them", seems like a very common problem around here. I don't have a definitive answer but what works for me is I work on an interesting project in parallel to learning about a topic. For example, if I am learning about compilers, I will think of a programming language and write a compiler for it. I usually try to pick an original project that is at least minimally useful because otherwise I lose interest quickly. If I can't come up with anything, I might just write some blog post(s) about the subject.

I'm not sure if it'll work for you, but the only way I managed to really study and master big subjects was slow and steady.

Study every day. It doesn't matter how long, how intense, how much material you cover. Just study every day. Sit down and look at the subject you need to study every day. If you get bored after ten minutes, do something else. But don't skip a day and say you'll make up for it by studying twice as long tomorrow. Just show up every day.

Write everything you want to learn on 3x5 index cards. Put each card on the floor. Organize by priority, until you have 1 card left. Throw away everything else. That's what you're working on.

Time is finite. You cannot do everything you want to do. You must throw away 99% of your "Want to do's." It's the only way you'll make real progress.

When asked what he did better than everyone else, Warren Buffet said, "Allocate resources." Your problem is that you are not good at allocating your most precious resource: time.

"The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes." -- Tony Blair

You are saying yes to waaayyyy too much.

Try to get rid of distracting habits (remove fb app, log out, block news sites, reddit etc...). It might be hard in the beginning and you'll catch yourself opening reddit or going to fb without thinking.

Once your brain is less addicted to distraction in general it might be able to focus on other topics for longer periods. When you can focus, you'll delve further into the topics you mentioned and have higher chances to stick with it.

Basically, you aren't getting in the zone on any of the topics you mentioned because of distractions.

Getting in the zone is what locks you down on a topic, and you aren't.

"I'm proud of the things we've done -- but I'm more proud of everything we said no to." -- Steve Jobs

Hi, Michael)

"information paralysis" Is that a problem? So, may be it is not? May be it's an opportunity) Let's solve it)

Imagine very-very big mindMap (like that, but much bigger http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QCtHZYRX_0w/UcbhaceT4MI/AAAAAAAAAW...). Imagine, each word in there is a single knowledge. All this knowledges are ether unbounded from each other or bounded in small groups and all placed chaotically. This is how it looks right now in most of the human minds and most of the Internet. So, would it be great, if we will create website which could bring order to all this knowledges through crowd-sourcing? And each knowledge will have bunch of links to courses, books, videos etc. It will be core structure to any useful information. This is the idea. I'm thinking about this sometimes. Just an Idea. Yet.

I could share more information, if someone will be interested in this)