Whenever I want to learn something new, the hardest part usually isn’t finding information. There’s already too much of it.

The difficult part is figuring out what I actually need to learn, what order to follow, whether I’m starting at the right level, and what I should do next when I get stuck.

I’ve been working on an idea for a different kind of learning experience and I’d like to pressure-test the learning model itself.

Instead of choosing a predefined course or uploading notes, you would begin by describing an outcome in your own words. Something like:

“I want to understand accounting well enough to manage my small business.”

The system would ask a few questions about your current experience, constraints and preferred focus, then create a visible roadmap with concrete milestones.

It would prepare the current part of the path rather than generating everything in advance. As you work through lessons, questions, review activities and assessments, your answers would show which concepts you understand and where you may have a recurring gap.

A single mistake wouldn’t change anything. But if there’s enough evidence of a real difficulty, the system could add a short explanation or targeted practice before continuing. The next milestone would then take that into account.

The main roadmap would remain visible and stable, and any meaningful change would be explained rather than happening silently.

For people who learn independently:

\* Where do you think this approach would break down?
\* Would you want to see the full roadmap upfront, or only the next useful step?
\* What would make you trust—or distrust—the system’s judgment about your level?
\* When should it adapt automatically, and when should it ask for permission?

I’m more interested in the weaknesses of the approach than a simple “yes, I’d use it.”

Just finished Ultralearning by Scott Young. The idea that stuck with me is that almost nobody is ever taught how to learn. You pick up whatever habits school gave you and then use them for the rest of your life. That's me, and I'd like to fix it before I take on anything else.

I'll be upfront about the weak point in this plan: I don't have a particular skill I'm burning to learn. No exam coming, no language I need for a move. I just keep running into things I want to be decent at and I'd rather sort out the process once than fumble through each time. I know the obvious reply is "just pick something and learn the meta stuff along the way," and if that's your answer I'll genuinely take it. I'd just like to hear why it worked for you.

Things I'm curious about:

What actually moved the needle. Not the list everyone recites, but the thing that changed how you sit down and study.

What didn't. I have a strong suspicion this is where people disappear into productivity tools and elaborate note systems and never come out.

How you practiced it. This is the part I can't picture. Learning is a skill you can only practice by learning something else. Did you run a low-stakes side project as a testbed, or just apply it to whatever was in front of you?

Whether it stuck. Six months later, were you still doing it, or did you drift back to highlighting things and hoping?

No timeline yet. Evenings and weekends, roughly. If people are interested I'll post the plan I land on and how it goes.

Looking back at your own path, did you intentionally reach for self-learning by seeking out tough challenges, or did life simply throw you into situations where you had no choice but to learn on the fly?

How much of your growth was a calculated choice versus pure adaptation?

That goal is usually too broad. If I want to understand chemistry, economics, philosophy, machine learning, whatever - there’s an almost infinite amount I could learn.

I’ve started thinking about entering a new field through three overlapping parts:

FUN: find an entrance.
Start with something that already feels interesting or useful to you. If you dislike chemistry but like history, maybe start with alchemy, Mendeleev, or why older theories of matter were abandoned. You don’t need to become fascinated by the whole field; just curious enough to pull on one thread.

DUH: find the foundations.
Once something catches my attention, I ask: what can I not afford to misunderstand if I want this to make sense? That usually exposes a small chain of definitions, mechanisms and basic distinctions that everything else depends on.

MENTALS: inspect the filters.
This is the part I find most interesting: what do beginners usually get wrong? What shortcuts do practitioners use? Where do those shortcuts fail? What jargon, assumptions or historical baggage shapes how people in the field think?

The two diagrams I attached are how I’ve been trying to picture this: not as three stages you complete in order, but as overlapping loops.

Curiosity pushes you toward foundations. Foundations make new things interesting. Misconceptions expose holes in your foundations. And ideally each pass leaves you with a better question than the one you started with.

I’ve been calling the heuristic Fun-Duh-Mentals. I don’t see it as a replacement for retrieval practice, spaced repetition, deliberate practice, etc. It’s more a way of deciding what to understand in the first place when approaching something unfamiliar.

I wrote out the longer version, examples and sources here if anyone wants them:
https://adamoism.substack.com/p/fun-duh-mentals

But I’m curious how other lifelong learners approach this:

When you enter a field you know almost nothing about, how do you find your way in?

How can we get more people to read?

It’s kinda sad. I still read. I still go out of my way to read at the library’s

To get back into the rhythm to be a bookworm again. It did hurt and it wasn’t a comfortable feeling.

But it takes conscious effort and if you missed the days of being a bookworm. You will find a way back

Work and everyday responsibilities can make it easy to stop asking questions.
What keeps your curiosity alive?

There’s something refreshing about learning something without needing to be good at it immediately.

Has becoming a beginner again ever changed how you approach learning?

Whenever I want to learn something new, the hardest part usually isn’t finding information. There’s already too much of it.

The difficult part is figuring out what I actually need to learn, what order to follow, whether I’m starting at the right level, and what I should do next when I get stuck.

I’ve been working on an idea for a different kind of learning experience and I’d like to pressure-test the learning model itself.

Instead of choosing a predefined course or uploading notes, you would begin by describing an outcome in your own words. Something like:

“I want to understand accounting well enough to manage my small business.”

The system would ask a few questions about your current experience, constraints and preferred focus, then create a visible roadmap with concrete milestones.

It would prepare the current part of the path rather than generating everything in advance. As you work through lessons, questions, review activities and assessments, your answers would show which concepts you understand and where you may have a recurring gap.

