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Comment by Saanti | Hacker News Reader

> You should always be learning even in your spare time. Maybe not always about programming but about something.

Actually, one of the most important things I learned 'the hard way', is that you should actually 'learn not to learn' (i.e. really rest), and let go of any anxieties that may urge you to 'always be learning'. This insight improved my joy in life and tech, and also my focus and productivity, by much more then an approach of anxiously trying to be learning all the time.

Maybe for others things work differently, but generalizing into 'everyone should always be learning' seems too strong a claim to me.

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Well the alternative is that you narrow your knowladge to a small problem domain which sounds horrible for

   1) your own mind,
   2) your ability to talk to people who work outside of your problem domain, and 
   3) your ability to think outside of the "box" that is held by your field.

How is the alternative to always learning narrowing your knowledge to a small problem domain? It's not. The alternative is... taking a rest every once in a while.

Learning isn't a tedious process. It can be as simple as saying "hey, how does that work" or "what are you doing" to someone working. I think talking to people, or thinking through how things work is relaxing.

Also there is no reason why you can't rest. We dedicate ~8hr/day of our lives to resting. We also get full days on weekends. We also get about 7-12hr/day for doing whatever we want while awake.

In those 7-12hr you can sit and stare into the idiot box and laugh when the talking heads tell you to laugh or you can read a book, go out side, think about "how would I make X", prototype some code for doing something, talk to some people who are professionals in a craft and ask "how do you build X".

I think one is way more fun then the other.

Now don't get me wrong, I watch a lot of TV but most of the TV I watch is "What If". I like science fiction stuff and a lot of it is some social commentary put into a setting that makes it ok to talk about or even asking moral questions that are different all together. Thinking about those dilemas falls under the classification of "learning". This isn't technical knowladge but instead social.

Wow, disingenuous statement you made there.

>In those 7-12hr you can sit and stare into the idiot box and laugh when the talking heads tell you to laugh... >I watch a lot of TV but most of the TV I watch is "What If"

You can watch TV and be an idiot or you can watch the kind of TV I approve of and as such become a better human being.

I mean if you broaden the definition of learning to include watching sci-fi and pondering whatever social commentary you read into the script then great. I'm going to go learn super hard.

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