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Tell HN: Don't learn more than you need to know

13 pointsne0122 comments

The most important resource for anyone is time and no one disagrees with not wasting it!

But most people waste it, and waste it in ways they think is not wasting.

For example, most people don't consider learning more than you need to know a bad thing! Because learning is good, we don't consider over-learning bad!

I think over-learning is as bad as not knowing anything. Both is wasting time!

Information in this world is infinite and our time is finite so it makes most sense to only learn the most important things that we need to know right now -- not in the future but right now!

Now, someone might argue that learning more than we need to know gives us perspective to see what we need to know next, or gives us big picture or our next idea or some other crap to usually justify a 400 page textbook on world economy for someone with no interest.

Well, if you have no perspective or you think you need to know more in order to make a better decision you still don't know enough. In that case you need to learn more but not more than that because soon you have no time to learn anything!

Don't over-learn!

Sounds like the sort of thinking that leads to apps that depend on a slew of "cloud" vendor services and 5 different saas api's (plus their collective cloud requirements) because the developer doesn't know how to hash a password or resize an image.

You can read about hashing passwords and resizing images in a textbook but the reading maybe less efficient compared to actually learning it while doing it. Knowledge and experience. E.g. Someone who's reading wikipedia about worms is wasting his time compared to someone who's joined a worm lab.

Oh that's fine then. This textbook says I can use md5 for my passwords so that's what I'll do.

I think the "follow your bliss" meme is a decent heuristic.

So much of the weird useless stuff I spent lonely hours learning about have actually turned out to be crucial to my career opportunities and generally made me a better engineer.

I think taking some hours to just do cool weird crazy stuff will probably always pay off in one way or another, maybe ten years down the line even.

If I value knowledge in life, your question is not relevant. I use my time in order get as much knowledge as I can. Over learning something means acquiring more knowledge.

What you should say instead is - I make use of my time by trying as many things as I can without understanding them. Pretty much like a newborn.

If I enjoyed my time "over learnig" is it really wasting my time? I understand that not all learing is enjoyed, but if it's subject I enjoy learning more about it's not wasting my time.

There's a famous section in the Sherlock Holmes story A Study in Scarlet in which Homes talks about how he not only did not know that the Earth revolved around the sun, but that he'd do his best to forget that fact, as it had no bearing upon his life.

"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose."

Well, the counter-argument is that you won't know what you need to know until you realize you don't know it.

How do you even know what you need to know?

Interesting!

To me one of the most fascinating things is the way babies learn!

How does a brand new brain (that knows nothing) start learning?

Of course, I don't know! I just know that babies are cute and this topic is interesting.

But, I think as soon as you can ask a question, you know enough to ask the next one which will ultimately result in learning everything if you had infinite time.

We are all familiar with the age babies start asking questions that our answer only leads them to a new question, and then another, and another, until we say enough with the questions let's go eat an ice cream! :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate–distortion_theory

We can discuss your thoughts only because there where people who learned to much. Without them we would not have internet, computers, could not read/write and high probably would have been killed by an epidemic years ago.

Learning a lot is not over-learning.

Ok - so how do you know if you're "over-learning" - what are the signals for you?

Learning by problem solving.

I just try to solve problems one at a time. And usually break a hard problem into smaller easier ones.

When I can't solve a problem it's usually time to learn more until it's solved. And when it's solved I go to the next one.

I have created a programming language with this method without even knowing where to start.

I guess, the internet (accessibility of information) is the main reason that eliminates the need to learn stuff beforehand.

Maybe I should change the title to something like:

Learn as you go! :)

Aah that better explains what you mean!

I enjoy learning for the sake of learning. I dont watch tv or netflix. All subjective.

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

the paradox: do busybodies waste time telling others to stop wasting their time?

There is some truth in this, but determining what you need to know is the hard part. Learning something enjoyable (learning to surf, for example) is another category where I don't think it can be called a waste of time.

This happens often with coworkers who spend a lot of work time reading books that go way beyond the material needed for their task (which is usually covered by official documentation).

not true

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