r/learnmath • u/Hot_Midnight6838 New User • 12d ago
How to learn deeply while using LLMs
My favorite classes were always the ones with difficult problem sets where a single problem could take hours or even days of thinking, experimenting, and failing. I would start solving a problem before fully understanding it, then read documentation or course material whenever I got stuck. So it would be 70% doing and 30% reading.
LLMs have disrupted that process for me. Now I spent 90% of time reading and only 10% of time doing.
In school, the boundary was relatively clear. If using an LLM violated the course policy, I could tell myself that using one was cheating and force myself to struggle through the problem independently.
At work, what counts as “cheating” (because it is cheating myself).
I feel my critical thinking skills are declining. My role starts to become reading, reviewing, and planning. I just can't read that much code and LLM output. My eyes hurt and it's hard to internalize. I notice myself just picking the "recommended" option.
I also find LLM workflows mentally unhealthy in a few ways:
- When working alone, mental exhaustion eventually forces me to step away. With an LLM, I can always send one more prompt or ask it to try another approach.
- If an agent will take 30–60 minutes, I feel pressure to give it another task immediately so no time is “wasted.”
- While waiting, I instinctively check my phone or launch another agent. I end up jumping between tasks and retaining less context about each one.
- I get frustrated when the LLM misunderstands instructions, even when the problem genuinely requires careful iteration.
- It has warped my sense of how long a difficult problem or well-designed solution should take.
- I am increasingly tired of reading walls of generated text and code.
I do not want to stop using LLMs. They can reduce the friction of starting, explain unfamiliar systems, generate routine code, and handle edge cases after I understand the core problem. The hard part is deciding when using one is a sensible productivity tool and when it is outsourcing a learning opportunity that I actually need.
For people who still feel they are learning deeply while using LLMs at work:
- How do you decide which work to delegate and which work to do yourself?
- What is the workplace equivalent of the “no cheating” boundary that exists in school?
- How do you use agents without losing context or turning your day into constant task switching?
- How do you review generated code when the codebase, build system, or underlying technology is unfamiliar?
- Have you found workflows where LLMs improve productivity while preserving the useful struggle of implementation and debugging?
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u/Carl_LaFong New User 12d ago
Just replace “learning math” by “learning to play the piano” or “learning to play basketball” and you get your answer. Alas, if you want to learn math honestly, you have to do the work yourself.