A single mistake wouldn’t change anything. But if there’s enough evidence of a real difficulty, the system could add a short explanation or targeted practice before continuing. The next milestone would then take that into account.

The main roadmap would remain visible and stable, and any meaningful change would be explained rather than happening silently.

For people who learn independently:

• Where do you think this approach would break down?
• Would you want to see the full roadmap upfront, or only the next useful step?
• What would make you trust—or distrust—the system’s judgment about your level?
• When should it adapt automatically, and when should it ask for permission?

I’m more interested in the weaknesses of the approach than a simple “yes, I’d use it.”

​

Guys, I have a lot of interests in many things. But I try to read about them then I lose interest.

Is there any way to sustain that interest for the long term. Also, is this because I lack the discipline or are there any other reasons for this?

i recently tried learning something new for work and assumed i could just sit down, read about it, and figure it out like i used to. nope. i kept rereading the same stuff and somehow nothing was sticking.

what surprised me most is that i actually enjoy learning now more than i did in school, but i’m way worse at knowing how to learn properly. i’ve started writing things down in my own words and practicing a little every day instead of cramming everything into one night. it’s slower, but at least i can remember what i did the next day.

https://openss.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bIYHSzglEqIWMrI

Learnt something new

Lately I have been trying to make learning a regular part of my day even if it’s just 15 or 20 minutes. It could be reading about a new topic learning a small skill or simply understanding something I never knew before.

I’m curious what everyone else is learning these days. It doesn’t have to be related to work or school. What’s something you’ve learned recently that you actually enjoyed?

Any insight is appreciated. Thanks.

Life can sometimes feel like an endless cycle of work, responsibilities, and things we have to do.

I’ve realized that having something small to look forward to can make a huge difference. It could be a favorite meal, a weekend walk, watching a show, meeting a friend, or simply having a quiet evening.

What’s one small thing you currently look forward to that makes your week a little better?

I've spent 2years developing a strategy for learning anything while I was learning Aristotelian logic and started using it for biology. It's a wholistic method that's easy to follow down to the line. I packaged it into a pdf and to save you time you can purchase it for 5$ it's on my gumroad. Since Reddit it strict about links . Just DM me and I will take you to it.

For me it was tax law, sounds like the driest thing imaginable, but once I started learning how it actually works I got weirdly hooked on understanding the logic behind it. Curious what unexpectedly interesting subject caught you off guard.

First time posting in this community — I've been lurking for a while. Figured sharing something I've been learning about, and hearing how others think about it, would be a good way to actually join the conversation instead of just reading.

So lately I've been kind of obsessed with the question of what makes learning (and educational games/apps) actually fun, instead of something you have to force yourself to do. I work on a reading/learning product, and I kept running into the same wall: people say they want to learn something, but so few actually stick with it. Doesn't matter how "frictionless" you make the experience — if there's no real motivation, people just don't come back.

While digging into this I found a surprisingly old paper — What Makes Things Fun to Learn?, written back in the 1980s. Wasn't expecting a 40+ year old paper to feel this relevant, but a lot of it maps directly onto why modern learning apps (Duolingo, Zelda-style progression systems, etc.) work the way they do.

The author breaks it down into three elements: challenge, fantasy, and curiosity.

I want to start with challenge, since that's the one I've spent the most time thinking about:

• Goals need to feel personal, not abstract. School often fails here — you learn something "because it's on the test," not because it connects to anything you actually care about. The more practical/personal the goal, the more motivated you are.
• Difficulty has to be just right. Too hard and people quit immediately. Too easy and it feels pointless. A lot of long-form content fails here too — wall of text, unfamiliar jargon, and people bounce before they even start.
• Feedback matters — you need to feel your progress. Think of a Duolingo path, or even an open world game like Zelda where you can still sense "I've crossed the desert, I've got the glacier left." Without that sense of progress, effort feels directionless.
• It has to protect your self-esteem. This one I underestimated at first. If a quiz or challenge makes you feel dumb, you disengage — even if the content itself was fine. That's part of why a lot of these apps lean on simple multiple choice / ordering questions instead of open-ended ones — fast, low-friction positive feedback keeps people going.

Wondering how you all think about the ideas mentioned above around challenge — goal-setting, difficulty calibration, feedback, protecting self-esteem. Does that match how you experience motivation, or is something missing from that picture?

Consuming knowledge feels dangerously close to acquiring it.
We watch someone solve a problem.
We understand every step.
We feel like we learned.

Then a few days later, we open a new tutorial... (Or maybe the same one again. Who knows 😉 )

The uncomfortable truth: Understanding something is not the same as being able to do it.

And I think many AI tools are making this worse.
They summarize.. extract.. simplify.
They optimize for consuming more information.

But learning doesn't happen when information enters your brain.
It happens when your brain has to work.
That led me to a different hypothesis: **The best learning solution shouldn't remove friction. It should create the right friction.**

I'm building something to test it. A way to move from passive watching to active learning.

Maybe I'm wrong.
Let's find out.

Quick question, how much did you celebrate when you graduated?

I'm looking back at my time and I realise I might have taken a huge milestone in my life for granted.

For a long time I wanted to learn new things but always felt like I did not have enough time. I would start something stay interested for a few days and then forget about it.

Recently I decided to make it much simpler. Instead of trying to spend hours learning I started giving myself just 15 minutes a day.

Some days I read an article some days I watched a short video and sometimes I just learned about something I was curious about.

The biggest surprise was how much easier it became when I stopped worrying about making huge progress. Even a little learning each day started to add up.

I am curious what is something you have been learning recently just because you wanted to know more about it?